Matthew BaileyMinecraft is big in the Bailey household and the boys were very excited when the new Minecraft game “Minecraft: Heroes of the Village” dropped on the doorstep so we (myself, Jack(7) and Toby(4)) played it as game 35 of the “Bailey Sorts Summer Board Game Bonanza.”
Having reviewed the previous game “Minecraft: Builders and Biomes” just after Christmas and thoroughly enjoying it (check it out even as an adult it has way better than it has any right to be) I was super looking forward to this as were the boys.
The game is essentially a CoOp strategy game similar to Pandemic where you are trying to stop the illagers from reaching your village. which is done by building 3 buildings out of cubes that you mine.
On your turn you can:
- lay a new tile that adds potentially more mining sites as well as more cubes to the bag
- Mine a tile, which involves taking 3 cubes out of the bag and hoping one will be the colour you are mining which means you get to keep it. If you draw Redstone you get to keep it as well and black means a monster attacks which in turn means you can…
- Fight a monster by rolling the dice
- add cubes that have been mined to a building.
At the end of your turn, you roll the Illager dice and have a 50/50 chance for the illagers to move forward one space.
You win by building all 3 buildings and lose if the illagers reach the village.
This game is clearly meant for younger kids than the previous Minecraft game and the kids had fun with it but I do have a few issues with the game as a whole.
Firstly the difficulty may be too easy. The first game we played we played it on the 3 easiest to-build buildings and started with the illagers further up the track (essentially the easiest you can make the game) and we absolutely destroyed it…
The second game we played it on maximum difficulty with the 3 hardest to build buildings and the illagers lower on the track and we still managed to complete it the first time. Now I know it is for kids but I am not sure my kids will go back to it seeing they have already beaten it on as hard as possible without house rules.
My other issue is the illager mechanics and how it interacts with fighting monsters. So monsters each have numbers needed to kill them (4-6) and when you fight a monster you get 3 dice rolls to try and beat it. There are no consequences short of lost time by failing. Now on this dice, there are the numbers 4, 5 and 6, there is one illager symbol that makes the illagers advance further but also 2 retreat symbols that make the move back up the track n reverse.
This is the only way to make the illagers move back and it’s on the combat dice. Therefore it’s actually not in your best interest to kill the monsters. Ideally, you need one that you can just continuously fight as statistically the retreats will come up more than the march forward… and this was Toby’s job which made the game pretty easy.
Each player chooses a person and a pet. These pets give extra abilities some of which are super powerful.
Component quality is fine for what it is but minis would be nice. The big chunky wooden cubes are as lovely as last time.
We enjoyed it but I am not sure we will play it again. I might let the dust settle and see if anyone comes up with some better house rules because at the moment it seems too easy and the monster dice are super unbalanced and exploitable. But for an intro to Pandemic style games for a child, this is a good option.
If you want a Minecraft game for slightly older kids, however, “Minecraft Builders and Biomes” is the better option.
