Medievallons

Gameplay Overview

Medievallons is a fast, vicious set-collection card game built for a pub table. The goal is blunt: be the first to complete three guilds, each one built from three matching cards. Every turn you draw a guild card and choose what to do with it.

Play it right away for a one-time power, then let it go.
Start a brand-new guild with it and put yourself out on a limb.
Add it to a guild you already have, protecting what you've built but slowing your race to three.
Or activate a guild you've already completed to trigger its power on the table.

Almost every guild does something once it's active, and that's where the game gets its teeth. Some force the next two players in turn order to hand you a card. Others let you knock a card out of someone's guild, and if that drops them below three members, the whole guild collapses and every card in it goes straight back to their hand. A few let you reach blind into an opponent's hand and just take something. At three or more players, this turns into constant, short-lived alliances: gang up on the leader this round, work against your ally the next. Whoever completes a third guild first wins on the spot, and the whole thing is usually done in well under thirty minutes.

Published

2025

Status

owned

Players

2 - 5 Players

Our thoughts

We picked this up not long after falling for Brightcast, and it scratches the exact same itch with more people and more teeth. The learning curve is a little clunky at first. Our copy is the original printing, where the guild powers live on a separate player guide instead of printed on the cards themselves, so there's a stretch early on where you're flipping back and forth to remember what anyone's guild actually does. Once it clicks, though, it's snappy and mean in a good way, very much a take-that game, best saved for a table with enough trust that a little targeted sabotage doesn't sting.

We default to two players like we do with everything, and it holds up fine there, but it genuinely opens up at higher counts. Turn order becomes something to exploit, alliances form and break inside a single round, and you're reading the table as much as your own hand. The one thing that keeps this from being a full favorite for Madeline: it's win or lose, no scoring cushion, and that flatness at the end takes a little shine off a game that's otherwise all texture and momentum.

Try this if you like...

You want something that plays in twenty minutes flat

Order your food, play a round or two, and you're back to the rest of your night. No rules overhead once you know the guild powers.

You like a bit of chaos aimed at you personally

The assassinate and steal powers mean the game is actively coming after your tableau, not just racing past it.

You're okay with alliances that dissolve as fast as they form

At three or more players, today's ally is tomorrow's target, and reading the table matters more than any fixed plan.

You get restless in slower games

Turns come fast and there's always something to react to, so downtime never really sets in.

You don't need a scoring cushion

There's no partial credit here. You either got three guilds down first or you didn't.

Follow the same spark

What to play after Medievallons

Not just games that look alike—these are the specific connections we felt at the table.

Trinket Trove
2025 · 2 - 6 Players
Why it connects
Same bones (set collection, card by card) but softer. Trinket Trove doesn't come after you the way Medievallons does.
Our thoughts coming soon
Zenith
2025 · 2 - 4 Players
Why it connects
Less a mechanical match, more a feeling one. That same tug-of-war tightness where it plays like a close race the whole way through until someone finally breaks ahead.
Our thoughts
Brightcast
2025 · 2 Players
Why it connects
The closest kin here. Same head-to-head instinct of building something in front of you that the other player can reach in and mess with. Medievallons just adds more players, more guild powers, and a sharper tactical edge.
Our thoughts