Charterstone

CHARTERSTONE

I am a fan of Mr.Stegmaier's games, I really like Euphoria and Viticulture is one of my favorite board games period. So when he announced Charterstone, I was quite excited. It was to be a legacy game and I had only played a few games into Risk: Legacy, which while it didn't exactly do it for me I found the concept very cool. So I pre-ordered and waited. Then we spent the first three months of 2018 playing through the 12 game campaign that makes up Charterstone.

*Just a heads up - it is pretty much impossible to talk much about or give any opinion on Charterstone without spoiling due to the nature of the game. I will attempt to keep spoilers to a minimum (thus not too many photos) but be warned - SPOILERS BELOW*

Charterstone is a legacy worker placement game where up to 6 people (we played with 3) build a town over the course of 12 games. All the standard worker placement tropes are present - place a worker, get resources, draw cards, play cards, etc. Spending your resources to play some of the cards is where the legacy part comes in, if you are constructing a building it is a sticker that you peel off the card and put on one of the designated area of the board. As the game goes on these additional buildings allow for more varied actions your workers can take. The left over card is kept by the player and can later be played again (for a different cost) to bring new cards out of a secret box into the game. Doing this and other things get you points, at the end of the game depending on how many points you have earned you get cumulative bonuses towards the next game. Each game will also have special rules and conditions that are set by decisions made in the previous game. At the end of 12 games who ever has done the best overall wins the campaign.

One of the first things I liked about Charterstone is the art and component aesthetic. It is all very nice looking and consistent. From the nearly empty board that is just full of future possibilities at the start to the crowded end game where it looks like a genuine bustling town. The core game mechanics that achieve this are mostly good, how both early games have simple worker mechanics guiding your process to the later games where each decision has more weight. Though I did have an issue with how in the first few games so many new rules and choices are unlocked mid-game that it was at times confusing and easy to forget them while you are still getting used to the core game play.

The game to game progression is a nice mechanic, earning points get you advancements towards additional income at the start of each game and allowing you to carry over more resources, money and cards from one play session to the next. Making this progress directly related to your victory points lead me to be bothered by one of the choices that kept coming up in our games, you either spent a session constructing building and opening new cards OR working towards earning big points to win the game. The effort of doing the former took enough time during a game with minor rewards compared that you didn't have time for the later. The length of a game was unpredictable as it was based on what people did and if a single person was taking actions that progressed the in game timer (which had some neat mechanics associated with it) quicker there was little you could do about it.

Charterstone is the first legacy game I've played to completion and I am not sure I 100% liked the method of "legacy" contained. I will be more clear, I liked it - but I thought it could be better. To often during and at the end of a game, the players are asked to make decisions that have both immediate effects and long term effects without any context as to what those choices mean. You often have to pick between two option in ignorance, which doesn't really make it a choice at all - its random at that point. In the end picking one over the other just locks out content, content that you have no prior knowledge of, thus making the choice is meaningless. I often didn't feel we gained anything special to our particular play through with these choices. I would have much rather had a more narrative strong progression, show me everything and show it to me in a way that makes a good story, rather than a random one.

Because of the somewhat random nature of the cards and game components unlocking as you play we ended up with the last few games actually sputtering a bit in the legacy department. Forced unlocks, dumping tons of components into the game at certain points rather than having the campaign last a few games longer to get them at our own pace or be more carefully designed so this didn't happen in the first place. Of course this was "our play" of the game and because of choices made other campaigns might not see this issue. We also ran into late game issues where buying certain cards got that player nothing other than a few points because the cards that it would normally bring into play from the secret box has already be brought out through other means, but you have no way of knowing this until it's to late. Again a better overall progression pacing would have avoided this.

Charterstone has an interesting end of campaign set up where the game then allows you to play it in its end state as a more standard worker placement game with a board that will be more or less unique to your group. The actual viability of this will probably be all over the place and in our case I don't think the campaign end state of the board would make a good standalone game. Too many random buildings and too many choices were made to suit campaign end conditions and not standalone play.

I feel like I am bagging a bit hard on Charterstone and I know an particular campaign run could be quite different than what I experienced but I really do like what Charterstone brings to the table. The core mechanics are good and the expanded game play options make it an even more full experience. The unevenness in the legacy aspect is what let me down, and even then only slightly over the course of the campaign. I think Charterstone could have been an either amazing set narrative campaign game or just drop the legacy aspect altogether and if it just used all the best parts to make a full game from the get go.

At this time I am not sure if I would buy a recharge pack and play through the campaign again (the board is double sided to allow this). The issues I have with the legacy part of it currently cloud my ability to separate it from the really good parts of the game. In the end playing through the campaign of Charterstone was a great experience with good friends that I just wish had been a little more fulfilling. 

If I had one piece of advice before going into playing Charterstone and something I would do if I did play it again is to use the Automata rules for the non-players to bring it up to the full 6 (if you don't already have 6 human friend to play with). The default rules for what to do with the other non- players are not very satisfying and lead to parts of the game play feeling a bit empty or lackluster. The Automata rules from Jamey's other games are very good and I trust they would fill their rolls here as well.