Author Topic: Sagrada  (Read 3822 times)

Offline Decar

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Sagrada
« on: April 18, 2017, 02:07:47 PM »
It came today, so it hit the table this evening.

Rules:
I'd not had chance to learn/play the game first to explain it, so just read the rules out of the book. Even though it is quite simple, knowing how to explain or start the game, was hard.  I'm sure it would be easier next time.

Basically, there's some public and private objectives.  You have some Tool Cards you can spend favours on to manipulate things.
Each turn a player draws (n+1) dice from the bag and roll them. You perform a snake draft and any left over dice are chucked on the round-marker-track.  Your first die has to be placed on the edge/corner, subsequent dice are played adjacent.  Dice which are orthogonal cannot be of the same colour or number.  You score points at the end based on the objectives -points for gaps.

Components:
You get a bag with 90 coloured dice in it and the favour tokens are nice glass beads.
The art work is very colourful, but the card stock is pretty thin; I'd have preferred this was a little thicker, but there's not much shuffling.

Player Interaction:
Not much really, only hate drafting, but we were too busy trying to work out optimal placements.  It's a typical, short-length friendly Euro affair.

Theme:
If you liked stained glass windows and dice: you're in for a winner.  If you dis-like either of these: go play something else.

Our Game:
The start of the game is pretty difficult; I made effective use of the Tool cards that let you manipulate stuff, when I noticed the Column  Colour Variety card was probably the easiest thing to score points against.  We both started with 'easy' windows.
I ended up scoring 47 points.  If I got a Blue 6 at any time during the game, I'd have scored another: 19 points!
My wife misunderstood the rule about orthogonality; so started off really badly.  She also forgot about the private card half way through too.

Last Thoughts:
It's a filler for me; it only took about 15-20minutes to play (which is a plus), but I didn't feel much challenge, there's plenty of room to do what you want, until the end game where occasionally we took dice we needed from each other.  I did think the interactions could have been tighter.  It probably makes for a good solo experience, which I look forward to trying.


Linkback: https://www.carcassonnecentral.com/community/index.php?topic=3260.0
« Last Edit: April 18, 2017, 02:10:28 PM by Decar »

Offline jungleboy

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Re: Sagrada
« Reply #1 on: April 19, 2017, 12:16:59 AM »
Sounds like you didn't think that much of it which is a real shame, because as I was telling Chooselife yesterday, Sagrada and Santorini were my two most anticipated games that were on Kickstarter last year. I'm more into components than you, though, and I daresay I'm probably more into stained-glass windows than you, so hopefully I'll still like it a lot. Maybe it would be better at a higher player count? 

Offline Decar

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Re: Sagrada
« Reply #2 on: April 19, 2017, 02:11:17 AM »
I hope I've not put you off!  I certainly enjoyed playing, although it felt more 'puzzley' than 'gamie'. 
I didn't find myself making tough decisions, but that might be due to several things. 
Perhaps my limited knowledge of the game or the dice coming up, made it feel a bit random to me. 
A lot of the time I felt quite restricted, but in 2-players there is only 5 dice to choose from, so more players may help. 
Also, the more difficult windows may offer a better challenge.  As a Solo I think it would be great.
Two of our scorecards were very similar too (5s&6s and sets of 1-6), so perhaps there are better ones.

I've yet to play, but Potion Explosion seems similar.

I just feel like something was missing, either mechanically or components-wise... I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Offline Chooselife

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Re: Sagrada
« Reply #3 on: April 20, 2017, 02:18:25 AM »
Played it with my daughter. Both on easy windows.
The game is pretty much accessible and and an increase learning curve.

My only complaint is that the Dice are just to small, for a kid just trying to set them on the window is halfway to lose it. For me, even not having big hands, just trying to put a dice without messing all the others around on later turns is an all new skill game.

