Meeple Jockey Gaming Club

Recreate the stained glass windows of the famed Sagrada Familia church in this interactive, fast paced and beautiful puzzle game!

How it Plays

Sagrada is an open drafting dice game where over ten rounds players fill out their dual layered player board with different colours and values of dice. However, you can’t just place those dice anywhere of course.. where’s the fun in that!

After setup, players start off by pulling enough dice from the bag for two per player plus one extra (3 players = 7 dice), then they roll them to establish a market. Players choose two die per round in a snake draft that satisfies different colour and die value conditions on their personal board.

Players choose from one of four sides on two random pattern cards to establish their board. On the pattern cards, the white circles in the bottom right corner ranging from three to six show the complexity of the card and how many Favour Tokens (more on those later) it provides.

Coloured squares can only have a die of the corresponding colour played on them while the number value of that die doesn’t necessarily matter. Conversely the greyed-out die squares showing a number on them allow only the value rolled to be played on it. In addition to that, die of the same colour and/or rolled value cannot be placed orthogonally next to each other. Diagonal placement is permitted. The first die of the game for each player must start on a space along any edge. Subsequent die can be placed anywhere that touches a previously played die, as long as it’s a legal spot! Should a die be discovered to be placed illegally after the fact, it and any other like it, must be removed and are lost from your end game scoring.

Of course just placing dice to satisfy basic colour and number conditions isn’t much of game.. enter Public and Private Objectives! Each player has one private objective in addition to three shared public objectives. These are cards are drawn randomly from small decks and allow for the player to try to score multiples of different objectives like row or column based colour or number objectives or other set collection based ones. This is the heart of the game and you really need to maximize how many times/efficiently you score these shared and private objectives if you want to be in the running at the end.

At the end of each round players note on the round tracker with the left over die(s) after each player has drafted twice. As the game progresses it will become more and more difficult to place your die in an advantageous or even legal spot. If you can’t place legally then your die is wasted and lost.

Oh no! Don’t fret, there are three tool cards available to the players that can help you out! These tools can change a die or dice’s position already on the board or alter one you just drafted. These tools come at a cost though. The first player to use a tool spends one of their Favour Tokens (clear glass beads) to do so. All subsequent uses of that tool cost any player two tokens. Conserve favour tokens as each is worth one victory point at the end of the game!

After the tenth round is complete it’s time to total up all those sweet, sweet victory points. Flip over the round tracker to help you mark your scores and take a look at how many times you achieved each public objectives as well as your private one. Add to that any remaining favour tokens and subtract a point for each open square left on your board and that’s your final score! Well how did your stained glass window turn out? Worthy of the finest churches in the world or more of a smashed flea market mess?

Two last items to talk about. The first being the 5-6 player expansion. We have not played yet with the Private Dice Pool Boards so my opinion is not yet formed. The description has them changing the draft from a snake format to a single round of public drafting coupled with a round of private dice pool drafting. This is supposed to speed up play and make it less likely that you have a really tough decision to make or no play at all. Personally I think it sounds like it takes some of the fun out of it and the game is plenty fast enough already but we will see.

What the expansion does do great is add a new personal and public objectives along with a few new tool cards. More variety is always welcome. It also adds an excellent little dice tray which allows for passing the market around safely possible. Last and most importantly, it adds all the components, boards and dice so two more people can play!

The last item is expansion related as well in that the base game came with a fit for purpose insert that also has enough room for all the expansion components! Hallelujah!

Final Thoughts

I highly recommend most any board gamer give this one a roll. It’s fantastic. Fast to pick up, satisfying to play and doesn’t fry the brain or over stay it’s welcome.

I really enjoy the combination of snake drafting your dice and how the challenge of the puzzle unfolds as your board fills out. Unlike some set collection/pattern matching games this one doesn’t feel punishing to play pieces advantageously -or even at all- in the later stages of the game like some can.. looking at you Calico.