A religious/merchant game? Okay sounds rather dumb but once you get into it you start to realise there is just something about this game.
Yes, this is a religious trading game when you think about it but it is a fantastic game. I was very dubious about this game but after my first playthrough, I was thinking I can not wait to play this game again. So I did!
Now time for the boring section
Players: 2 - 4
Age: 12+
Time: 90 minutes < I found this to be more around 45 minutes for a 2 player game
Box contents
You actually get quite a lot of pieces with this game, 6 dice per player, loads of cardboard tokens, several different card types and of course playing meeples.
So for each player, there are;
6 dice
4 trading houses
2 player tokens
A Lock Leven card
A double-sided religion card
A double-sided turn of play/ year card
Then you have your game pieces
2 flaming torches for those pesky religious conflicts
4 sets of cards to match the country zones (these have character and event cards in)
Wine tokens - because who does not enjoy some wine?
Book tokens - I like to read! Hope you do too!
Ore tokens - No you are an ore!
Cloth tokens - Get dressed you, naked person!
Scroll tokens with hidden bonuses
Protection shields to help defend against event cards
Set of catholic meeples
Set of proestant meeples
Set of neutral meeples
That is quite a lot of pieces for a game that does not take long to learn and understand. I like it already..... How about you?
Setting up the game
The instruction book does have a great section on how to set up the game and a picture of how it should look. This made my life easy when setting up the game and that is what I like a clear guide on what to do.
The first action is to take a playing colour for each player and make sure you collect your trading houses, playing tokens, the year card to match your colour and your religion card to match your colour.
Now you need to shuffle and deal a Lock Leven card to each player so they can see their starting religion. Now in a two-player game players can not be of the same religion to start with, if this happens either redraw or let one player redraw one of the other religion cards.
Once you have your religions roll the black dice and place it on top of your religion card (not the Loch Leven card (this card should be face up to show you what you start with and where)). This is how many turns (years) you will be this religion before you can make a choice to swap and re-roll.
The religion is sorted and now we need to look at the Loch Leven card and do what it says. Each player collects a protection shield, a trade good that the card shows and then places one of their player tokens on the action section of the map where the card shows.
All making sense? Probably not but like I said look at the rulebook and follow what it says or just look at the photo above and just copy what I have done.
Each player then places their other player token on the score tracker around the edge on the number 2 (first to 50 wins the game). Not sure why we start on 2 but we do.... why have a 1 then? No idea.
Now we need to set up the rest of the board and that is simple enough, shuffle each zone of cards (different colour backs) and then place them face down next to their zone. You need to flip the top card over and put it on the pile face up. If this is an event card you are meant to discard it and draw until you get a character card. I feel that it is better to just put it back in the deck and shuffle it again.
Put the shield token on the large cathedral in Kingsbridge, put the other item tokens in an easy to reach location and same with the torches and finally, all the scrolls get shuffled and put into two piles on the top of the board above Antwerp.
That is everything I believe, of course, you can set up the game how you like with the tokens and such but make sure it all makes sense to the other players.
How to play?
Each turn is played out in two halves of a year the first half and then surprise surprise the second half of the year. I bet you saw that coming a mile away!
In the first half you basically from left to right rotate the dice on any cards you have down by one number. So for example your religion card currently is set to 4 years you would pick this up and swap it to the 3 showing that you have 3 years remaining before you can swap religion.
If you have a character card you lower the dice by one again and then you perform the action under that card. Maybe you gain an item like some wine? Maybe you get to remove or add a religious meeple to a city? If the action card shows a line between them it means you can only pick and perform one. The rulebook once again explains this very well and you can always refer back to it when you need to.
Now if a dice (none religion dice (black)) is one 1 well you can not move it to a 0 you just need to perform the action 1 more time and then discard that card. They have fulfilled their contract with you and killed themselves so no one else can use them.
