Context note: This review is based on two three-player plays of the competitive game. I have not tried the solitaire or cooperative variants, or the Chronicles scenarios (yet; spoiler - this is mostly a positive review). The first game was bare-bones core set; the second game included the stretch goals. I have not used Ancient Beasts or Black Powder (again, yet, but I definitely will try them out).
Brief mechanical summary for those who are totally unfamiliar with the game.
The Great Wall has a lot of things going on, but the core of the game is worker placement. The board is divided between an administrative area where players will send their clerks to activate actions, and a conflict area where players will construct sections of the wall and/or barricades, and send archers, infantry, and cavalry to fight the invading horde. Infantry can also be assigned in the administrative area as overseers, who will produce resources for their players during the income step. How many actions a player may take, and what bonuses they get, are based on which command cards are chosen (these are revealed simultaneously). There is a bit of rock-paper-scissors to this, as some command cards receive extra benefits for their owners when other cards are chosen by other players (e.g. if you chose the "Despotism" command card, you will get extra worker placements if other players have chosen the "Economy" command card). Some administrative areas will trigger if they have any clerks on them; others must have all worker-placement spots full to trigger. So there is also an element of predicting where other players want to go.
Each player will have a general and two or more advisors. Advisors can either be kept face up, which give you additional powers, or they can be tucked under your general to provide additional icons that act as a multiplier for the general's special power. (You must do one of each with your starting two advisors.) Honor (VP) in the game comes from constructing defenses, defeating horde cards, effects of generals, advisors, and tactics cards, and three end-game scoring cards (artifacts). 629
The latter are very important to remember during the game. Players may also accrue shame tokens (these are bad if not removed by game end), either for being the only player with workers present when a resource-gathering location or the troop-recruiting location activate, or for failing to have troops present on horde cards when they manage to breach a section of the defenses.
There are several endgame triggers: unconditionally after 6/5/4 years in a (1-3)/4/5-player game, or at the end of any year when a) all three wall sections have been entirely constructed (or 2 of 3 if there are fewer than four players), b)the pool of shame tokens is exhausted (this is probably only relevant during the cooperative game, where it guarantees a loss), or c) defeating the <PERSON> card (if playing with the <PERSON> module).
Art and Components
I have the wooden-meeples version of the game, but all versions came with miniatures for the Iron Dragon and the Rat, so I have a good sense of what the other version must be like. The art and components of this game (either version) is excellent. The flavor text on cards is also wonderful, and the game comes with very functional inserts (though you may end up tossing the Stretch Goals Box insert if you want to store the walls without disassembling them). Overall, the aesthetic contribution from the cards, the meeples/miniatures, and the three-dimensional wall segments to the narrative quality of the game is superior. (More about thematic integration in the gameplay section.)
However, I do have one significant complaint. This is a big, sprawling game, with lots of cards all over the place of various types. And the fonts on everthing are tiny. You will constantly be picking up cards again to see what they say, or asking other players to remind you what their cards do, because you won't be able to see it otherwise. And if you are venerable in years and your eyesight is going, that alone would probably disqualify this game for you no matter how many other good things I say about it.
Gameplay
I missed out on the actual Kickstarter campaign for this game, because I was accustomed to Awaken Realms making ridiculously over-produced thematic games with mechanisms that might or might not be robust. It was only after reviewers I share common tastes with started praising it that I realized this time they had made a ridiculously over-produced Eurogame instead.
I love both the variety and the cleverness of the mechanisms of this game. There is a big stack of General cards, and an even bigger stack of Advisor cards. All of these have powers that are somewhere between "cool" and "awesome". 366