Designed by: Jason Kotarski,Philip duBarry
In Fidelitas the idea is that you, the players, are seeking to overthrow the political elite in a medieval city, and set out to be the first to do so.
Before play begins you need to set up the city cards – with the harbour at one end and castle at the other, and five location cards in-between. Each location card has two locations with a matching guild symbol.
A random Virtos card is laid at each location in the city, and players begin with two virtos and two missio cards. Broadly speaking, you are utilising the virtos (character) cards in order to achieve your objectives – the missio cards.
During your turn you do one thing – play a virtos card to a location with a matching guild symbol. If your virtos card doesn’t belong to a guild, or doesn’t have a matching location, you can play it anywhere. Having done so, you complete the action on the card, and – if able to – play any completed missio cards. Each virtos card messes with the population to some degree, allowing you to more previously-played cards from location to location, or gather a bigger hand for yourself. Each missio card asks for a certain criteria to be met; for example, wanting four different guilds represented at the market, or eight soldiers in play at the city. If your missio cards feel hard to achieve, you can play any virtos card to the tavern, which allows you to dump a missio card and pick up a new one.
At the end of your turn you replenish your hand from the draw pile or any card at the tavern, before play continues. As soon as a player hits eight points, the current round will be the final one – or the game may end after the virtos draw deck has twice been exhausted.
All your cards are hidden from your opponents, but regular players might be able to hazard - possibly - what you're trying to do and go for a spoiling tactic. In the main, though, the Take That here is a by-product rather than a targeted attack.
Fairly minimal.
You're just looking for the best way to combine your Virtos cards with your Missio cards. It's light on the rules and fairly light on the strategy too.
Lots of variety in how the cards come out, and a relatively brief playing time.
1-4
Players
12+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
Fidelitas has an interesting theme of political upheaval and I rather like the artwork, which our pictures here don't do justice to. But the theme never really emerges out of the mechanics here, which amounts to turn-by-turn messin' with stuff. Because everyone's cards are hidden from each other, most of the time players are busy with their own plans and interference - which I think would make the game more interesting - is usually inadvertent. I miss the tension of something like Citadels, where every player has a hidden-role that may or may not have a bearing on each round. Though I found Fidelitas an okay game, that's one of a number of others that, for me, it doesn't quite stack up against.