Village Pillage is a simple card-battling game about protecting your village. You choose which characters to send into battles which resolve depending on each card's abilities. Unlike similar card battle games, things are kept streamlined both by the simple art and clear outcomes.

Once you have your cards and stock of Turnip currency, you each simultaneously play a card to battle each player to the left and right of you. Everyone turns up their cards together and deals out the effect in order (Farmers, Walls, Raiders, and Merchants). Farmers produce turnips, Walls block Raiders, Raiders steal turnips, and Merchants either add new cards to your hand or help you purchase one of the three relics you need to win.

As you play you work to win turnips and buy three relics. Each round you also gain knowledge of which cards the other players have. Because card effects may only work against certain types of other cards a strategy develops to out-manoeuvre them in rock-paper-scissors style. Should you focus on farming, or defence or stealing or trading? Or maybe you just try and foil other players with characters that can Exhaust their cards and stop them from being played next turn.

The result is an approachable but highly tactical take-that game. You are progressing by attacking other players, but the focus is still on strategy rather than just brute force beating others at the table.