Villagers

Each round consists of two phases: first, players take turns drafting cards from "The Path" – the communal card market – and then they can build selected villagers into their own tableau by paying the gold required by the card. Each villager belongs to a craft family (ore, wool, wood, etc.) and sometimes requires a specific other craftsman to already be present in your village. By building clever chains, you earn gold and attract increasingly valuable villagers. The game features two scoring rounds: one halfway through and one when all cards have been drafted; the player with the most gold after the final count wins.

Villagers is one of those rare card games where the theme and mechanisms perfectly reinforce each other: every production chain feels logical and satisfying, and designer Haakon Gaarder's illustrations give each character a recognizable and charming personality. The game receives widespread praise as an accessible yet substantive gateway game — reviewers consistently call it a must-have for game nights and a title that doesn't get boring after multiple plays. The spite-drafting tactic (drafting a card to block an opponent) adds subtle interaction without making the game feel aggressive.