Architects of the West Kingdom – Works of Wonder Now on Kickstarter

We knew it was coming, and we were waiting with bated breath (well, ok, I was).

And it’s finally here!

Well, the campaign, anyway.

Yes, the Works of Wonder expansion for the brilliant Architects of the West Kingdom (designed by Shem Phillips & S.J. MacDonald and published by Garphill Games with eventual distribution by Renegade Games Studios) is now on Kickstarter!

Let’s blurb the Kickstarter page:

“In Architects of the West Kingdom: Works of Wonder, builders from far and wide have travelled to partake in the King’s latest endeavour – five glorious monuments to beautify the city. However, not just any architect can be entrusted with such a task. Only those of influence and charitable reputation shall receive this great honour. Will you accompany the Princess as she surveys the projects, or rally support from the elusive Profiteer?”

The expansion adds a new board extension that includes the Influence track, it will house the new Contribution/Consequence cards, and include spaces for new apprentices.

It will also have Wonder tokens and their corresponding cards and 6 new player boards. Finally, it will have 24 new apprentices, 24 buildings, and 12 rewards.

For those who like this sort of thing, it also has a new solo mode with 6 unique opponents!

Do you know what excites me even more than the expansion (though I’m plenty excited about that)?

The fact that you can also get the Collector’s Box for the entire Architects of the West Kingdom game.

I didn’t jump on the Raiders of the North Sea Collector’s Box until it was too late and then I had to wait for my game store to restock from Renegade Games.

That’s not all!

As an add-on, you can get the Paladins of the West Kingdom Collector’s Box!

That’s two boxes!

Needless to say I jumped on that immediately too.

Ok, enough about the Collector’s Boxes, though.

Works of Wonder looks like it will add a bunch of new stuff, with new options on how to win the game. Multiple ways to win, you can’t go wrong with that!

Included with the Collector’s Box for Architects will be 14 promo cards: 3 Buildings, 6 Apprentices, 1 Contribution/Consequence and 4 Craft cards. These will be available separately at a later date as there are no Kickstarter exclusives in this campaign.

In fact, Garphill Games emphasizes this, saying “There are no exclusive items in this Kickstarter campaign. If you’d prefer to wait for the items to become available in retail, we are 100% okay with that.”

That’s awesome, and it certainly doesn’t keep these campaigns from funding.

For $38 NZ (approximately $34 CDN right now), you can get the expansion.

For $100 NZ (approximately $88 CDN right now), you can get the expansion, the Collector’s Box, and the 777x536mm neoprene playmat! I’m not a big playmat guy and if there had been an option for the Collector’s Box and the expansion without the mat, I would have been happy. It’s hard to transport playmats.

But it certainly looks cool!

That being said, what I ended up doing (after seeing somebody mention this on Boardgame Geek) is to just back the expansion and add the Collector’s Box as an add-on. Knocked about $30 off of my pledge level and I’m not getting a mat!

So yes, I guess there is a “pledge level without the mat but with the Box.”

Blog post editing when new information is presented? Who does that?

If you want to get started on the whole West Kingdom saga, you can also spend $444 NZ (approximately $389 CDN right now) and get the whole Architects series, Collector’s Box and playmat along with the complete Paladins series with Collector’s Box. This also includes the Tomesaga that combines all three games.

Not for me (since I have all of the other stuff except Tomesaga) but if you don’t have any of it, I’d recommend it!

Even if you just want to dip your toe in, you can pick up the base game of any of the series.

There’s so much awesomeness in this campaign that it’s unreal!

Go to the Kickstarter page and see all of the great pictures I haven’t used here and to back at whatever level you need to. You won’t be sorry!

The campaign is open until August 12 for fulfilment scheduled for May 2022 (though the Garphill Games projects typically fulfill a few months early).

Here’s the page again so you don’t have to scroll up! (Though I’m sure you already went to it and have it open right now, right?)

Is this something you’re backing or looking at? Let me know in the comments.