134) Valley of the Kings

This is a set collection game combined with the deck building mechanic. It plays very similar to dominion where each turn you have five cards in hand. Each card can be played for money or its special ability. You can buy cards from the bottom row of the pyramid (seen in picture two). The twist is that on each turn you can take a card from your hand and remove it from the game. This card will then be scored when the game ends. Some cards are worth a set amount of points, but most cards belong to a set of like colored cards and you get a lot more points for each additional card in the set that you collect.

Setting up the game 

Available cards for purchase 

My hand 

End game score

This game felt a lot like a deck management game rather then a deck builder, which was a unique twist. The built in ability to remove a card from your deck every turn made for some interesting choices, especially in the first few turns when money is fairly tight. It did feel like some cards were overly powerful and could break the game, but after only one play its very difficult to know this for certain. The one annoying thing is that you're constantly shuffling your cards. My deck size remained around 10 cards the entire game and I was able to draw my entire deck most turns so I was constantly shuffling. Apart from that it was very fun and I would happily play this again.