Please Don’t Burn My Village Review

Reading Time: 7 minutes

Please Don’t Burn My Village Review – With Added Designer Interview

The Cardboard-Based Characteristics

How Do You Stop A Dragon Burning Your Village? Well, Treasure Of Course!

Who doesn’t like dragons? Well, not many people that I know. My kids love them, and that’s a good job, as I roped them into playing a quirky, light, stock-manipulation style game with me that I got sent over by the lovely people at Fireside Games. Bribe the dragon or visit the black market, the choice is yours. Just make sure you keep an eye on the other players, don’t let their offerings get too bountiful, or you may be left to burn.

The Setup

Setting up Please Don’t Burn my Village is a breeze. Throw the board out and lay out some treasure tokens randomly on the Dragon’s Favour track. After that, remove a few wild cards depending on player count, deal seven cards to each player, create a starting black market and set the deck aside.

I love a game that has a breezy setup and this game certainly is that. There are not many components, only a few rules and the game is mainly played between the players. Much better than being embroiled in rules with your head down and I admire that.

Dragons and Offerings

Don’t Burn my Village is a mixture of hand management and stock manipulation, only the stock is treasure and at the end of the game, each treasure type will be worth a differing amount of points. Raising or lowering the price of each treasure type is the main crux of the game, as is visiting the black market when it’s most lucrative.

You have three real choices on your turn, well two that matter and while your turn is quick and breezy, what you choose to do can change the game dramatically. I found this out to my detriment when my kids colluded against me to tank the treasure I was collecting, damn it, I have taught them too well!

Your first choice is to bribe the dragon. Bribing the dragon involves playing a set of identical treasures to your tableau in front of you. On the Dragon’s Favour track, there is a tile for each treasure that you randomly arranged when setting up. Where the tiles sit shows how many points you will get for that treasure at the game’s end.

When playing a bribe, you move the marker for that treasure up the score scale as many places as the number of cards you played. Therefore, increasing the score for that treasure at the end, for all players.

Wild Style and Adding to Bribes

In the deck, there are also wild cards. These act as treasure and may be added with any bribe, as long as you have at least one of the base treasure cards. You may also add to previously played bribes, here though, you can play just wilds and move the treasure tracker accordingly.

You are essentially collecting large sets of each treasure in front of you, which are essentially ‘stocks’ and trying to manipulate the Favour Track to make your treasure hoard score more than everyone else’s. Like I said above, it feels a lot to me like a stock manipulation game for families and players new to the genre and I appreciate that.

The Black Market

After making your bribe to the big fiery, scaly one, you must fill the Black Market. You turn over cards from the top of the deck and, starting at the first column, place one in each column until you place a wild or a card matching the type you bribed with. As with all these types of systems, sometimes you get one card, sometimes you get ten. It certainly randomises the columns for players to hover up for future bribes.

Bet it all on Black!

Instead of bribing the dragon, you can visit the Black Market. Here you can select any column, which can be made up of any number of cards of varying treasure types, even wilds. Each column has a value above it ranging from three to zero, from left to right. The number above each column is the number of cards, that a player must discard to take all the cards located there. Picking the right time to get a wad of cards, especially from the cheaper columns, can be key in winning. Even more so if they have high-ranking treasures in them. Well, until your wicked kids lower their value anyway!

Lowering Treasure Values

Several times during my plays, my kids made it their sole mission to make my treasure worthless. As I stated, I have taught them too well! When you visit the black market, you pick one of the cards you are discarding and that treasure tile, located on the Offering Track, goes down by one. Therefore, dropping points for all players with bribes of those cards. It’s a simple game with simple rules but deciding when to lower the scores, raise treasure scores and visit the Black Market can truly make a difference.

There is one more option on your turn, which is drawing one card. No-one wants to do that though, it’s a last option you pick and only really worth it, when it’s your ‘ONLY’ option. Say, you have no cards, nothing to offer and cannot visit the Black Market, drawing a card is your way to go.

Scoring and End Game

Once a player cannot draw, either when drawing or filling the Black Market, the game ends. Each player tots up the scores from their bribes, subtracts points for cards left in their hand and a winner is declared. Just be wary, wild cards left in hand can be brutally detrimental. Most points wins, with the player who manipulated the dragon being crowned winner and hopefully, stopping the dragon from burning their village.

Components

Please Don’t Burn My Village is light on components. It’s a deck of cards, a board and a few treasure tiles. What we have though, is bright, cleanly illustrated and of a decent quality. The board is thick, as are Treasure Tiles and the cards, while not being top-notch quality-wise, should last a while.

I love the artwork, it’s like art from a Saturday morning cartoon or a modern video game. The dragon is bright and well drawn, the board is bright and everything has a fantasy-like quality to it. From a component standpoint, I have no issues. Maybe the cards could have been of a higher stock but that’s neither here or there, especially in a family-weight game.

In Conclusion

For what it is, Please Don’t Burn my Village is a bit of fun with the family and kids. Teaching young ones how to manipulate stock markets and game mechanisms of this ilk is rarely seen in games of this weight. My kids loved taking my points away, loved increasing their own point hauls and the amalgamation of the game mechanics that drive this is great for people of their age.

While it won’t be the first game I suggest for a game night, while it may not be the best game of the year, Please Don’t Burn my Village is a great game for new gamers and families alike. It has a light ruleset, a good amount of decision-making on your turn and just about anyone can play. That is certainly a win in my book. Right I’m off to bribe a dragon, hopefully it won’t burn my village!

Interview with the Designer –

Where did the idea for Please Don’t Burn My Village come from? What were your thoughts during the creation process?

Originally, the game was about tulips. I had pitched to a different games company the idea of making a short game about tulips for families… story short is that I ended up discarding my original idea and then having to come up with a new one in 2 weeks. Then, I just literally woke up with the whole game idea in my head! I built the game and tested it the same day with friends, and it worked very well. Unfortunately, the original game company turned it down, so it took me a while longer before Fireside Games took it; and the theme was discussed extensively before we settled on something in the world of Castle Panic – tulips were considered too niche!
As regards my thoughts during the creative process, it might have been something like “Is it breakfast time yet?”. No but seriously, the aim was to make something exciting and fun and to ensure it was balanced and engaging over the complete range of players. I’m very proud that it plays well with 2 to 5 players!

My kids loved the game as a light stock manipulation game. Was that your thought when designing it?
Exactly, and I’m glad your kids love it! Market games are fun! I wanted to do something which was totally original and different and I believe that the combination of market manipulation and the way the black market fills up in an exciting way achieves that. As a side note, the Dutch basically invented the commercial auctioning off of tulip bulbs and it’s still used there today!

Any plans for future additions or expansions for the game?
Anne-Marie? – Thank you, Simon! My response to Seb’s question about expansions is that if Simon develops one, we are absolutely open to publishing it.

Any future plans for new games or game ideas?
Absolutely – thanks for asking! Please Don’t Burn My Village is my first published game after 6 years of trying but I’m hoping it will be the first of many. I only want to do colourful, original games though! I have 5 other games under contract so far and about 50 ideas in my back pocket. So I just need time and some luck. My next game out will be “Makoto” published by Huch!, due out at Essen in October. It’s an original and fun card-shedding game which has got very good responses so far; also, the artwork is stunning. You can see a little bit about the game on BGG.

You can buy Please Don’t Burn My Village here on the Fireside store.