Bored? Game! – Lords of Xidit

Let me tell you about a little game called Lords of Xidit. Wait, don’t run off. Yes it is a silly fantasy place name, but hear me out, because this is a little gem. Xidit is the attempt of blooming French imprint Libellud to enter the shared universe space that is proving popular with many bigger publishers (i.e. Fantasy Flight sets most of its games in Terrinoth and the Android settings). Although it doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, it’s perhaps not so surprising that the setting Libellud chose is an anagram of their break out hit party game Dixit.

Lords of Xidit shares the same promising designer (Régis Bonnessée) and excellent artists (Xavier Gueniffey Durin and Stéphane Gantiez) of Seasons, the other major game in this strange and quirky universe, and should you own that game (and you should, because it’s great) then there’s an exclusive free card included here for it, as well as a lovely map of the land of Xidit itself. The game is something of a retheme and redevelopment of Bonnessée’s earlier game Himalaya, which uses similar innovative mechanics and scoring system. For those of you who are familiar with board games I’d sum up Lords of Xidit as the unlikely love child of Robo Rally and Lords of Waterdeep, but since that won’t mean much to many, some explanation is required.

In Lords of Xidit players take on eccentric questing knights seeking to rid the land of all kinds of bizarre and quirky monsters (imagine Don Quixote on acid). This is achieved by moving from city to city recruiting different colour coded heroes and ‘spending’ them to fight the beasties, in much the same way you complete quests in Waterdeep (although instead of coloured cubes Xidit’s incredible production values have stretched to plastic models, which whilst looking cooler are a little fiddly to deploy). The significant twist here is that Xidit’s core mechanic is the criminally under used simultaneous action programming that can also be found in Richard Garfield’s chaotic robot racer mentioned earlier. Each player secretly programmes six actions for each round into their private board, planning their route across the landscape via roads of three different colours, recruiting and fighting. This is where all the decisions are made and it’s vital to attempt to second (and even third) guess your opponents, because once the boards are revealed, each action is carried out individually in player order with no option to deviate. Sorry, did you want to kill that monster that someone else just vanquished because they were one step ahead of you? Tough.

As most of a player’s resources are hidden behind a screen attempting to remember whether someone picked up an elusive cleric the previous round becomes the difference between a gloriously triumphant romp and a turn in which you just wandered aimlessly around the board.

As most of a player’s resources are hidden behind a screen attempting to remember whether someone picked up an elusive cleric the previous round becomes the difference between a gloriously triumphant romp and a turn in which you just wandered aimlessly around the board. Players who don’t like this level of uncertainty or the process of bluffing and second guessing their opponents may become a little frustrated as events unfold, but providing you don’t make too many risky choices you should be alright. The clever thing about the game is it encourages such interactions by making it more rewarding to follow one another around rather than break off on your own. Because heroes must be taken from recruitment stations in order of quality (from the humble peasant to the all powerful mage) getting to one after everyone else has taken the chaff is a good strategy, providing you don’t arrive so late that everything has gone (much like timing your shopping trips during the January sales).

The game continues with players bouncing and cursing their way around the kingdom of Xidit for 12 turns, before the ingenious end game scoring kicks in. Throughout the game you will have been collecting points in three distinct areas: gold, mage towers and fame. Although each monster bears all three rewards, in varying quantities, you can only choose two of the three for each monster slain. Gold is a completely hidden score, kept behind your screen; mage towers are completely open and consist of little interlocking plastic towers (yes, as mentioned before, this game is beautifully over produced) you place on each city, blocking them off in the process; and finally fame is an area majority system in which tokens (representing bards singing your praises) score you various points in each area only if you have the most.

The cleverest thing about the way scoring works is that these three resources are scored in an order determined randomly at the start of each game. When you score the first of these, say gold, the player with the least is eliminated and can’t win, followed by the player last in the second category and finally the person with the most in the third category, out of those players remaining, wins the game. You might have mage towers that stretch to the high heavens scattered as far and wide as you can see, but if you don’t have enough gold to pass the first round, those mage towers are meaningless. This cleverly forces you to spread your rewards over the course of the game and pay attention to what your opponents are taking. Ideally you want to come third, second and then first in each category, rather than over focusing on one thing, which is easier said than done in practice.

Whilst the game plays at quite a fast clip as everyone resolves the actions they have programmed in, resulting in very little down time (a plus for any game), the strategy and thought comes in planning each round’s actions and anticipating what everyone might score in the end game. It’s a deceptively simple and yet dazzlingly original mechanic that works beautifully with the theme and results in end game scoring far more dramatic than most games that rely simply on a score track.

Designer: Régis Bonnessée
Publisher: Libellud
Number of Players: 3-5 (best with 5)
Mechanic: Simultaneous action programming
Length of Game: (60-90 minutes)
Complexity: Medium