Number of Plays: 29 (Mostly 3 players, equal amount of 2 and 4)
Game Length: 30 minutes
Mechanics: Dice Rolling
Release Year: 2017
Designers: Adrian Adamescu, Daryl Andrews
Artists: Adrian Adamescu, Daryl Andrews, Peter Wocken
Publisher: Floodgate Games
I love churches. I’ve always marvelled at the massive, ornate buildings that were erected long before electricity was harnessed. It’s a seeming impossible task to consider how much work, engineering, and planning that had to take place in order to create these monuments to God. Inside these old churches it’s usually dark as light has a difficult time penetrating stone. The solution wasn’t just to place gaps in the rock and close them with clear panes of glass, because if you’re going to create a monument to the almighty creator, it should be head and shoulders above what we do for other morals.
A beautiful stained-glass window is the centrepiece for cathedrals. The vibrant colours illuminated by the sun create a majestic display of light, and the artistic story told within the glass becomes breathtaking. The game of Sagrada takes the idea of building these stain glass windows and creates a unique game of dice drafting and window crafting.
The game of Sagrada begins with a blueprint inside a dual layered cardboard frame. The blueprint is slipped in, the public objectives are laid out, and you contemplate your secret objective. The first player pulls out a mittful of colourful translucent dice (2 times the number of players plus 1). Once the die are cast, the first player selects a single die and fits it into their board somewhere along the edge (because if you try to suspend a shard of coloured glass without anything for it to hold on to, gravity will strike). Then every player in clockwise order chooses a die and fits it onto their board. Once the last player has taken their die, they take a second and in reverse player order, everyone gets a second die from the pool. With that second die the placement restrictions begin to rear their ugly head and the game begins. You must place a die directly adjacent or diagonal from an existing die on your board. However, you cannot place dice of the same colour or the same number directly adjacent to each other.
Each blueprint will have colours and numbers on the board that also need to be obeyed. You don’t want to place a die with 2 pips next to a slot that will requires a 2, lest you enjoy having a holey window. The game plays quickly over 10 rounds, in which hopefully you will take and place 20 dice. More likely near the end of the game you’ll end up with a gaping hole that requires a red five and the player to your right took the only die you needed before you ever had the opportunity.
Throughout the game, you also have some glass beads that allow you to make use of the tool cards. These cards allow you to break the rules of the game and can be used either before or after drafting your die for the turn. This flexibility helps the windows that feel impossible to complete with the die that are being pulled from the bag, and add a bit of variation to the game. One session you may have several tools that let you move die around on your window, while in another session the die will be locked in place for good, but you do have some leeway on changing the pips before it’s cemented in its place.
Often this game can feel less like a game and more like a off-brand very colourful Sudoku. You want to place a red die down, but you need to make sure you aren’t placing it next to an existing red die, and that the number on the die you’re placing isn’t going to make it impossible to play another die later. I’ve often found myself in a situation where I need a specific colour and number to fit into a hole in the middle of my board. If that colour die doesn’t come out and the tools don’t allow for the flexibility I need, then my window is destined to have a hole in it.
I’ve read that a lot of people really love this game at the 2 player count, and I need to disagree. At 2 players, only half of the die in the bag will come into the game. This has the opportunity to screw over the private objectives; If I need to get as many yellow die as possible but only 3 happen to come out of the bag, then my score will suffer as a result (for what it’s worth, an average score in this game is around 50 points. The secret objective often gives around 20-ish points, up to 40% of a player’s total score!)
My preferred player count for this game is 4. Every turn 9 die will hit the table and at the end of the game the bag will be empty. An equal amount of die will be drawn and the likelyhood of getting the die you need increases as a result.
While the 3 public objectives change in each game from a pool of 10, only a few varieties exist with simply different qualifiers. For every pair of 1 and 2, get two points. For every pair of 3 and 4’s and pairs of 5 and 6’s, get 2 points. There’s objective cards for having a different pip value in each row and a card for different numbers in each column. The same goes again for colour. Two more objectives exist that require you to have an entire set of either colours or numbers. The final objective is finally unique as you score each die
At first it seems having 10 public objectives with only 3 on the table each game would give a lot of variety, but with only 3 different goals (pairs, colour/number variety, and full sets) the variety is a simply a mirage.
The box that holds Sagrada is almost comically large compared to the contents. The amount of empty space rivals Splendor and I’m sure could contain every expansion that’s been released to date.
