Paper Tales is a tableau-building, drafting card game.

Title:  Paper Tales

Year Published:  2017

Designer:  Masato Uesugi

Publisher:  Catch-Up Games

Players:  2-5

Game Time:  ~30 minutes

Set-up Time:  ~1 Minute

Ages:  12+

Theme: Fantasy Medieval Earth

Mechanisms:  Drafting, Hand Management

How to win:  Gain the most Legend points over 4 rounds.

Game Description 

Experience two fantastical centuries of expansions and combat in Paper Tales. Remodel your assorted assembly of characters, units, and buildings in each period based on your developments and the age of your heroes. Write a new legend of the rightful ruler who brought unity to the rival kingdoms.

How to Play Paper Tales

Paper Tales Round-Up

This is a very nice game.

It’s a simple drafting game where you build a tableau. But what makes it interesting is the number of different cards and their interaction with each other.

When drafting you’re looking for combos. You’re looking to see which cards work well together and especially those that really help each other.

Removing an Ageing token from the Veteran allows him to live for more than 1 round. But add ageing tokens to the Monkey and you get more income.

Points are tight, it’s a fairly low-scoring game so you always have to consider the attack strength of your front row. Each battle lost is 3 points missed,

But at the same time, you need to think about which are giving you resources you can get those buildings. The abilities help greatly but also they are worth a few Legend points at the end of the game.

Cards

The game is helped by having a wide range of cards and just a few copies of each. It makes the drafting phase super important and each played card a key moment. Your early cards can help define a strategy for the early part of the game. Hopefully, you can draft cards to keep that strategy going.

But it’s unlikely. Even if you draft replacement cards key figures in your plan will die and the odds of replacing each one is very low. I love this constant cycling of a Kingdom and trying to keep the points tempo up round after round.

Also keeping up the resources, income and everything else. It’s tough!

The art is very nice. It’s a different kind of art you don’t see very often but at the same time, it’s cute and tells the story of the card well.

Some cards are powerful and if you get them early on they can benefit you greatly at the end of the game. This can cause a bit of an imbalance I think. If you HAPPEN to draw them early, some cards win you the game or give you a massive head start.

Rating

7 Wonders is still better, but this is a very fun drafting game with cute artwork. There is room for both in my collection.

I give it 7/10 

Paper Tales First Impressions March 2018

Also, I picked up the Twinples to replace the standard wooden cylinders used to track points and the current round. I unbox them here…

Jesta ThaRogue