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...