Thames & Kosmos – Devir – Lacrimosa – Level: Advanced –Euro Board Game – 2-4 Players – Board Games for Adults & Kids, Ages 14+ - BGLACML

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The other disappointment is in upgrading your hand of cards. I love this idea, but the upgraded actions never delivered. This is a combination of the limited turns in the game where upgrading a card will only benefit a future turn and the fact the upgrades weren’t that much better than the base cards. Once you’ve completed the fifth round of the game, after getting your player board income in the Maintenance phase, perform endgame scoring by tallying up victory points for any royal court tiles you fulfilled, then you score points for each movement of the Requiem, and for your remaining story points and ducats. Whoever has the most victory points wins the game.

After his death, Mozart’s widow Costanze sought to bring light to her late husband’s work. In Lacrimosa from Devir Games, you are a patron, sought by Costanze to finance the completion of Mozart’s Requiem with his disciples and privileged students. Meet with Costanze to record memories of Mozart, recall the trips you took together, commission new works, and, of course, complete the great Requiem. If you love efficiency euros, you’ll enjoy Lacrimosa. It’s not going to become your favorite game, but you’ll have a decent-to-good time. Even if you love efficiency euros, it’s not worth seeking out in my opinion. Let Lacrimosa come to you. The theme is a welcome change from farming and war, even if it makes absolutely no intuitive sense in terms of gameplay, but there’s so much more to learn here than the decision space rewards. Players continue taking turns playing 2 cards from their hand into their player board and taking actions until all players have played 8 of their 9 cards, completing 4 turns. The 9th card is held over as part of your starting hand for the next round. Then there’s a Maintenance phase for income and cleanup to prepare for the next round.There are so many different ways to play Lacrimosa that we haven’t yet settled on any primary strategy. Players may seem to be surging ahead with their tactful acquisition, performance, and sale of music, or they could be charging around Germany, visiting city after city. Players could be building progressively more powerful memory cards and leaning on period bonuses or Royal Tiles, or they could be banking on contributing the most to the Requiem, and scoring huge end-game points.

Let’s look at buying an Action first. You slot the book and candle into your board, that means you want to buy one of these. The cost for Actions is printed straight onto the board, and you can see that cards are less expensive as they approach the right edge of the market. So let’s say I want to buy this card, which costs one Ducat, the currency, and this symbol means it costs one resource of my choice. I pay those, and then the new card replaces the card I slotted into the bottom section of my player board for this turn. That card gets removed from the game. We pop it straight into the box, which is how we ended up in that setup mess to begin with as it should happen. This does mean that you’ll get the resources listed on the bottom of the card you just bought for the next round. A player can Perform an Opus to take a small amount of ducats (listed on the card). If their needs are greater, players may elect to sell a piece of music. This yields a higher amount of money, but they must then discard the Opus. Players start with the Nannerl minuet. It’s not worth much when performed or sold. Operas (such as Don Giovanni) are more expensive to commission (cost at top), but raise more money when they are performed or sold.

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Lacrimosa can be overwhelming when setting it up for the first time. Once you’ve processed all of it (or had someone explain it to you), it makes a lot of sense and flows well. Players gain victory points throughout the game, but they can earn extra points for certain end game perks. Royal Court tiles (bought while Traveling) reward points for sets of Opuses or Requiem movements. Finally, players score the Requiem. If you choose to sell, it’s a similar idea, but you’ll get some combination of victory points and permanent improvements to your income for each round. Also, the card gets handed to me and goes into the Box of Pain. Please note, you cannot perform a work and then sell it in the same round. Not allowed, no-no. Pt. IV: Non so più cosa son, cosa faccio So what can you do exactly? There are five core actions in the game. One is to tell stories of travelling around with the man himself. The centre of the main board is dedicated to a map of Europe. You will pay certain resources to travel from one major city to the next and take designated reward tiles for doing so. These tiles vary from one-off effects such as monetary bonuses or resources to end-game scoring. A simple mechanism but each round that goes by upgrades the tiles left behind, offering a risky decision as to grab that tile while you can or to wait and hope nobody takes it before you can nab its powered up version.