Sagrada is a simple to teach game that doesn’t overstay it’s welcome. While the variety in the goal cards does wane after repeated plays, and I have my issues when played with two players, I wouldn’t hesitate to give this title my full recommendation. Some expansions have released that include a few more goal cards which I think would do well to address my main complaints of this game. Unfortunately, I haven’t played with any of the expansions, so I can’t speak for how well each of them work.
When Sagrada was first released back in 2017 it was released alongside Azul. As much as I want to take a look at Sagrada on its own and judge the game based on it’s own merits, the reality is that no game exists in a vacuum. Azul is also a light, aesthetically pleasing, puzzle-y game that is great to introduce newer players to the hobby while still having the depth to keep ‘core’ gamers interested. The community consensus seems to be that Azul is the preferred game of the two, but that doesn’t hold true for my own tastes. I absolutely prefer to play Azul as a duel game, and if three or four people are at my table, then Sagrada is the box I’ll be pulling off the shelf.
Named after a city in the Aegean Sea, known for it’s bleached white buildings and brilliant blue domed ceilings, Santorini burst into my life in a clattering mess of plastic.
I like toys
The box is larger than average with most of the space being used by these chunky 3D sculps of stackable buildings. Let me tell you the toy factor here is quite satisfying.
Santorini is played on a plastic grid slightly elevated off the table by a brown plastic rock. Each player takes the role of a Greek God and places their two heroes onto the board. On your turn you must do 2 things. You must move one space (diagonal or orthogonal) and you must build.
You can move to any of the 8 spaces around you, unless they already have a hero in that spot, or if a tower spire of plastic is in your way. You can move up one level, or down any number of levels, but unless you have a God assisting you, there is no vaulting skyscrapers in a single bound. If you cannot legally move or cannot legally build on your turn, you lose. The winner is the player who gets one of their heroes to stand on the third level of a building. This sounds easy but considering that both players are vying for the same potential victory spots and if their opponent feels they can’t reach it first, they can simply build the 4th level which drops a bold blue cap on the victory spot, making it inaccessible to both players.
The back and forth play reminds me of a duel between fencers. every turn a step, parry, and riposte. A subterfuge, seeking a hole in your opponents defenses want waiting for your chance to strike (strike in this context is climbing to the top of the tower.
As with most asymmetric games, inevitability the question of balance comes into play. Some Gods do appear better than others, and some Gods specifically seem to do very well against other gods. The real strength of Santorini is the length of each game. If players are afflicted with a serious competitive nature, then play is fast and furious. If you do fall into a matchup that heavily disfavours one side, the game ends quickly and with a sweep of the board you both draw new powers and you start anew.
I really enjoy the production value that went into creating this product. So many abstract strategy games are completely theme-less and embrace the aesthetic of black and white bits of wood on a grid. Santorini by contrast has a risen textured brown board with ivory white towers and brilliant blue tops that lift the game up off the table. The game board develops into spires quickly and it’s visual appeal had made people stop as they walk by the table to gaze in awe at the quality.
Part of me understands that Santorini could be played with simple discs and a much smaller board which would reduce Santorini’s footprint on my shelf by quite a lot and encourage me to bring it along when I travel. But a lot of the charm comes from the satisfying towers and quality components. The strategy is deep too which makes the component quality simply a bonus. I have toyed with the idea of creating a ‘demake’ travel version as most of my 2 player gaming happens at restaurants or airports (at least it used to).
Santorini was a favourite when I got together with my old chess rival. If you have a lot of 2 player gaming going on in your life and you enjoy the head to head nature of a abstract strategy game, then I implore you to give Santorini a try.
Here’s an odd confession to make as an adult man. I don’t like driving cars. I’ve actively avoided getting a drivers license for years until I got a job the required me to have one. The even stranger part of this confession is that I enjoy piloting other forms to transportation; Ski-doo, Sea-doo, bicycles, dirt bikes, ATV’s (4 and 6 wheelers), boats. You name it and I’ve had fun driving it. Something about driving my normal ‘big boy’ car through the streets of my city just creates and stupid amount of anxiety. I prefer to ride a bicycle to and from work, lest I have to put myself into the headspace that I need to drive every single day. If you do catch me on the roads, I’m usually the one driving slower than most of the other traffic and wishing that I were already at my destination.
