What it is
Lords of Xidit is a fantasy programming and area-majority game for three to five players. The kingdom of Xidit has been overrun by monsters, and each of you leads a hero travelling from city to city, recruiting troops wherever they can and taking them where there’s a monster to defeat.
Moves don’t happen one at a time. Everyone secretly plans their sequence of movements and actions for the round, then the plans are revealed and carried out together, step by step. Whoever reaches a monster first gets it, and anyone heading for the same spot ends up with a wasted trip. That’s why you plan by watching where the others are and what they might do.
Defeating monsters earns you reputation, gold and influence, and the scoring works in a way all its own. At the end the three are counted one at a time, in an order that changes every game, and at each count whoever has the least is eliminated. The winner is whoever is still standing and strongest in the last one.
How it plays
As in Valparaíso, what matters is planning around the other players, not on your own: where they are on the map, which troops they have with them, which places they might visit. Simple as it is (you move, you recruit, you fight monsters), you have to play it thinking about the moves of the people around you.
My advice for a first game is about scoring: you don’t need to be strong at everything. Being the richest at the table won’t save you if gold is counted last and you were knocked out in the first count. It holds up well with a big group too, because everyone programs at the same time and then it resolves quickly.
The nugget
Lords of Xidit is a remake of Himalaya, an older game by the same Régis Bonnessée in which you travelled between mountain villages with yak caravans. The original publisher folded and the game disappeared from shops, so Bonnessée brought it back to the table in the world of Seasons, with heroes and monsters instead of yaks. He’s also the man who founded Libellud, the publisher of Dixit.
At our table
It’s not a well-known game, and that’s a bit of a shame, because it runs beautifully even with five and nobody sits around waiting for their turn.
How long does Lords of Xidit take?
The box says 90 minutes. At our table: 120 minutes at five.
The box
What’s your favorite programming game?
The ones where you decide everything up front and then watch the others wreck your plan, with nothing you can do about it.
