Can be build it?
BASILICA
Designer: Lukasz M Pogoda | Publisher: Portal Games
Medieval Florence wants a sweet new church. However, in an embarrassing doublebooking, both the bishop and the queen have hired different men to design it. Rather than risk telling her madge that her chosen designer sucks, the bishop goes ahead and lets both men build the church together. At various stages, the queen will arrive and judge their work, and whoever makes the best contribution will win. It’s like a thunderdome for architects.
In game terms, this means taking tiles from a small tableau and either laying them out to construct the basilica, or playing them for the action on their reverse side. Adjacent tiles of the same colour form areas that score you points if you’ve placed the most builders in that area. Actions include promoting your builders to give them additional powers, placing extra builders, or moving your opponent’s builders.
There are three scoring phases, triggered when the queen pawn reaches certain spaces on the scoring track. In each of these, you check who has majority control of each scoring area, award points accordingly, then remove the bottom two rows of tiles. And that’s it. The entire game is this process of creating scoreable areas and vying for control over them.
Let’s start with the bad – the central mechanic involves choosing a tile from either the top or bottom row of a six-tile tableau. If you take a tile from the bottom row, the tile above it gets flipped to take its place, then a new tile comes off the stack to replace that one. Since you take three actions per turn, including tiles you move from one row to the other or replace, you may be called upon to relocate between four and nine tiles every single turn.
This might not sound like much but it adds up. Contrast this with a turn in Carcassonne: draw a tile from the bag, place it. Turn done. In Basilica, placing a tile often triggers your having to move two more to reset the tableau. Multiplied over dozens of turns, this fiddly admin gets to be annoying and inelegant. It’s a nagging distraction, pulling your focus away from the play area to part of the game that ought to be invisible.
That said, while this is bigger than a niggle it’s smaller than a fatal flaw. Here are the good parts: Basilica is really fun. The area control is dynamic and engaging: do you want to focus on scoring one big area, or is it better to spread your builders wide and win multiple uncontested areas? Promotions for your builders include turning them into artisans, who count as two builders, or jesters, who can turn the tile they’re on an additional colour, changing the shape of the board and allowing them to contest two or even three areas simultaneously.
Even the bits you’d think might feel nasty, like moving one of your opponent’s builders, in practice don’t feel that bad at all. Though there’s some luck involved in terms of what tiles you choose from, Basilica is tactical rather than strategic – you respond to the fluid board state and exploit opportunities, and the soft reset after the first and second scoring phases makes it unlikely that one player will attain an unassailable lead.
The double-sided tile mechanic, despite the annoying admin it generates, creates a bunch of depth. Since they drop from the top row to the bottom, you can see which colours are coming up and plan accordingly. It gives you some interesting, crunchy dilemmas – play this tile, and you’ll lose the chance to do the action above it. But you might not want to take that action until you’ve played the tile. Argh!
The production is high quality, with some gorgeous wooden builders, and though the big blocks of primary colour don’t exactly scream medieval Florentine basilica, it scarcely matters, because the central tussle is solid as a marble pillar. If you can overlook a bit of tile-flipping legwork, this is an accessible yet rewarding two-player title.
TIM CLARE
WHAT’S IN THE BOX?
◗58 Cathedral tiles
◗8 Scaffolding tiles
◗16 Stained glass tokens
◗6 Promotion tokens
◗2 Score tokens
◗12 Wooden builder pawns
◗ Queen pawn
◗2 Wooden coins
◗2 Boards
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED TIGRIS & EUPHRATES…
Basilica’s fluid area control has hints of Go and might appeal if you’re after a looser, less mathsy Tigris & Euphrates. While it might be gauche to compare a tile-laying game to ol’ grandpappy Carcassonne, if you enjoy the tension around placing farmers and jockeying for majorities, Basilica has plenty to offer you.