A very good filler/light family game with possibility for strategic gaming against experienced gamers, although you would also increase the analysis paralysis risk, but I'd gladly pay extra to have bigger dice.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me, Shall be my brother;

Offline Decar

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Re: Sagrada
« Reply #4 on: April 20, 2017, 02:33:39 AM »
Haha, I thought it would come across as nitpicking if I said I thought the dice were slightly too small.  But bigger dice would have been nice.  I can imagine younger people would struggle with their size too.

Offline jungleboy

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Re: Sagrada
« Reply #5 on: April 23, 2017, 08:59:00 AM »
Some random thoughts from me:

Love the components and theme, which are pretty much most of the reason I backed it!

My only complaint is that the Dice are just to small, for a kid just trying to set them on the window is halfway to lose it. For me, even not having big hands, just trying to put a dice without messing all the others around on later turns is an all new skill game.

Sorry to hear that this is an issue. Not having kids, it's no big deal for me, and I also didn't have problems putting dice in their spots.

It probably makes for a good solo experience, which I look forward to trying.

I played a couple of solo games today and I'm not sure it works that well - we'll see. Basically, I won one game by quite a lot and lost the other by quite a lot, and I think therein lies the problem. In a multiplayer game, the different types of public objective cards can create a higher or lower scoring game - for everyone. That's no problem because they're public cards. But in a solo game, if you get public objective cards that are 'too weak' or 'too strong', there might not be a balance between your score objective (which of course you have some control over) and an achievable or likely score. Also, the drafting just isn't as good as it would be with multiple players. Choosing the best two out of four dice is not really 'drafting' in the way a multi-person draft is.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to playing the real game. Maybe at the board game meetup this Wednesday.

Offline Decar

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Re: Sagrada
« Reply #6 on: April 23, 2017, 09:17:46 AM »
Some great observations around the solo play.  In fact one of the main reasons I scored so highly against my wife was being able to use the (move 2 dice) skill twice during the game.  It probably gave me access to another 30 points.  The other skills were much much weaker than this.  Having access to these skills during solo could sway the scores.  I think the other issue you've identified is you could use a tool card to essentially discard a bad die too; which score may or may not influence the finals goal on the scoretrack.

Regarding the solo-dice draft you could always randomize the AI player's selection of a a die, if you line the dice up then alternate between:
a) Roll two dice: on an ODD/ODD take 1st dice, on ODD/EVEN  take 2nd, EVEN/ODD take 3rd, EVEN/EVEN take 4th
b) Roll a dice: on 1,2 take 1st, 3,4 take 2nd, 5,6 take 3rd.

It might help and make your choice of 2 slightly better.

But either way, hope your games against real people are more enjoyable and you have a good time at your next meeting!

Offline Chooselife

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Re: Sagrada
« Reply #7 on: April 24, 2017, 02:00:00 AM »
Played it with the Wife and Daughter yesterday.
It plays nice and balanced and again my daughter was able to play with very limited help and mainly on the later rounds.

It sure looks like nitpicking but being so small makes easy the miss the pips, by the last round we were having an laugh in finding a way to help the kid finding a way to finish her window with a little help (cheating) and when I look to my window for point scoring I had three "3"s in line right next to each other starting on the , it wasn't on purpose so I might have flip the middle one while adding a neighbour dice.
I took a photo halfway to the game and didn't even notice it. My wife on the front has two "4"s side by side and both of us didn't notice.


Offline jungleboy

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Re: Sagrada
« Reply #8 on: May 06, 2017, 02:05:41 AM »
Played two games with Chooselife last night and I really liked it. The components are beautiful and the gameplay is clean and fast. I think/hope junglegirl will like this.

Offline jungleboy

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Re: Sagrada
« Reply #9 on: May 15, 2017, 01:43:23 PM »
I think/hope junglegirl will like this.

And she does! We played our first game together tonight and she beat me handily by 20 points, as I was somehow unable to place four dice and she placed all of hers and did as well or better than me in each of the four objectives. I introduced the game to her without the tool cards, as I thought they would complicate things a bit much. We both used Level 3 window cards to keep it even. Also, she has very slender fingers so she doesn't suffer from the Chooselife small dice plague.


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