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

Product Information

Be strong! For there are many good tidings to come, though this will not be without a counterpoint here or there. It is my intention to share this new game without misinterpreting its impact on my gaming group. Published by Devir Games and designed by Gerard Ascensi and Ferran Renalias, Lacrimosa plays from one to four Mozart aficionados, or maybe just some competitive euro gamers.

Final Score: 3.5 stars – A medley of mechanisms and quality production are almost enough to supplant the fact that Lacrimosa is missing a few notes. In the first section, single note has the majority. Blue has two single notes and gets 6 points. Purple has a double note and gets 1 point. Double-note composer has the majority here. Yellow and Purple each have one double-note marker: they each earn 4 points. Blue has a single-note marker and earns just 2 points. 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. Religious music is less expensive, but never raises money unless combined with a special power. Travel

Next let’s talk about Performing and Selling Music. These two actions are performed using this card, which shows the Queen of the Night on stage [ed. At this point, one of the players pretends to sing a few bars of opera], yes, exactly, and this parchment scroll. When you perform this action, you can choose whether you want to perform or sell whichever one of your pieces you want. Each piece of music has a cost for being performed or sold–the resource is called “Talent” but we’re calling them Mozart Busts because that’s what the image is and why is Mozart’s talent a resource that I am accruing to spend later? It doesn’t bear thinking about, it doesn’t retain any water. So you spend that resource and you get, if you perform the piece, the amount of money shown on the card. Then you rotate the card 90º to indicate that it has been performed this round.

Both games feature beautiful production that emphasizes unique themes, but they are themes that have absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay experience. For Bitoku, about Japanese forest spirits, the theme simply disappears. Lacrimosa is unique amongst games I’ve played for the degree to which its theme actively works against understanding the game. I didn’t bother using the theme of Bitoku to teach new players because it was faster to explain everything mechanically. I avoid using the theme for Lacrimosa because attempting to incorporate it makes the game significantly less comprehensible. That’s really bad.So if you want the tile in that section from the top composer, you’ll need to put your token with the eighth note side facing up, you immediately get the bonus listed next to where that token was on your board, then you have to pay the cost shown on the tile you want. These get more expensive as you get deeper in the pile, so earlier is better. I scurried through the overview to discuss this design. First off, what an intriguing thematic choice. While Lacrimosa’ sea of beige and staunch European illustration places it firmly in the Euro strategy camp, it blends several mechanisms and couples these with the most curious narrative. Players are patrons vying to be the best at remembering their time with Mozart, spending sweet, sweet coin on the composition, and interacting with performances from the past (or present?). It doesn’t all come together thematically, but each action is rooted in specificity to service the dizzying sense of place. It’s as if two timelines have been smashed together. A moment of calm before the widow enters to seek our knowledge about the great composer.

The last action, this fancy cross, is, thematically, you’re paying these composers to work on Mozart’s mass. Practically speaking, this is a little area control mechanic wrapped up with some engine building. In the end, I never found myself getting too excited about the turns. There are opportunities to build mini-combos, but I never found myself getting too high or feeling tension. The gameplay is fine and I would probably be up for a game of Lacrimosa in the future, but it’s not something I would play regularly. There are some interesting decisions, just not enough to get me excited. While there is some variable setup with different composers and different cards, I don’t think there is enough variety to justify too many repeat plays. They could choose Sussmayer instead (upper tile, represented by single eighth note), but it costs 8 ducats instead of 4. MaintenanceOnce all players have taken their four turns, everyone cleans up. Players get new Story points, money, and other perks according to what they’ve put on their player boards, then remove all the Memory cards and shuffle for the next round. Devir went the extra mile to develop a game with a unique theme that engages the actions in a creative and interesting way. If I’m rating Lacrimosa on ambition and production, it’s an easy 10. Unfortunately, the choices, actions and replay ability don’t quite meet those initial lofty expectations. That’s not to say it’s a poor game, just one that didn’t quite live up to the expectations it built for itself. I’ll briefly dissect some of my issues and point out where the game succeeds and falls short.

The second action is to tell tales of works you had commissioned from the genius. You can buy Opus cards from the market row at the top of the board, of which there are four types. Symphonies, Operas, and Chamber or Religious pieces. Then as a third action you can choose to either perform them for money or sell them for a mix of resources and victory points. A lot of the end-game scoring tiles will depend on your collection of these commissions so deciding whether to sell or keep can often be a difficult decision. Your fourth option is to journal. This simply means to upgrade your story cards from the market row. You pay the resources for the new card and then replace the bottom row card in your portfolio with this new one. Each period will release stronger and stronger cards but deciding what cards to replace will be tight as you will need to make sure you keep access to all possible actions for future turns. SanctusLet’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.