Players 1 – 4
Playing time 25 – 40 minutes
Sometimes I feel like playing a game, but can’t be bothered to set things up. Sometimes Mrs Middle-Aged wants to play a game but is tired from a long day at work and doesn’t want something that takes too long or has too many options/decisions. Enter Sagrada, a game of placing coloured dice to form a stained glass window; this is our current default go to when we want something light and simple to while away some time in the evening.
The game is very easy and quick to set up, and easy to explain. Essentially, you have a 4 by 5 grid that you need to fill up with coloured dice drafted from a bag. Simple? Not really! Each player has a stained glass window player board into which slots one of the template grids. The template has either blank spaces in each grid square, or a number or colour representing the restrictions in that space (i.e. only dice of that number or colour are allowed in the space). These restrictions, added to the complication that no two dice of the same colour or number are allowed to occupy spaces orthogonally (up, down, left or right) adjacent makes for an interesting puzzle. The templates come in a range of difficulties represented by the number of glass blobs at the bottom of each.
The glass blobs, when played, allow use of some of the power cards in the game, sometimes helping to avoid the inevitable pitfalls of certain die placements. These cards are randomly selected at the start of the game and allow a player to fiddle with their window in ways that the game does not normally allow in order to more easily place the dice.
Dice are drawn from a pool of 90 dice in a cloth bag and can be any one of 5 different colours you draw dice equal to the number of players times two plus one additional dice i.e 5 for a 2 player game, 7 for a 3 player game etc. Turns then proceed in a horse shoe order i.e if there were 3 players the turn order would be player 1, then 2, 3, then 3 again, 2 and finally 1. This gives player 1 the most choice initially and the least choice at the end, evening things out; the first person to play alternates between drafting rounds.
What starts off as a deceptively easy game rapidly gets more difficult. You find increasingly that there are fewer options as to where you can shoehorn your dice, and will occasionally leave a hole in your window leading to negative points at the end of the game. Which brings us on to the scoring. This is achieved by a number of public objective cards drawn at random at the start of the game, and a private objective card also drawn at the start of the game. These objective cards can have a massive influence on how you complete your window, e.g. most reds, or one of each colour in a row etc. This can unwittingly put you in a difficult position for the late game, for example, when all you need is a red die with any number, but the draft gives you every colour except red!
This game has us both hooked because of its simplicity and ease to set up and have just a quick round (although we quite often will fall into the trap of ‘just one more go’ a few too many times resulting in very late nights!). The game is very much a multiplayer solitaire game (and indeed the solo variant plays, unsurprisingly, very well, with a few minor changes to the dice use, goals, and scoring), with the only real interaction coming from the dice selection. While dice selection can be used to get one over on your opponent by selecting the one(s) they need, this is often not a good tactic (unless by happy coincidence you also need the die) as this can result in you messing up your own window. Fans of confrontation and conflict should look elsewhere.
Those that do not like a large dose of luck playing a part in the game may not like Sagrada very much. Inevitably when dice rolls are involved, luck is going to come in to play even if some skill and logic are required to place the dice in the window. In addition to this, at lower player counts the drafting will have a big impact on the game in terms of luck as the same pool of 90 dice is used and not reduced, meaning there is a chance you may not draw as many dice of a particular colour during a game as required because more are left in the bag at the end of the game, and if that happens to be ones you need/want – tough. This could be mitigated by reducing the number of each coloured dice proportionately for lower player counts to make the gameplay more consistent, although I am yet to trial this as a house rule.
The production of this game is fantastic, from the beautifully coloured semi-transparent dice, to the fantastic player boards that do have the look of a stained glass window due to their chunky thickness, gorgeous colouring, and traditional church window shape. It does feel like a lot of care, attention and thought has gone into the production and theming of this game, and that beauty and tactility are a big part of what makes this game a joy to play.
Whilst I do love this game and its simplicity, and it has seen a lot of play, I would definitely not put it in a list of all time greats; it is a fun puzzle that is great to break out when you want something to play with a low rules overhead, and whilst it can feel rewarding to complete a window, it can feel a bit samey despite variation in templates and cards.
On a final note, the scoring of the private goal cards can make the game feel a bit unfair. The private cards are (in the base game at least) of the variety ‘sum the values of the dice of X colour’. When doing this it is easy for this score to dominate the entire scoring negating any of the points gained for the public cards. We have found that for a much closer game (points wise) it is better to get one point for each dice of X colour (as chosen on the private goal card) and disregard the dice pip total. Whilst this may not be as originally intended, we found that (especially with 2 players and still using a 90 dice pool) the luck of getting the most dice in your goal colour played too big a part in the game.
