Sagrada Remastered: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Dice Rolling, Pattern Building, Sudoku
Player Age: 15+Player Count: 1 - 4 PlayersTime to Play: 30 - 45 Minutes
Player Age: 15+
Rundown:
Sagrada is a dice placement game about designing stained glass windows that feels very much like a sudoku puzzle brought into board game form. I have reviewed the first edition of the game here. This review is a combination explaining the game but also diving into the differences of first and second edition.
In 10 rounds players are placing dice in pursuit of legally being able to place more dice but also in pursuit of public and private scoring conditions. Each round players will be snake drafting dice choosing from dice equal to the player count plus one. This starts with player 1, then the last player will have two turns and turn order will now occur in reverse making the first player the last drafter. The last dice will move to the round tracker signalling the rounds but also some tool cards will interact with these dice.
A Placement Puzzle:
The placement of the dice is where this game really shines. The dice has to be placed in one of the four corners of the board at a starting point, afterwards it has to be adjacent (including diagonal) to another placed dice. The many restrictions of placement come from the fact it can't be the same colour or number as a die orthogonally adjacent, and has to match any number or colour displayed on the placement on the player board. Meeting these restrictions when placing dice is challenging enough, but the real puzzle comes from players trying to meet the colour of their private objective or meet the conditions of the three public objectives.
Production Comparison:
Most of the production differences between first and second edition are cosmetic. The two largest difference are the tools and public objectives are now in larger sized cards with a much better presence and readability.
The other enhanced production feature is a new focus on colour blind friendly. Blue and red die now have a sparkle feature in the dice and are visually shown in the cards as well.
Intricacies:
Private Objectives:
In the original edition of the game the private objective would score based on the value of the pips of dice placed in that colour. In concept that sounds great and adds another layer of decision when it comes to drafting dice. In reality players would often remember the colour but forget higher pip values were more beneficial and create more complications when scoring. The remastered edition changes this to three points per any die of the represented colour. This simplifies and streamlines the scoring without largely affecting the decision space.
Tools:
Each turn a player may choose one tool to manipulate a die to create a more optimal placement. The first player to use a tool only needs to spend one favour token, any subsequent use of this tool will require two favour tokens. Favour tokens do not return once spent and each player will gain a different amount based on how challenging the puzzle (window frame) they choose for their window.
Dice Setup:
Instead of all dice used no matter the player count. The dice bag that will be drafted from is now adjusted based on player count (as shown below) to create a more balanced chance of any coloured die appearing.
Determination:
- Plenty of variability built into the game.
- Better functionality and table presence in the second edition.
- Not sure if there is enough of a difference yet to upgrade to the second edition.
After reviewing Sagrada the first time, the game has continued to grow for me. It is now definitely a go-to golden game. It is a perfect balance between ease to play and challenging sudoku puzzle. Players have to prevent the same colour/number orthogonally touching, while meeting the conditions of the window frame they have. This is just to place, players have to focus on meeting their private objective colour and the public objectives to score points. The second edition creates a great starting point for anyone new to the franchise cleaning up several small elements and production focuses. Players with an existing collection including multiple expansions may not find enough difference in the editions yet to explore this new edition though. In saying this a new expansion has already been released for the second edition, containing a lot of elements from the original fifth player expansions. As well as new elements. If you're new to Sagrada, or just never took the plunge I fully recommend getting this new edition for Sagrada.
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