Sagrada

Who doesn’t know the Sagrada Familia? As an ex Art of Design student, I’ve always wanted to visit this amazing piece of art and admire it from another point then only my pc monitor. With Sagrada I feel like I’ve accomplished getting at least a bit closer to that. Sagrada is a small logic game where you as an artist compete with other artists over the best glass stained window for the Sagrada Familia. Already in love with the theme of the game, I couldn’t wait to play it.

How to Play.

The setup for Sagrada is quite quick and easy. Randomly give each player a private objective card facedown together with two window pattern cards and one player board. Each player chooses one side on a window card and slides it inside the player board. Then give each player the same amount of favor tokens as the difficulty number on the window pattern card. Then place the round track together with the player score markers in the center of the table. Also place three random tool cards and public objectives cards face up on the table. Lastly place all the dices in the dice bag. Now you are ready to create your window.

The game is played in ten rounds. At the beginning of every round, a player will take two dices per player, plus one additional dice out of the bag and roll them on the table. For two players this would be five dices for example. Then, going clockwise, each player can choose three options. You can take one die from the table and place it on your window, you can pay a favor to use a tool card. Tool cards can help you finish your window with swapping dices for example. Note that if there is already a favor token on the card, you have to pay two tokens. Lastly, you can choose to do nothing. Every action is completely optional. If you don’t see a dice or card you can or want to use, simply pass and the next player can take its turn. The first turn will go clockwise, starting with the player who took the dices, the second turn from the round will go counter clockwise.
Once every player has taken two turns (or passed), place the last die and possible remaining dices, on the round track. The next player can then take dices from the bag to repeat the process.

Placing dices on your window has some placement rules you need to follow.
The first die of the game must be placed in one of the corners or edges from your window. Every other die must also be adjacent to a previously placed die. If there is a color or specific number on your window, you can only place the matching number or color on that spot on your player board. Lastly, a die can never be placed orthogonally adjacent to a die with the same color or value. Meaning you can’t place a red die can’t be placed next to another red die unless it’s diagonally. They can’t touch sides.

If then round has passed, the game ends and the final scoring begins. To count your scores, use the back side of the round track and count the points from the public objectives, private objective and left over favor tokens. The private objective will give you a color you have to place on your window in order to get points, where public objectives will often ask for pairs or specific values, like a three and four value pair for example. For every empty space left on the window, you lose one victory point. The player with the most victory points is the best artist and wins the game.

Playtrough of the game.

Sagrada is a game that takes surprisingly more thinking then I originally thought. The dice placement restriction rules make it a lot more challenging and it gives you great satisfaction to see your window getting build. You also will not easily know who is winning until the end because of the personal and public objectives.

The game looks nice on the table to, and if you can, play it with candle light only. Because the dices are transparent, the light can really play with the colors which will give you just that bit of extra coziness, or at least that is our opinion.
The quality of the components are quite good and there is a lot of replayability because all the window screens are double sided. They also have different difficulties, so if you want more challenge, you can choose a more difficult window to build.

Final Thoughts.

Sagrada is a light logic thinking puzzle game where you have to build your own glass stained window. With each dice you choose, your window becomes a little more colorful, and with 90 dices and a lot of window patterns to choose from, this game will be different every time. The rules are simple yet challenging and you can choose your own difficulty. We found this game a lot of fun with two or more players.