Designer: Stefan Dorra

Artist: Klemens Franz

Publisher: Z-Man Games

Valletta is a deck building game designed by Stefan Dorra, a designer that I associate with my “Golden era” of Euro games where player interaction reigns supreme, Indeed, when I think of Dorra, For Sale comes to mind, followed by the insane, no-holds-barred negotiation game, Intrigue. I think these are two of Dorra’s most memorable titles I have played, but perhaps not the most popular in the hobby. I was unaware of Valletta until relatively recently but since it was published by HiG, a company I trust to do ample playtesting before publication, I decided to give it a whirl.

Decking building with the Grand Master of Malta

Mechanism wise, once you crack open the rule book, it is pretty clear immediately that Valletta is a deck builder constructed around the ever-so-familiar resource acquisition and conversion machinery. Players start off with a few character cards and proceed to play 3 each turn to gain resources, construct buildings, trigger benefits, steal from opponents or score points. In between that, there is a special card present in all player decks – Jean Parisot de Valette, a French war hero that defended Malta against the Ottoman turks in the Great Seige of Malta and the namesake for the city and game. When played, this card triggers multiple functions including moving a built in timer to track game length, fire a person from your hand or hire a builder from a common face up pool of cards. Firing a person is akin to the trashing a card in Dominion to trim the deck and improve efficiency. This is a one of a kind card that is in everyone’s deck and serves to move the game along. After the three cards are played, they are discarded and fresh ones are drawn to refill the hand of five cards.

Buildings and character cards come hand in hand

As a deck builder though, Valletta is quite pedestrian. If you have played other deck builders, there really is nothing tremendously new to add to the genre. However, the design is solid. As with other deck builders, personal decks grow when new cards are added to them. Here, character cards are attached to specific buildings and so when one constructs a building, you will get a character to go with it. These character-building pairings are fixed in that it does not vary from game to game. The utility of a character is understandably tied to the function of the building. So for example, if you purchase a lumber mill, then the lumberjack will come with it and when played, the lumberjack will trigger all the lumber mills to produce wood. The same goes for all the professions which is pretty intuitive. The buildings themselves come in only 2 flavors: those that produce resources or generate income, that’s it. However, the powers are slightly more variable for the character cards. Unique characters can score points, steal from others or boost production. By combining these variable player powers, one can custom tailor a strategy to score points based on what type of deck is being put together.

Cards and buildings allow synergy and multiple paths to score points

Despite my previous statement, there are perhaps a few things that I would consider unique to Valletta. First, the game end is triggered when Jean Parisot reaches the end of the timer track at 25 points. Then players reshuffle their entire deck of cards and play all their cards once before final scores are tallied. This is neat in several ways. First, a cap of 25 points means that players can develop a strategy to push for the end game. You can really trim a deck and just push for scoring points by focusing purely on resource-to-point conversion. There are card synergies that allow you to do that. When doing this, you will likely be facing opponents that are focused on purchasing buildings to score points instead. To end the game through construction, you need to build 8 buildings which tend to be slower and harder to accomplish, though they do score more points. However, there are also cheap buildings to be had, so a similar “rush” strategy could also be viable if one focused on buying cheaper buildings in volume. Of course you can go the point heavy route and just accumulate resources to build the biggest, baddest and the most powerful buildings hoping to outscore opponents at the end. Notably, buildings can be upgraded by just paying the resources sans money to flip the card over, doubling the points and resources. Overall, I appreciate that the game has different specializations to pursue scoring points.

Beyond just the basic resource conversion framework, there is also an interesting spatial element to the game where building cards are placed in rows above and below the score track. Players then get monetary discounts when buildings are chained together orthogonally. Plus, bonus points are scored when buildings are constructed from the left field to the right, following the movement of Jean Parisot on the timer track. While not exactly groundbreaking, I find these elements to be quite thematic, envisioning the Grand Master walking around the city directing the construction of buildings. It just adds historical flavor to a game that is decidedly pretty Euro in game play. I always appreciate the extra effort to educate while pushing around cubes.

In summary

First of all, Valletta has stayed true to its HiG roots. It is very much a pure Euro in terms of weight, length and game play. For some, this is probably a weakness where the game feels like a JASE. For others, there is comfort in familiarity. The joy of playing a solid design mixed with a dash of the new is frequently underrated and also underappreciated. It is akin to trying the same type of food in a restaurant instead of going bold and sampling a new dish. While being adventurous is always lauded as a virtue, I think knowing how to be content is of an even greater value. The only concern I have is that while I enjoyed my plays of Valletta, the game by virtue of being a deck builder, is also quite a solitary experience. Apart from the land grab and occasional “take-that” card, I am not sure what my partner is playing most of the time. The only thing I cared about was waiting eagerly for my turn to come around so that I can execute my actions. There are different interactions in Euros and while most are not direct conflict oriented, some have more active player involvement. Valletta is not really one of them. I’d say play it, enjoy it and then decide if there is space in your shelf for one more good quality Euro.

Initial impression: Good