If the religion dice is on 1 then you can change your religion if you wish to do so, if you do just flip the card to the other religion and then roll the dice again to see how many years you will be that religion again.
Now the player who is going first performs this action and then in a clockwise order so do every other player. It is that simple! Now if at any point during this phase a city is full of religion meeples (in a two payer game you only need 3 all other amounts of players you need 4) put a conflict torch there because at the end of the turn there is going to be some conflict!
The first half of the year is over and all players now flip their cards to the 2nd half!
Now, this is where the tactics all come into play, first pick up all your free dice (not locked on a character card or other) and roll them. You now use the dice to hire a character card. Each dice is coloured to match a zone, Blue is Paris, White is Kingsbridge, Orange is Antwerp and Brown is Seville, of course, there is the purple dice and this can be used as any colour above. Once you pick the character you want you to place the matching religion meeple into the city, you perform the action of that character card. You place it to the right of your last card in your play area and lock that dice on top of the card. The number indicates how many years you will need to keep this character. You also place a trading house meeple into the city on that dice roll. If it was a 4 you would place it in the 4 zone in the city. Now the number is important because if this city breaks out in a religious conflict and you are on the winning side you will score that many victory points! Also if you roll the same number that a player already occupies in that city you put your trading house meeple there and move them down one! Sneaky right???
Now you need to flip over the next card in the pile, if it is a character card then it is all good. If it is an event card you need to read it out and everyone needs to do what the card says! Now if you have protection shield tokens you spend them here to stop events from harming you or to gain VP points. Protection shields are important!
Once that is done with you then pick anyone dice colour you have left from your roll and move your other player token to that space on the action track board. Once you are on that space you perform that action, this is where you can gain VP points, sell items if you can for VP points, remove dice or religion meeples. Pay attention to this tracker and use it to your advantage, you can win or lose a game with this alone!
Once the starting player completes this it then goes to the next player and once they have all gone any religious conflicts need to be resolved!
Religious conflicts are very simple to score, basically see which religion as the most meeples. If you are on the side of the winning religion you score VP points equal to the space your trading house meeple occupies, if you are on the losing side then you remove your trade house and score 0. If it is a draw then just remove the meeples and no one scores. Once the conflict is finished all meeples are removed and put back into their piles.
We play the rule you can use your scrolls (if you have any) on your turn in either the start of the first half or at the start of the second half, if you miss these points you can not use it until the next start.
There are a lot of actions on character cards and on the action tracker so please read the rulebook and learn what these actions allow you to do.
You can not sell items to a city if you do not have a trade house meeple there, keep this in mind when you are collecting items and using the action tracker.
There is a lot to the second half of the year and after a few turns you will find it becomes second nature!
How to win?
The first player to reach the 50 VP points wins the game and then that's that!
Final Thoughts
I did not expect to like this game but took a risk on it and I am glad that I did, it plays well and there is a lot to the game.
Now I want to first point out the game is beautiful I mean look at the artwork on the gameboard alone! It is well done and all the pieces are well made. I like this in a game it does not feel cheap at all!
Now for some reason with how the gameboard is designed it feels as if it is designed for an expansion because the right-hand side does feel as if it is cut off.
Also, who thought it would be a good idea to have brown and purple that look almost identical? I keep getting these two mixed up while playing and that is annoying.
The game is clever and to win you need to think about everything you do in this game. The first pay through I was destroyed because I was not thinking about the religious conflicts and how they were going to bend me over and spank me.
In the second game, I planned every move and was watching what my opponent was doing. I paid attention and won, just, it was not a landslide but a close victory because of a sneaky religious swap.
Trading is a great way to gain points also but you need to watch what dices you are using because you might be stopping yourself on the action tracker from scoring what you need.
Everything in this game and I mean everything needs to be planned out if you want to win. I honestly can not see someone winning this game who just goes at it randomly because it is a game of strategy.
Overall I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would and I find myself wanting to play it again already..... What have you done to me!
8/10
