This week, there were just four of us so we tried out the game that, for some, was the hit of the Essen Fair this year. Probably best known for Verrater a few years ago, Marcel Andre Casasola Merkle designed this game about developing a Greek city-state, by building various constructions making best use of the available resources. Players draw tiles representing their constructions and can either build them straight away on the map if they have the appropriate resources, or store them on their player board for construction later. Buildings placed on the map next to associated buildings can be erected for free and groups of associated buildings yield an amphora allowing extra actions later in the game. There are four shrines at the edge of the initial map and the winner is the player who can either be the first to link two shrines with a chain of their buildings or complete the building of all 30 of their buildings on the map.

At the beginning of our game, Nige got blocked in the centre of the map quite badly whereas Mark K and I made a couple of quick attempts to try and link shrines. When these failed, we all started to set about building all of our constructions and for the most part, ignored the shrines. Mark G managed to expand the map to an area where he had best access and took good advantage of being able to build steadily and cheaply. The end was pretty close but Mark G pulled through with a deserved win. This was a very strong and thoughtful game which I think will see a lot of play. The excellent production was typical of Hans Im Gluck and we all thought it was very good. It took a little longer than it perhaps should, but next time, we will have a better idea of what we are doing and it should play more quickly.