Automobiles tries to emulate the life of a race car driver. You begin the game with a set number of cubes in your bag (5 white, 5 yellow, 2 light grey), and one card of each colour on the table. The normal colours (brown, white, light grey, dark grey, and black) are always preform the same action. The yellow, blue, green, red, and purple cubes all do different things based on the cards that are selected during setup.
The game begins by everyone getting a ‘buy’ action based on their placement (first player gets $10, second gets $11, and so on), then everyone draws 7 cubes from their bag. On your turn you use your cubes in any order to propel yourself around the track, or modify the cubes that are in your play area. Any cubes you don’t use generate income that you can use to buy more cubes to add to your bag. As you drive, you will generate wear that has to added to your discard pile. If you ever need to draw a cube but cannot because your bag is empty, you pour the entirety of your discard pile into your bag, give it a hearty shake and continue to draw until you reach your 7 cube limit.
Probably the most important part of this game is making the engine noises with your mouth when you move your car around the track. Seriously, it’s the most fun. Especially when you coerce your usually stoic friend into doing it too. The bag building element does a good job of conveying momentum as you speed around the track lap after lap fine tuning your bag. If you ignore your wear and push your car hard, you’ll end up having a turn or two where you only draw one useful cube with everything else being wear that goes back into discard pile. If you’ve built a good engine, you can clear half a lap in a single turn and clear the wear out of your discard at the same time.
The last time I played this game on the table, the green cube specifically lent itself to some great moments. The ability “Move as many light gray spaces as your current position. If you’re in last, move an extra light gray space” created situations where we all were sling-shotting past each other, trying to move our selves into positions so we’re barely in last place so we could rocket toward the finish line!
Usually, buy the end of the third lap, people more or less stop buying cubes, as they have what they want in their bag and adding any more cubes just lowers the chance of drawing the ones you really want. This is slightly changed when you play the season campaign.
The season campaign has you decide on 3 maps ahead of time, and your bag carries over from race to race. I’ve only played this variant on Yucata.de, but I really enjoyed my time with it. Especially when you have a race that requires white and light grey cubes, then the next race that benefits having black and dark grey cubes. At some point between these two races you need to pivot and try to remove some of the cubes that you’re relying on for this race in order to put yourself into a better position for the next race.
The season campaign does require buying expansion, which also includes variable player powers and ‘managers’ who give you money and/or the ability to remove cubes in between races. Honestly, the base game is fun for at least a dozen plays, especially if you have kids of non-gamers involved, but if you find Automobiles racing up the track of your favourite games list and you have someone who wants to play 3 games in a row, the expansion with the season campaign is absolutely worth your time and money.
Automobiles usually gives me the feeling of speed and momentum, with the tension of a car weaving through a space barely big enough to get ahead of someone, and narrow photo finishes. Sometimes the game comes to a screeching halt as you find yourself pulling a handful of cubes but none of which move you forward because they are the entire wrong colour that you needed or the only way you could move forward is blocked by another car. As much as I feel a sense of momentum from the game I can’t deny I’ve had a turn where I do almost a full lap, breaking away from the pack, only to have the next two or three turns in a row stuck in a single spot because I didn’t draw the dark grey cube necessary to move from the black lane to the other lanes. I don’t fault the game for that though, it feels way more like my own failing to plan than anything.
Pros:
Great game for lots of gamers, from beginners to experts
You can must make the vrrom vrrom noises with your mouth
the each of the special power cubes have 5 different effects, meaning lots of modularity and variability
Cons:
the base game only comes with 2 maps, one of them being a boring oval.
luck of the draw can have you pull all ‘good’ cubes, but you are unable to move because of your current lane, or because other players block you.
Tokyo highway has plain, unassuming cover, yet somehow the plain grey and large white letters stands out among the dozens of boxes with browns and greens promising wealth to the person who can trade their silks or spices in the most effective manner. The box is significantly larger than it needs to be, but I can’t fault it for that, it does lend itself to an impressive image on the shelf of a board game cafe (where I first played it).
The first time I played Tokyo Highway I was at a board game cafe with my little brother. He’s always wanted to do the things I do. He’s always read the books I’ve read, played the video games I’ve played. But when it comes to board games, while he tries his best, they really aren’t his cup of tea.
