our review

Idrakys fighting monsters

Lords of Xidit

Plan your actions and your rewards

Monsters out of the evil dark threaten the realm, princes need the help of player heroes to defeat those monsters. We have twelve years to succeed. In each year our Idrakys are given six orders for movement, recruiting of army units, remove threat in a city with units or pass.

Each player has a programming board on which he – simultaneously with all other players – programs the six orders. Then orders are resolved in turn, one after the other. A movement order is executed, the Idrakys moves along the road of the chosen color into an adjacent city. If you want to recruit units you take a unit from the city where your Idrakys stands and where there is a recruitment tile, you must always take the weakest unit in the city and can only hire one unit per city and year. In order to execute the order of removing a threat, your Idrakys must stand in a city with a Threat tile and you must have the units stated on that tile in stock. For successful removal of a threat you choose two out of three rewards that are offered – gold, placing bard tokens into adjacent areas or build a new level of a Sorcerer’s Guild. Those guilds can never have more than four levels, in each city only one guild is allowed and only one player can build a guild. In each game the rewards are scored at the end of the game in an order that is randomly determined at the start of the game.

When orders have been implemented the recruitment and threat tiles in cities are replenished. You can plan well for coming tiles, as they are visible in appearance order on the Path of Destiny. When no new threat can be added, the titans wake up and the Titan tiles are turned over to their Raging Titan side, supplements for Threat and Recruitment are coming into play. Raging Titans can be removed out of any city and are then taken out of play.

After years 4, 8 and 12 a Military Census is taken. Each type of unit is handled separately – each player takes any number of the current unit from his stock into his hand, he need not show all of them and can show none at all – then units are revealed and if you show most, you glean a reward.

At the end of year 12 and after the last Military Census three Assessments are made for player rankings in each of the three reward categories.

For Wealth Assessment you count your gold sovereigns and indicate the total on the score track.

For the Influence Assessment you count the number of levels you build in the Sorcerer’s guilds and indicate the total on the score track. Levels still in stock behind your screen are not counted.

For the Reputation Assessment you count the number or bard tokens in each area and receive reputation points for first and second place, the total of reputation points is marked on the corresponding score track.

Now the score tracks are evaluated in the order that was randomly determined at the start of the game:

Each player moves his score token to the case on the column in the Hall of Fame  that corresponds to his rank on the score track, ties are resolved via units in stock. In case of four players the player in last place on the column is out of the game, in case of five players both players in last and last-but-on place. Then the second score track is handled the same way, score tokens of player(s) already out of the game are ignored and the player in last place on the second column is out of the game. Then the last track is evaluated, again score tokens are placed according to rank on the track and tokens of ousted players are ignored; this leaves two players in the game and whoever is in first place on this column wins the game.

And if, somewhere at the back of your mind, you have the feeling that this is somehow familiar, you are right – Lords of Xidit is a new revised edition of Himalaya, where you programmed movements of Yaks for picking up and delivering commodities.

Himalaya was a good game and Lords of Xidit is an even better game, not only because of the new, very suitable topic and the very small amount of chance. The rules have been revised: The final scoring was changed, now it happens randomly in each game - in Himalaya the order was always the same. Another really nice improvement is the introduction of threat and recruitment tiles via the Path of Destiny - in Himalaya resources and orders were introduced by a 20-sided die.

Due to the randomly determined, but known order of scoring at the end each game is different, but you must always keep an eye on your fellow players and try for optimum effectiveness in programming the orders and choose your rewards with the final scoring in mind. Clever planning is essential, wrong orders can have dire consequences. All in all a very good and well-working game, that is well-suited also to families with some gaming experience. Special rules for three players are provided.

Dagmar de Cassan

Players: 3-5

Age: 14+

Time: 90+

Designer: Régis Bonnessée

Artist: Naïade, Stéphane Gantiez

Price: ca. 50 Euro

Publisher: Libellud / Asmodee 2014

Web: www.asmodee.de

Genre: Action planning, collecting

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en fr it pl

In-game text: no

Comments:

Revised new edition of Himalaya

Fantastic components

Good rules

Topic and mechanisms go very well together

Good for families with gaming experience

Compares to:

Roborally, Himalaya

Other editions:

Asterion Press, Rebel.pl

My rating: 6

Dagmar de Cassan:

From the Himalaya to the realm of Xidit – the journey sits well on the game, it has become even better – planning of orders and optimum choice of rewards are an attractive challenge, also for families with some gaming experience.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0