A Week of Games, Day 3 - Mystery of the Temples and Unearth

Today I've got some thoughts on two lighter games.

MYSTERY OF THE TEMPLES

Full disclosure, I backed the Mystery of the Temples kickstarter and received my copy of the game via that kickstarter.

Designer Wei-Min Ling has quite a few games under his belt and though I haven't played any of them before I have read good things. The kickstarter for Mystery of the Temples was simple, the right price and looked interesting so I backed it.

The basics of the game involve players moving back and forth between two sets of cards that are arranged in a circle. Some cards get you crystals and/or otherwise allow you to effect your crystals, the other cards allow you to spend them for points in a first-come-first-served system. You can't stop where another player is sitting, so there is a blocking element as well as a race to spend your crystals on the right cards for points.

The second system involves how you place your crystals on your player board in order to spend them. Each crystal has to go on an empty space and when spending them you must be able to trace a line through all the crystals you want to spend in the correct order. Planning this out correctly is very important to avoid wasting moves. The game ends once a player has cashed in four sets of crystals. The winner is the player who got the most points via crystals and what ever the bonus points (random selection at game start) they have earned. All in all sounds like a light weight game with some interesting decisions.

Unfortunately Mystery of the Temples just felt kind of flat. The blocking aspect didn't seem to do anything but extend the game via passive aggressive moves. The main game of racing out the points seemed off due to the number of points earned by how many crystals you cash in, with the lowest not worth it and the highest taking to many actions to get. There are interesting choices but overall it just seemed a bit, well boring. I do want to give it another go, but my expectations are tempered.

UNEARTH

Much like Mystery of the Temples the art of Unearth is what initially caught my eye. Holey heck it looked pretty, but I was not about to be fooled a...well I have lost count now on how many times I have been fooled by a pretty game. But after seeing a play through and reading the rules I was fairly confident I would like Unearth.

The core of the game is dice placement and set collection. Each turn you roll and place a die on one of the available Ruin cards, hoping to collect it for scoring. There are a number of different dice, a D4, three D6's and one D8, each serving somewhat of a different purpose. Each card has a value on it, that when the total value of the dice on the card placed by players equals or exceeds will resolve the Ruin card, giving it to the player with the highest die result, ties broken by any additional dice the players have on the card. Each other player with dice on the Ruin when it is awarded get them Delver cards which are one off special actions that they can spend on their turn to change dice in various ways. When placing a die on a Ruin if the result is 1,2 or 3 you can take one of the hex Stones on it and add it to you ever growing tableau. When you have enough Stones to make a ring you are award a bonus Monument to place in the middle.

So what does this all get you? Well each Ruin is one of five colors, at the end of the game you are awarded cumulatively more points depending on how many of a color collected. You can also score points for having one of each color. The Stones collected can earn you points based on the Monuments you have earned. This gives you two paths to work towards at all times, both being important, but also you are at the mercy of the dice, low rolls won't get you many Ruins but the Stones add up and they will earn you Delver cards that can make a huge difference towards getting the Ruins you want later.

The components are great quality and its one of the few games I have where the insert is actually functional. Unearth plays smoothly and I find it to be quite satisfying on top of just looking good. If you are looking for a quick playing dice game with enough choices to keep it interesting I definitely recommend Unearth.

A Week of Games, Day 2 - Roll for the Galaxy

ROLL FOR THE GALAXY

Back in 2007 a little game called Race for the Galaxy came out and became very popular. I enjoy it very much and have played many hundreds of games of it over the years.

Seven years and many expansions later the die based version came out, Roll for the Galaxy. I often find my self liking the smaller quicker "dice" based version of games that come out, sometimes as much as the original. Roll for the Galaxy is no different. Roll takes the core principles of Race, building a tableau, gaining new abilities, picking actions and trying to score the most points the quickest but rather than having it all card based the mechanics are moved to dice. Each player getting a ever expanding pool of dice they roll each round to perform actions. The more dice allocated to an action the stronger it is, but you can only guarantee one of the action types per turn (chosen in secret), while hoping the other players pick the others you want to do as well.

Where Roll really shines is the speed of which it is played, rolling dice, allocating and using the dice are all more or less done simultaneously, meaning a 4 or 5 player game moves along at a quick race, er pace, actually feeling more like a race than the original game. The mechanics are smooth and it's easy to keep track of what both you are doing and the other players accomplishments.

I think Roll for the Galaxy does a great job of capturing the feel of the original, with it's own twist, being a lighter, quicker easier to learn game. I give it top marks and enjoy it a whole lot.

(There is also an expansion, Ambition, which adds more dice colors and objectives, both enhancing the core game without over complicating it.)

A Week of Games, Day 1 - Sagrada

Once again I let this sit a few weeks longer than I meant to, but that just means I've got more to write about I guess. In fact there will be a game "review" each day this week rather than just the big Sunday drop.

SAGRADA

The vivid colors of Sagrada initially drew my attention to this game. Pretty colored dice, nice components with simple and clean rules guiding you into a light weight game. How can you lose? Well...

Sagrada is a game about picking dice and placing them into certain slots on your player board. At the start of each round random dice are picked from a bag and rolled, then one by on each player picks and places 1 die, then back around for a second die. You are attempting to fill in your specific stained glass window. There are rules to dice placement of course, dice of the same color or number cannot be next to each other and certain spots on your board will only accept certain colors or numbers. The strategy to get what you need and place it without blocking yourself off down the road is quite good. There are random objectives to score points at the end of the game, based on various factors such as having rows of all unique colors or fully completed columns, ect. A handful of special abilities that you can use once or twice during a game (such as moving dice) are also available.

All in all Sagrada sets itself up to be a light but clever game involving dice, right in my wheelhouse. But after a half a dozen plays I am left unsatisfied with how it all works out. The random dice out of the bag can really do you in by no fault of your own, if the colors or results you need don't come up...well you are out of luck as there is very little to no recourse to mitigate this. If the dice you need are not available then you can't place and even if you can you may not be able to work towards the point giving goals. I do like the picking of dice and core mechanics of working towards filling your window, but each time the game I have played has been won by a significant margin based purely on the luck of people fulfilling their personal secret goal. This goal gets you 1 point per result on dice of a specific color and each it has been the decided far above any of the public goals. It kind of leaves a bad taste in the mouth when you lose and couldn't have done anything about it, even in a lighter game such as this.

Ultimately I think Sagrada asks you to make interesting decision during the course of play, but then doesn't actually reward you for doing so at the end.

Back tomorrow with another dice game...