I tried to introduce Century: Spice Road to him. A simple trading game, only two players, lots of room to try new things and even some helpful pointers every now and then. He took literal minutes to make each decision, unable to quantify a value for each of the cards, often prioritizing the wrong cards and leaving the strongest cards for me to pick up for free when they get to the end of the queue. Needless to say, after a long game, I ended up crushing him. By the time I picked my 6th score card he had just managed to achieve his second one.
Having already paid the $5 entry fee, we didn’t want to pack up and leave. Tokyo Highway caught my eye. A big grey box nestled on the shelf between Splendor and The Voyages of Marco Polo. I pulled the box from the shelf, checked the back for a unhelpful summary and with a shrug dumped the contents of the box onto the table. Perhaps my brother would do better if we both were learning a game for the first time.
The rules were easy to read and explain. A mere two pages with simple and helpful graphics. While I read the details of how to win, my brother busied himself with stacking his cars on top of each other. The goal of the game is simple, the first person to place all of their cars first is the winner. You get to place a car if you ever place a road above an opponents road where there are no other roads above it, or if you place a road below an opponents road where there are no other roads below it. You place your roads (Popsicle sticks) from pillar to pillar, going up and down (you must always go one above or one below the last pillar you placed) and trying to weave above and below your opponent while they try to do the same to you. If you drop an opponents piece, you have to give them some of your construction pieces AND rebuild the game state. If you run out of construction pieces, you’re out of the game.
A bit of back story on me, I’m not know for loving dexterity games. My wife absolutely adores Jenga, and when that stack of blocks hits the table I prefer to take up knitting. The stress and anxiety the grips my shaking hands when trying to surgically remove a block from this tower is not a feeling that I ever seek to replicate.
Tokyo Highway somehow overcomes that aversion and fills my heart with joy. This is a game that makes me grin from ear to ear from the early turns all the way up to the crashing conclusion. When my turn to place my next road I relish the possibilities. Do I build high above everyone, scoring easy cars for going above? Or do I play a low game, conserve my pillars and snake close to the table sneaking under the highway when I can, sometimes causing my own demise when I try to wedge myself into a spot that I just wasn’t meant to fit.
The idea that when the intricate series of highways collapses, you’re supposed to relinquish building materials and rebuild the game state didn’t really jive with my experiences. I much rather to play with the option that if you knock stuff down, then that might as well count as a loss. It doesn’t make for interesting or intriguing game play watching the player who was just embarrassed rebuild the entire structure.
From a competitive viewpoint, I don’t like it either. If someone else rebuilt my roads, but it fell on the next couple turns I’d forever be suspicious that they deliberately sabotaged my roads sending all my tiny commuters to their demise.
Part of me has to think of the thematic part of that rule. “You were not as good a builder as the rest of us, so we’re going to make you rebuild our roads too.” In any case, trying to rebuild the structure brings the game to a screeching halt. This issue is exacerbated when playing with more than two players. If multiple players in a row make a mistake, it can take entirely too long before the game gets back around to you.
I recently received the game for my birthday and promptly forced it upon my wife. The game started well with us both seemingly giddy with excitement that comes with having official car placing tweezers. We played one game that ended with a cataclysmic crash, sending at least 4 of my roads to their demise. We reset and played again, this time our roads were much tighter, resembling a double helix shape. We had junctions and half of my roads were high in the sky while the others snaked close to the ground, looking for any easy roads to sneak under. My wife took advantage of my strategy by managing to place one of her roads both above and below two of my own in a single move. I was flabbergasted with her mastery and skill with the official road placing tweezers.
I’m quite happy to have Tokyo Highway in my collection, and I do anticipate bringing it out during game days every now and then. I suspect it will be a hit with the kind of people who can’t make it through more than 15 seconds of rules, and it gets bonus points for looking great too. I can’t think of a single game of Tokyo highway that’s gone by where I didn’t pull a camera out and take dynamic shots of the impossible roads that make up Tokyo Highway.
Artist: Nikoletta Vaszi, Naomi Robinson, Benjamin Shulman
Publisher: Gamelyn Games
Banana for scale
One of the games I spent over 100 hours on in my youth was Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced. That game kicked off an addiction of an entire genre that I’ll hereby refer to as “Tactics” Other games in this Tactics genre that I loved: Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions, Final Fantasy Tactics A2, Pokemon Conquest, XCOM, Into the Breach, Banner Saga, Fae Tactics, Fire Emblem (every English release to date)… you get the idea
Side note here, I’ve never been a fan of the Advanced Wars style of tactics games. I’ve tried a few Advanced War entries, as well as Wargroove and it just doesn’t jive with me. I think (speaking specifically about Wargroove because I played it most recently) the big problem is that the specific units don’t have any kind of growth. There’s no level ups, no managing equipment or spells that make the units unique to you. You don’t affect any change to make the units yours.
