Inner monologue: “Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t say it”. My actual voice: “This packs quite a lot of crunch into such a small box”. Overused soundbites aside, I’m not sure that what this does pack into its box sings as much for me as it seems to for others. Perhaps I should be filing this one under ‘It’s not you, it’s me’?
The Red Cathedral
Designer: Isra C., Shei S.
Publisher: Devir
2020
How to play:
Players take on the task of building St Basil’s Cathedral, represented in the game by a variable layout of four columns of cards each consisting of a door section, arch(es) and a roof. In addition to points gained throughout the game as you successfully construct those sections of the cathedral / adorn them with ornamentations, you will also gain a good chunk of points at the end of the game for the columns where you have constructed more sections than your opponent(s).
The game is largely played by taking one of three reasonably straightforward actions:
• Claim one of the sections of the cathedral as your own by placing a token of your colour from your player board onto the section that you want. You can either claim a section at the base of one of the four columns or claim a section above one that someone else has already claimed. Think of it thematically as erecting scaffolding; you either start the scaffolding at the base or continue it from where someone else has left off. The section of the cathedral that you claim will have a cost displayed on it – a mixture of the various resources gained during the game; bricks, timber, stone etc.
• Gain resources to be used during a later turn to build / complete your previously claimed sections of the cathedral. To do this you move one of five coloured dice, randomly placed at the start of the game, clockwise around a rondel on the main board - moving it by the value the dice displays and landing on a space that then allows you to collect the resource for that space. For example, for my action I need some bricks in order to build a section of the cathedral that I have already claimed. I can see that the yellow die is currently displaying a value of 5 which if I move it takes to the space after the bricks that I need so I can’t use that. But wait, the red die has a value of 3 and if I move that then it will land on the bricks resource. As the game goes on and as dice are moved randomly around the board I might even find myself in a sweet spot of there already being another dice or two in the space I want to be and then I get to take double or treble the amount of the resource. But I need to be careful as I can only hold a maximum amount of resources at any one time.
• Use the resources that you have gained during other turns and send up to three of them to any sections of the cathedral that you may have previously claimed as your own. This may complete a particular section and score you immediate points. Or it may tantalisingly (or deliberately if you are playing the game smartly) leave the sections almost ready to be completed during a future turn. Your resources can also be used to adorn any completed sections of the Cathedral (including those that your opponent may have previously completed) with ornamentations which may further increase your dominance of a particular tower.
A couple of notable wrinkles during the game:
• As you claim a section of your cathedral as your own, it will also have on it a random token which can be placed on your player board in a space that matches one of the five colours of the dice on the rondel. From now on when move that coloured dice then I also get to take the bonus displayed on the token. For example, I may claim a section of the cathedral and its bonus tile goes on my playboard in the yellow spot. Its bonus is a coin. Now, every time I use the yellow dice I get a coin. These bonuses vary and could offer victory points or let me use another colour dice in the same turn – so perhaps every time I use the yellow dice my bonus also lets me gain the resource from wherever the green dice is positioned on the rondel. As the game progresses and I claim more sections of the cathedral then I will get more of these bonus tiles assigned to different coloured ‘workshops’ on my player board and likely near the end of the game every time I move any dice around the rondel it will also trigger a secondary bonus action.
• The rondel on the main board is also made up of 4 quadrants and each quadrant will have a randomly assigned card that lets me take some additional actions if my dice lands in that quadrant – perhaps letting me trade resources I don’t want for ones that I do, gain points, etc. Just some additional incentives for landing in a particular zone, or even just an incidental bonus for landing somewhere I was always planning on visiting.
And that is largely that. Claim a section of the tower, use the dice rondel to get some resources, use those resources to complete your tower sections or to furnish sections with ornamentations. First player to build their sixth tower section ends the game and final scoring takes place and the player that has built the most in each separate tower finds themselves most likely in line for the most points and the winner’s crown…
Solo Headlines:
Five randomly placed cards that have an action displayed on them which largely mirror the actions that a normal player would take (claim a section of the cathedral / gain resources / use the resources). Depending though on how the luck of the shuffle has gone, the solo opponent may be taking its turns optimally (claim a section > gain resources > build) or less optimal (eg trying to build but hasn’t yet gained any resources so can’t build quite yet).
Each of the solo opponent’s cards will also indicate a dice to move on the rondel which doesn’t particularly have much, if any, impact on the solo opponent’s game but does keep the rondel dice moving and changing as they would in a multiplayer game.
Some very simple “this is how the opponent behaves on its turn” rules to take in but really straightforward stuff that will take about 5 minutes, if that, to sink in. Its turns take moments and a solo game will run at around 50 mins or less.
