King of the Valley: The Festival

During setup, integrate the new character tiles into the existing draw piles. This includes the Mystery Knight, Alchemist, and numerous Commoners. Additionally, set up the new Festival locations: the Beer Stube, Theater, Jousting Field, and a double-sided Fortune Teller/Executioner tile. The Mystery Knight is placed in pile number one, while Alchemists are added to each level's draw pile. The Beer Stube starts with spaces for Commoners to earn gold, with Priests needed to unlock higher-paying rows. The Theater has four initial tickets available, with two more unlocked by placing Wizards. The Jousting Field is set up with face-down tokens for each Knight, and the Fortune Teller/Executioner tile is placed with three level two tiles face-down beneath it.

The objective of the game remains to gain the most influence points, but the Festival expansion introduces new avenues for scoring. Players will strategically use the new characters and locations to collect money, acquire valuable Theater tickets, win bets at the Jousting Field, and manipulate the character tiles in the Valley to their advantage, all contributing to their final score.

On your turn, you can utilize the new Alchemist character. After collecting an Alchemist, you must wait one round before using its ability. Once active, the Alchemist allows you to take a second move action during your turn, enabling you to collect two character tiles instead of the usual one. This is a one-time use ability, and the Alchemist is discarded after use. Commoners, another new character type, can be sent to the various Festival locations to trigger their unique effects.

Points are scored in multiple ways through the Festival locations. At the Beer Stube, Commoners placed by players earn increasing amounts of gold as rows are filled, with Priests unlocking higher-value rows. At the Theater, Commoners can buy tickets for one gold, and these tickets increase in victory point value as more tickets are sold overall (up to six points per ticket). The Jousting Field allows players to place Commoners to bet on either the Black or White Knight. At the end of the game, the winning Knight (determined by the sum of face-down tokens) awards four points plus one point for each Commoner the betting player has in their stand. The Tax Collector location (the fifth new location) allows players to place Tax Collectors to accumulate gold in a central Treasury, which is awarded to the player with the most Tax Collectors at the end of the game.

The game concludes when the Valley is completely filled with character tiles, similar to the base game. Before final scoring, the Jousting Field results are revealed, and players who bet on the winning Knight score points. All collected characters, Theater tickets (valued based on the total number sold), and any gold collected from the Treasury are then tallied to determine the final influence points, and the player with the highest score wins.