It’s important to hold the high ground
Tiny Epic Tactics designed by Scott Almes and published by Gamelyn Games is a 1-4 player take on the tactics series. This entry in the Tiny Epic series is specifically designed to appeal to the gamer with a nostalgic feel for the aformentioned Tactics games. The main map is a scroll with 5 sturdy boxes stacked in various spots to create elevation. The rulebook has several modes of play (2-4 player competitve, 2 v 2 player team play 2-4 player free-for-all, 1 player solo adventure, and 2 player solo adventure. As I’ve only played the 1 player solo adventure, that’s what I’ll be focusing on here
To begin the game, you will have 4 characters to control, one from each of the 4 classes (warrior, rogue, mage, and beast). Variability here feels high as there are 8 options for each class, theoretically offering thousands of different combinations. Once your heroes are selected you set up 4 more (one of each class) as your opponents and leave the rest to the side (they can get subbed in if you successfully beat down the opposition).
8 characters for each class
You begin the game with the party split, two characters in each corner and 4 enemies randomly spawned in 3 spots closer to the middle of the board. On your turn you can do 3 actions that can be taken with up to 3 different characters. If you elect to use two actions with a single character, they’ll be put into a weakened state where they either need to not move next round, or lose two HP.
This mechanic makes it so you can’t just run up and attack in the same turn, but try and predict where your opponents will be so you can maximize your actions. it also prevents you from favoring one character too often, which you probably shouldn’t be doing if you want to win the solo game
The goal of the solo game is to explore 5 caverns, collect each of the crystals, and then fight your way through the final cavern to win the game. You lose if all 4 of your characters die, or if the game timer runs out. You start out with only 7 turns to get all of this done, but each time you defeat an enemy you regain 2 turns. This leads to a cost/benefit analysis in your head, trying to decide if it’s worth your time to spend the actions necessary to get the reward of time back on your side.
Gotta get them crystals
There are some times where you will need to knock your opponents off a cliff before you can enter the dungeons (the dungeons are the 3d terrain tiles flipped upside down), but this leads to one of the biggest challenge of the solo game. Getting everyone off the final box. When you kill an enemy character they are removed from the board. But the next turn you respawn them at one of the three spawn points with one of those spawn points being on the final dungeon. This would mean you need either to get lucky with the spawn point, kill the enemy with 2 ranged actions and one move into the dungeon, do a hit and run melee attack (either killing them or pushing them off the terrain, or lure the enemy off the box. In my (one) experience, this portion of the solo game grinds to a halt and just frustrates you against the RNG of the solo game.
The mechanics of Tiny Epic Tactics do manage to evoke feelings of the tactics games that I referenced before, but lacks any personalization beyond assembling your initial team. During the solo game I found my thought pattern following the same path that I would when playing a proper Tactics video game, such as considering elevation, or moving one character before another to take advantage of their positioning. That part of the game does feel good, but it also lacks depth. There is no character progression, no way to change the abilities of your characters, or modify the party composition to deal with changing situations.
The image quality on the boxes are much higher than the playmat
I do have a small complaint with how the dice are used in the game. Each attack uses the die in a different way. The Melee attack uses die to determine how far the target is pushed. The Ranged attack uses die to determine how many ammo has to be used before the attack is successful, and the magic uses the die to spend more mana to possibly do more damage (in my experience). This is a mild annoyance and the fact that I need to think “Is rolling dice good or bad for this action?” adds to the mental load of playing the game.
From someone who is not a Solo gamer, this solo mode felt fairly well done to the point where I will likely try to play it one more time. This time with a better understanding of what each attack does and if/when abilities could be useful. It did remind me that I’m not really a solo gamer, as a lot of the time I spent playing this on the table, I found myself thinking “I never did get around to playing Fell Seal”. It’s hard for a solo board game to make me want to play it instead of a video game, but I believe one day I’ll find the right solo system that will let me in on what makes solo gaming special.
Tiny Epic games don’t waste a lot of space in their boxes
