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

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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.

I wanted to do a late-review turn, pivoting to what makes Lacrimosa good, but each strength is immediately followed by, well, by a “but.” This meaty game by Gerard Ascensi and Ferran Renalias supports up to four players and is best for teens and adults. Experienced groups can play a game of Lacrimosa in about 90 minutes. Setup After eight of the nine cards are utilized the round ends and players gain their income. Income boosts player’s Story Points for the next round (these are the currency for specific areas of the board), their coin, as well as provide one-time use story tokens to boost available resources. The main board is reset, the market row adjusted for the next era, and a new round begins. Upon ending the final round, players score their obtained Royal Court tiles, their contribution to the Requiem, and receive points for any leftover resources. A large vertical board with a hefty amount of beige and plenty of color highlights that pop into focus. Game Experience: There are two elements in Lacrimosa that seem to trip people – the iconography and the area majority scoring for the Requiem. The icons for Documenting a Memory and Commissioning an Opus both focus on writing. They were similar enough that most players got them confused at least once.The left-most Opus costs 3 Talent points (2 + 1 showing above the card) and 8 ducats. The middle Opus costs 2 Talent and 8 ducats. The Memory card to the right costs 1 ducat and 1 story point of any kind (shown below the card) Perform or Sell Music 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. Now let’s look at buying Music. These have their cost printed on the top of the card itself, and there’s a little additional cost printed on the board. You pay the cost, you get whatever number of victory points are printed in the upper right corner, and then you add that piece of music to your collection. There are four different kinds of music in this, they are represented by different pictures. Those will matter from time to time.

After you pay the corresponding composer tile costs, you collect the reward on the tile and place it face down on your player board where you removed the Requiem marker you just placed. The rewards may be one-time, immediate benefits, or in some cases, ongoing special abilities. There are composer tiles that allow you to perform a particular action a second time, some that give you an extra story point during the Maintenance phase, and others that give you victory points whenever you gain, perform, or sell certain types of Opus cards.Wow. This game is gorgeous. The visually arresting box art for Lacrimosa is the most memorable box I’ve seen in the last five years. Thankfully, the artistic touch doesn’t end there. Devir spared no expense in the quality of the components in Lacrimosa, to the point where it is simply a pleasure to play. I get endless (probably too much) pleasure in the player board, which actually allows you to slide the cards inside it and stops them perfectly in place. It just feels right. Less Complex Than It Seems Then again, Lacrimosa is such a predictable decision space that it doesn’t produce the circumstances for interesting turns. There isn’t much in the way of meaningful player interaction, so your plans can more or less proceed unaffected by the actions of those around you, and you know what cards you’ll have, so you can go ahead and do those things. The moments when the game came closest to sparking my interest were those turns where the draw didn’t quite work out, and I had to think on my feet. We’re talking at most two turns in every game, though. Opus and Memory cards become more powerful (and more expensive!) for the next period, and the Travel area is refilled. They could choose Sussmayer instead (upper tile, represented by single eighth note), but it costs 8 ducats instead of 4. Maintenance 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.

The Soloist earns points and adds player interaction throughout the game from performing revised versions of each action. At the end of the game, the Soloist also scores points for royal court tiles, and the Requiem is scored as normal. I found the Soloist bot to be fairly easy-to-learn and smooth-to-run. Plus, I love that the Soloist scores throughout the game similar to human players. You really feel the competition and an underlying tension since the Soloist bot is scoring points often and snatching up precious tiles and cards that you'll often want. Travel: Move a player-shared Mozart meeple on the main map to visit new locations, gain bonuses, and gain end game scoring tiles.The next action is Travel, which is this stagecoach. Mozart starts the game in Salzburg–I don’t think this is the late Mozart, I think this is Mozart in the past?–and you use Travel to move him around the map. You can move him as far as you want, so long as you can pay the total coin cost for the route. Each city has a little action tile in it, which can be activated by paying the number of wagon wheels, Mozart’s favorite pasta, shown. You only activate the city where you stop, you can’t activate a bunch of tiles along your way. After you pay the wagon wheels, the tile is removed from the board. Empty spots will get refilled between rounds.