Step into the light and take a peak through the beautiful stained glass windows of the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia. If you have already been to Barcelona you will no doubt revisit memory lane; if you haven’t - you might just be booking a trip after this delightfully engaging game of Sagrada.
Sagrada is an aesthetically pleasing dice-drafting strategy game in which players are competing to build a 5x4 stained glass window from a pool of coloured dice, drafted over 10 rounds, in order to gain the most victory points.
Each player gets a different puzzle card to slot into their game board window, from varying levels of difficulty, and aims to complete their pattern by filling their window with beautiful dice (in 5 different colours) to complete private and public objectives. Private objectives award points equal to the total number on the coloured dice matching your card and public objectives are shared for all players to gain points by completing certain patterns in their window.
The starting player will select and roll a number of random dice from the bag (2 per player plus one extra) and draft a die to place in a slot around the edge of their window. Play proceeds with the next player clockwise, until everyone has drafted one die; then the last player drafts again and play continues in reverse order anti-clockwise back to the starting player. The remaining die gets placed on the Round Tracker board and the next round begins with a new starting player.
Sound simple? Well, get ready for the baptism of fire as you can only place subsequent dice adjacent or diagonally next to other dice in your window but no two dice (horizontally or vertically) can have either matching colours or numbers. This is where the Tool cards come in handy as you can spend shiny glass tokens to get help in ways such as moving, flipping and trading dice to suit. Spend wisely though as tokens are limited and, just like Gaudi, you might not get to finish your masterpiece!
This is a fantastic family game that you will want to get to the table on a rainy Sunday afternoon to add some colour to your day…and when friends visit…and when you have half an hour to fill…and even when you are home alone, as the solo game is a whole new challenge.
Sagrada is fun, replayable and gorgeously tactile. A must-have to display at the front of your game shelf and on the coffee table when you have visitors, as it is destined to be shown-off and shared!