General Headlines:
As I will mention later, I didn’t hate this game. Some of my issues stem directly from the solo mode, others more broadly from the game generally. And some of them might just be “this one didn’t click for me but other people might really enjoy it”. With that said…
I won every game I played. The first one was a close tie – but that was more likely down to me not fully grasping the rules. You see, whilst being simple to operate and manage - the solo opponent also lets everything it is going to do during the entire game be seen. All of its cards and dice movements are face up from the get go. I know it’s every move and can plan accordingly and it’s really apparent quite early on how to choke the solo opponent. Yes, I felt like I had played a nice thinky puzzle but I didn’t particularly feel that that I wasn’t going to win so any real tension was absent. I’m fine I suppose with games where tactically I need to look at what the opponent is doing and try to frustrate their attempts in order to ensure my own success. Its just in this game my opponent literally showed me all of its plans – no curveballs, no unexpected moments and it felt a little too easy to figure out how to beat it. Some automa opponents I want to curse the day they were born and swear that they are somehow alive and wanting to make my life a misery. This one felt disappointingly simple to grok.
All of which might not have been too much of an issue for me if each time I played the puzzle I was finding new secrets and depth to the gameplay. But I wasn’t - though I need to temper my own expectations here a little as I know that this isn’t a heavy, sprawling Euro. That said each game felt largely identical to the last, which again was a little disappointing as the actual set up of the game has loads of variability; the dice on the rondel, the cards in each of the quadrants of the rondel, the resources that can be gained from each spot on the rondel, the shape of the cathedral that you are trying to build, the ongoing bonuses that you get when you claim a section of the cathedral. But the variability doesn’t change the game to any meaningful extent at all – the changes feel so minor that they are almost insignificant to the point of me wondering why the variable set up is even happening at all. The game just felt the exact same every time. So now I’m playing a game that I know I am going to win each time and that its going to pan out largely identically each game. Hmmmm.
The rondel in this game is really neat, and I do like a rondel as a rule of thumb. Perhaps this is more an indication of my gaming preferences but much in the same way as I particularly struggle with games that have a lot of cards that have text on them and feeling that I can no longer see my game ‘at a glance’, I also struggled a little with the rondel here for similar reasons. I felt every turn I was having to count out each of the five dice’s steps to see where they would land and as I mulled over my options I found myself recounting over and over again – not enough ‘just being able to see’. That could just be me though, but regardless it was enough of an issue for me to mention it here.
Similarly I had some (albeit minor) issues with how to score certain elements of the game. There is a rule in the game that if someone completes a section of a tower above one that you haven’t yet completed then you lose points. If you asked me to try and meaningfully explain now how this works even now I don’t think I could. I also wasn’t sure too what to do when the VP marker goes around the board one full time. It also took me a couple of head scratches to figure out the maths for end of game scoring. Nothing to the point of me wanting flip the table and burn the rulebook - just some unnecessary fiddle that may well be a flaw in the rulebook rather than the game. Or a flaw in me…
The art didn’t particularly chime with me either. Beauty is of course in the eye of the beholder though so I won’t fault it too much here. But personally I found it a little underwhelming for my own tastes.
Brace yourself, I am going to say a couple of positive things:
The resource management in this game was really good in many ways – trying to use the rondel to get what you need, knowing that you can only carry a limited number of resources so needing to ensure that you don’t have too much of what you don’t need, sending those resources over to the cathedral but realising that you can spread them out and do some planning ahead for future turns, finding some resources tighter than others, deciding whether to use resources to build the cathedral or to decorate it with ornamentations. This part of the game felt excellent. If resource management is your thing, its done very well here.
The game also has a neat parallel scoring thing going on; as build the cathedral I get Prestige Points (the person with the most of these at the end of the game is the winner) but those Prestige Points are also broken down into smaller points that I will gain throughout the game – think of it like a ruler and the Prestige Points being cm and the smaller points being mm. And there is a tasty bit of think in the interplay between the two types of points that gives some pause for thought – decisions such as “if I take the small point now I am going to end up with an extra big Prestige Point next turn”. I quite enjoyed having to keep my eye on when to score and not just what to score.
Player boards are also two sided, and the advanced side added just enough ‘think’ to make the puzzle a bit more, erm, puzzly. Mainly by increasing the cost of things slightly and also by staggering when you get access to the ornamentations that you can use during the game - as opposed to the basic side of the board which gives you everything you need from the off. I liked this extra bit of difficulty, but again it wasn’t enough for me to think that I might lose the game…
At a glance:
I don’t hate the game, it’s a neat puzzle. I just didn’t get any excitement, tension or drama from it - I played it a couple of times, realised that there wasn’t too much depth or particularly much to discover from the game, I beat the solo opponent each time without any real issues and didn’t therefore have any particular reason to step back into the ring to wreak some heavy vengeance. A good analogy is that once I have solved a crossword then there doesn’t feel like much reason at all to try and solve it again, no matter how enjoyable a crossword puzzle it was, as I will already know the solutions.
The Red Cathedral felt like a very enjoyable crossword puzzle.
+ Excellent tight resource management
+ Rondel / movement of dice is well done here
+ A good introduction for those considering more heavier Euro games.
- Solo mode is easy to beat at all difficulties
- Each game feels pretty samey
Final Score:
6 out of 10.
Reviewed after 5 plays.
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