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Welcome back, gamers! In a bit of a deviation from what I’ve written before, I wanted to switch gears and try my hand at writing reviews for a few of the games we have available in store. The first one in this series will be a game that immediately caught my eye, Sagrada. The box art was stunning, and mimics a stained-glass window simply beaming through with sunlight. The entire box is modeled in this respect, with an homage to the actual ‘Sagrada Familia’ in Barcelona hidden away in the middle.
Sagrada is a game for two to four players, and it consists of constructing your own stained glass window by drafting dice and placing them along your windowsill. Each player chooses a specific design card and slots it into a coloured archway, which dictates where certain colours and numbers have to go. Players are not allowed to place identical numbers OR colours beside one another, in addition to making sure that every new die that is placed is touching another one in some way.
Before drafting begins, each player gets dealt a private scoring goal. These are colour-dependent, and will dictate which colour of dice you should be aiming to choose more of than others. In addition, three public goal cards are placed in the centre, showing everyone how the points are going to be scored for this game. This ranges from getting diagonal runs of the same colour, or matching sets of numbers, to having entire rows with no repeating colours or numbers. Players also have access to special ‘Tool’ cards, which can be used by spending tokens they receive depending on how difficult their window is to complete.
After setting the score cards and tool cards, an amount of dice dependent on the number of players get chosen at random from a pouch and rolled on the table. The dice are then moved into place in the center where players can choose them one by one to place in their window. Players continue to draft dice over 10 rounds, and everybody scores points for achieving various goals that are set out before the game begins.
The setup of the game doesn’t take very long, and the challenge given from the random aspect of the diceroll proves to allow for relatively simple early-game play, but complex and thought-provoking late-game challenge. Choosing the wrong numbers or colours early on can spell disaster if you’re not careful, but the tool cards do a very good job at remedying any misplays that happened in earlier rounds. Gameplay takes approximately half an hour to 45 minutes, so multiple games can be played over the course of a night.
Overall, the game is visually appealing, easy to learn, and the colourful dice are always a pleasure to watch come together as the game progresses. All in all, I give this game a Three out of Three possible Kingdoms.
If you like the idea of this game and want to see how it plays in person, I always have my copy readily available in store. Drop by and I am always happy to provide a demonstration. I hope this has proven informative, and if enough people express interest, I will continue on with more.
Until next time, gamers!
-David