I was undecided as to whether to buy this game but I am very glad I did. This game is extremely well made, the components and artwork are superb suiting the theme well and it is a delight to play. The main board is double sided one side is for 3 players the other for 4 players this seems to be a trend with newer games and it works very nicely.
You each play a master painter with a team of Apprentices whose task is to help restore the Cathedral and its Alter. Having not played board games all that long I can not comment on whether the mechanics in this game are anything new but they are certainly used well and fit right into the central theme of the game. There is plenty of things to think about on your turn and various actions you can take. The turn order for actions is determined by the players choosing what time to wake up, this selection is done in reverse order of the Scoring track (random on the first turn). This effects the mood of your workers and the cost of your paint in the market. Going first gets you the most choice but costs more, going last is cheaper but you only get to chose from whatever the other players leave. You start with 5 apprentices but if their mood is really bad you will lose one but if they are really happy you gain an extra one. Each action you can take you can allocate up to 3 apprentices to perform it, so you have to decide carefully what actions you can take this turn and whether you want to do some more than once. During the last turn the actions you can take change so you are able to blend paints and then restore a Cathedral piece this is very important as for most of the game blending paints is done after restoring the Cathedral which makes your choice of paints at the market and paints used to restore Cathedral pieces very important.
I really enjoy this game and every game is different with the added benefit that the game comes with 3 expansions right in the box allowing for plenty of tweaking helping to keep the game fresh and exciting. The rules are short (always good) and mostly quite good and well explained. There are a couple of areas where the rules are less than clear and the examples given do not add much to the clarity, that said getting them wrong did not harm the gameplay that much, I read a
thread on
boardgamegeek that helped clarify the rule.
The game plays equally well with 3 players as it does with 4 and the expansions also provide rules for playing this 2 player, though I have not tried these yet. Whilst the rules and mechanics are quite simple to pick up there is a lot of depth here even with the basic game.
