Mea Culpa Board Games First Impressions

Mea Culpa has you trying to get into Heaven.

Can you do it while also making the most of the Houses of Pleasure?

Be it at the brothel or at the market, men such as the Pope or the Emperor can be seen hard at work at any time of the day. Even the most miserable miser, though, would be well advised to also strive to get hold of enough precious stones and wine to make sufficient donations towards the Lord’s cathedrals. After all, it is through pious generosity that a poor soul can gain the all-important letters of indulgence and be pardoned for a life of greed and lust. When all is said and done, what matters is to have sinned just enough to have achieved all goals and gotten away with it, while others took the fall.

Mea Culpa Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

So this game is a little out there and confusing so I’ll just give the top level of gameplay and hopefully by the end it will all make sense.

After a round is setup players take turns drafting a role and taking their preliminary action.

The Pope can move a stone from one Den of Sin to another. The Emporer places a builder on a Cathedral site to build a piece of a Cathedral. The Sinner may place 2 stones in the Den of Petty Sins. The Merchant has no preliminary action.

Then players take turns taking actions. They can buy or sell goods at the Market and at the end of the Merchants turn they can take a good from the Market for free.

They can donate by placing goods and/or coins into their donation chests.

Finally, visit one of the six Houses of Pleasure. For rooms 1-4, complete the action in the room and increase your etched post by that many notches. For room 5, add a stone to the Den of Lust and take an action from rooms one to four. Room 6, add a stone to the Den of Lust, increase the etched post by 2 notches and take the Letter of Indulgence.

The Petty Sinner does not increase their etched post and the Pope goes incognito and other players have to guess which room they chose and if caught will step one space closer to Hell.

After the action phase ends, players take steps to hell based on how many notches they have more than the player with the fewest.

Dens of Sin, Cathedrals & Donations

Each Den of Sin has a Pope Stone that will be moved during the game. If one Den of Sin has all 3, the other two are activated. For each stone a player has in those Dens, they move one step closer to Hell.

When a Cathedral is built, each player will open a compartment in their Donations Chest. The biggest donors of the shown Goods and Coins will receive Letters of Indulgence.

How do you win?

After the second Cathedral is built and the second lot of Donations have been resolved, players compare Etched Posts again and the game ends.

For each set of the 4 different coloured Letters of Indulgence, a player moves 8 steps closer to Heaven, then 1 space for each Letter they have left.

All the players that reach heaven win, if no one reaches Heaven, the player that is closest to Heaven wins.

Main Mechanisms

Quite a bit!

BGG says Area Majority (For the Den of Sins), Bidding (For the Donations), Secret Unit Deployment (For the Pope), Set Collection (For the Letters of Indulgence) and Variable Player Powers (For the 4 different roles you draft each round).

Theme

Heaven, Hell, Religion, Cathedrals, Popes, Dens of Sin etc It’s not for me!

But putting all of this into a quirky and cartoony theme kinda works!

Setup

Putting stuff out initially doesn’t take long at all. There’s a lot of bits but most of it starts in a bag or off the table.

Components & Artwork

The components are pretty standard for 2016 apart from a few standouts.

The matchbox with the two compartments works really well. The 6 sided etched post that you rotate is fun too. Also, the wooden blocks for the Cathedral are OK and look good on the table.

The art does look pre-2016 but the character art is humorous at least.

Ease of Teaching

I struggled to get my head around the game after the teaching even though now I look back as I’m writing this it’s fairly straightforward. The 6 Houses of Pleasure and the 3 Dens of Sin were a struggle for me for whatever reason. I think it’s because they were complicated with the additional rules for the Pope and the Petty Sinner.

I think it can be simple to explain if you have a plan. We were learning (mostly) out of the rulebook at the end of a long day and I was getting sleepy!

Similar Games

I can’t think of many. Auf Teufel komm raus has the hell theme and The Pillars of the Earth has building a Cathedral to control the game timer… I mean, that’s it.

You can have any light to medium euro with a mix of mechanisms and you’re there.

Mea Culpa Review

Positives

The double-ended matchbox looks good, works well in game terms and is really innovative. I would like to see it used more.

The way each round works with you drafting a different character each time means they play differently and give you different goals to achieve.

You have a lot to balance with the Donations and the Den’s of Sin.

Negatives

It looks old and dated, way older than 2016.

It’s not exciting or fun in any particular way.

Summary

A good idea that just doesn’t work for me.

Jesta ThaRogue