Practically all of them! Well…except for Shadowvale, since it’s not out yet! We’ve been big fans of Valeria for a long time, and slowly working our way through the expansions and we’re here to tell you: They’re awesome. So do these expansions add value to the Kingdom, or are they… oh wait… we already said they’re awesome. Let’s just take a look!

First, we’re going to assume you know how to play the base game. If you don’t, take a moment and read our Double-Take Review, which you can find RIGHT HERE!

So how many expansions are there? Well, we have 6 but it turns our there are more. We’ve got five mini expansions that add 10-15 cards each, plus Flames & Frost, which is a bigger-box expansion that features a new set of every card except for the starter cards (values 5 and 6). So let’s jump in!

Expansion #1 - King’s Guard

The King’s Guard introduces a new card type: Events. Events are mixed in with the Exhausted cards. When a stack is exhausted there’s now a 50% chance that the Exhausted card will have an Event that will most likely affect everyone. If you pull the King’s Guard Event, you place the King’s Guard Citizen cards where the exhausted stack was. That stack still counts as Exhausted, but now you can recruit the King’s Guard.

Jeremiah—As a first expansion this added a bit more than I expected. I was expecting just a few cards that would swap out with a few numbers. Adding Events, and a new Citizen that drops into an exhausted stack’s slot, is a great wrinkle that adds depth without changing the face of the entire game.

Firestone—Yeah, I fully expected this to just be a new card to swap into your game. Instead, it takes a mechanism you’re already playing with (Exhausted cards) and adds variety without any real rules overhead to keep track of, which is perfect!

Expansion #2 - Undead Samurai

This pack includes more Events, and a stack of Monsters. There is both a Boss Monster card and a Boss Monster Event card in the pack. If you use the event version of the Undead Samurai when he comes out so do all of the other Undead Samurai, and they get placed on other Citizens which can’t be recruited until someone kills off the monster on that particular stack.

Jeremiah—Again a nice versatile offering. When used as an Event this can really wreak some havoc—in a very fun way!

Firestone—When I saw the pack I thought we’d get to recruit the Undead Samurai as a Citizen! Alas, no. But again, they could have simply made this a new Monster to add to the mix, but it’s as if they asked themselves, “Yeah, but what else could we do with this? What’s the next level?” Covering up Citizens and forcing you to fight a Monster is a cool and, again, easy idea.

Expansion #3 - The Agents

This pack includes 15 Agents, which are a new card type that are placed in a row above the Monsters. As one of a player’s actions they can now choose to use an Agent. Once the Agent is used, it’s placed on the bottom of the Agent deck, and a new one is put in its place.

Jeremiah—So this new card type adds yet more variety and some cool powerful cards! This set can be a touch swingy depending on the luck of the draw. But it adds an interesting new decision to the game as you figure out if you want to use an Agent or perform a different action.

Firestone—This is my least favorite of the expansions. As Jeremiah said, it can be swingy, but worse is that there’s a lot of take-that in these cards, which I’m personally not a fan of.

Expansion #4 - Peasants & Knights

This set simply gives you another option for the starting Peasant and Knight cards—there are 6 of each card.

Jeremiah—Oddly enough, this is what I expected from the first expansion, a few new cards that can swap out for some variety in how you setup and play the game.

Firestone—It’s strange that this expansion now seems so….basic, when this is exactly what we expected all along! Still, I like having some more variety, especially since these are the Citizens you’re playing in every single game. This doesn’t change anything—it just adds variety.

Expansion #5 - Monster Reinforcements

This is a set of 13 Monster cards with the classification of Warden. They go in the matching terrain type right above the Boss Monster.

Jeremiah—These almost feel like Agents for Monsters. But add a really nice challenge as you go for points via slaying Monsters!

Firestone—This expansion is easy to incorporate and just adds new life to the game, which is exactly what you want in an expansion. Plus, these Monsters just look awesome!

Flames & Frost

This is a massive expansion, which includes a whole pile of new Domains and Dukes, 5 new sets of Monsters with new location types, and a whole new set of Citizen cards (except the base Peasant and Knight cards).

Jeremiah—This. Is. Awesome! It’s like getting an entire new version of the game! With Flames & Frost the replayability goes THROUGH THE ROOF! Plus, these cards are SUPER awesome, lots of cool powerful abilities and combos!

Firestone—This expansion effectively doubles the game. And it’s not that I was getting burned out, but we enjoy Valeria so much that we’ve played practically every combination out there. (Okay, not really—but we’ve played A BUNCH.) With Flames & Frost the combos and interactions are massive, and it’s breathed new life into a game that wasn’t even sick yet. The fact that this is thematically tied to fire and ice gives me hope that they’ll come out with new, thematic expansions like this one, which I’d love to see.

The Verdict

Jeremiah—I’m a big fan of these types of expansions. I do not want to read a giant set of rules and basically re-learn the game. All of these expansions work as modular enhancements, you can use as many or as few as you like, I REALLY like this set of expansions (And there are more than these!!)

Firestone—These integrate so seamlessly with Valeria that I don’t even see them as “modular”—I’ve just added it all to the base game. The only thing I keep separate is Agents, but for the rest, it’s all fair game in any game I play—even games with brand new players. That’s almost never the case.

Jeremiah—Valeria: Card Kingdoms is by far my favorite game in the Valeria realm; it’s one of my favorite games of recent years. But playing the base game does get a bit repetitive, so these nice little twists and turns add a ton of replay value to a great game.

Firestone—In every expansion, Daily Magic Games pushed back against my expectation that they’d simply add new cards to swap in (which would have been fine!), and looked at other ways to bring you new cards. I love that.

The Final Verdict

Jeremiah—Perfect. I love an expansion that adds depth while keeping the feel of the game, and all of these do that seamlessly. I don’t have to play all of them all the time, but being able to swap out and set up the game with different flavors and feels is great. I’m so very happy with where Valeria: Card Kingdoms is right now, and can’t wait to see where it expands to! Great Job, Daily Magic Games!

Firestone—Daily Magic Games knocked these out of the park. I already loved Valeria, and these expansions are so terrific that it’s like they were always there. If you’re only going to get one, then go with Flames & Frost, because there’s a TON packed into that box. But track them all down, because they’re great. Bring on Shadowvale!

Theology of Games would like to thank Daily Magic Games for providing review copies of these expansions. This in no way affected our opinions of the game.

Thanks for reading!