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Try to imagine for yourself, that you find a perfect spouse for your daughter. He isn’t handsome at all, but he is incredibly rich. That’s not all, his words can reach to the king himself!
But for some reason, the Parisians from the house of Politte get stuck on the sound of his name.
You keep searching. You find another. He’s not as good as the last one, but he’s alright. He’s not too charming, but almost as rich as the last guy. He organizes the New Year balls with the mayor and has great connections in the Turkish embassy.
But the house of Travaux warns you that they have a quarrel with your candidate. They are already preparing for war, so you would simply get caught in the crossfire.
Back to searching. You find one more. Again, he’s not perfect, but still, it could be worse. He’s ugly, but he makes up for it with his character. He isn’t rich, but he’s wealthy enough, and if you want to acquire new property later, he’s the guy you want to have on your side.
There’s one problem though, the house of Sage broke all relations with you, the moment they heard you were trying to arrange a marriage with him.
You have three daughters. If it always goes like this, you might spend your whole life looking for a good match for them. Thinking about it, you might come to this conclusion very quickly: you simply can’t please every family in Paris. So, you simply must compromise.
The Five Families expansion doesn’t make the solo variant that much more difficult… but in a small way it will affect whether the game will end in failure or success. There isn’t a bunch of new components or any complicated new rules… but instead adds a new dimension which we can use for new ways to profit. This is a brand new step, which you must make work for you, that ties the whole game together. This expansion makes the solo variant challenging, and the players who were already good at it will now have to sit back, look down on the whole game again, and come up with new strategies.
So, what is this new expansion? It’s simple! At the start of the game, we draw one card from the deck of Parisian families. Each of these cards will be in effect for 3 rounds and then another is drawn. These cards represent the timeline in which that family will have the biggest influence in Paris life. That’s when you will have to take those families into consideration while you accomplish your plans.
Family cards contain information about what that family likes and dislikes. They will have impact on the available actions that we can take. For instance, let’s take a look at the family of artists, Jolie. Like most artists they like: parties (New Relations), new palaces (Property), and weddings (Marriage or Arrange Marriage with an artist). On the other hand, she really dislikes: those lousy aristocrats (Marriage or Arrange Marriage with an aristocrat), hard work (Enterprise), and people who work too much (give an additional pawn).
By taking any of these actions, you will raise or lower the acceptance level of these families. To keep track of the current level, you will use a new set of cards displayed in a fan. The highest level will allow you to take a Marriage action for free. It’s like you have 2 people madly in love with each other in both families, yours and the Parisians. On the other hand, if you let the level of acceptance drop really low…. you will have to face the consequences.
So, fulfilling the will of the most influential family will allow you to trigger some helpful effects, but there’s one problem: goals on hint cards from the basic ‘Legacy’ don’t always go along with the family’s will.
This expansion also brings another dimension to the solo variant… it makes the player sometimes screw themselves. Hint cards tell us to do certain things, and that’s it. We have to do it without complaining, but also we have all those family cards that tempt us, and it’s really hard to give up on their bonuses. Of course, it’s unlikely you will see family cards and hint cards with common goals. Because of that, it’s necessary to have certain skills when you play ‘Legacy’ with this expansion. You need to make difficult choices, once you’ve decided on your strategy, you should go with it and discard all others without hesitation, trust me… the expansion will make you want switch strategies on many occasions, it will make you hesitate, and if you succumb to temptation, then the game will punish you badly… the game won’t hesitate for a second.
