“What I have dreamed in an hour is worth more than what you have done in four.”

~ Lorenzo de’ Medici

Lorenzo de’ Medici, also known as “Lorenzo il Magnifico” (Lorenzo the Magnificent), was one of the most powerful and enthusiastic patrons of the Italian Renaissance.

In Lorenzo il Magnifico, each player takes the role of a head of a noble family in a city during the Italian renaissance. You try to accumulate prestige and fame to gain more victory points than the others.

This is essentially a dice placement game where you don’t actually place the dice… right? RIGHT?!

3 dice are rolled in 3 different colours. Each player has a piece of their colour representing those dice… so dice placement.

Gameplay

On your turn, you place one of these pieces on a space. Much like other dice placement games, the value of the item placed determines what you can do. It’s also where you can go and potentially what you can get.

These are the dice, surrounded by the first 4 places you can go which I will go through now. From left to right is Gain 5 Gold, then (under the Beige piece with a Green 0) Gain 5 Workers, then Gain 3 Shields and 2 Gold and the 4th… (under the Blue piece) is to Gain 2 Scroll actions. These are basic general actions that let you get 1 of pretty much anything.

Under those spaces, you can see a 1 pip die. This means you need to have a die value of 1 to go in this space. The ‘0’ piece is a special piece each player has and you can spend Workers to ‘bump up’ the value of any piece as you place it.

Above that on the board is an area that lets you buy cards. There are 4 types of cards in 4 columns each with 4 spaces numbered 1, 3, 5 and 7. You place there, pay the cost of a card and add it to your play area.

If someone has already taken any space in the same column you wish to place in, you must pay 3 Gold first because of reasons.

Players Area

This is your play area. It holds the cards you bought and your resources. Wood and Stone are the other resources via actions you can get and you have spaces for all of them. It’s actually pretty nice.

Cards line up in rows on your board. Yellow has no restriction as do the Blue and Purple cards which line up off to the side.

Card Restrictions

Green is restricted by the number of Shields you have which represents you spreading out your influence into the Woods or something.

These spaces are to activate your Yellow and Green cards. The spaces for 1 player each (currently occupied by Yellow and Red) require a 1 minimum on a die and activate all the cards in their respective rows.

However, each card in the row also has an activation number so you only activate cards that are equal to or under the value of the dice you placed. Get all that?

The larger space next to the individual spaces do the same thing, any number of players can go there but the value of their die is reduced by 3.

It’s not shown in a picture, but there is a religion track that you can move up with various abilities including that Scroll action I mentioned earlier. Every few rounds you need to have a certain amount on this track or get hit by a game-long penalty.

After a number of rounds the game ends, and you add points for resources and buildings you have built on top of points gained throughout the game, and most points win.

Lorenzo il Magnifico Positives

Great mechanisms, everything works together very well.

Different ways to win I think? You can have different focuses game to game and pass/fail the penalty tokens as required based on your strategy.

Not bad bits for the price.

Lorenzo il Magnifico Negatives

The only variability to the game comes from the tokens that give penalties, (which you can ignore anyway) the rest is similar. I mean, there are the buildings you can buy but…

Looks dull and the theme is pasted on so why not make it a fun one? 🙂 Where are my Elves and Golems?

Summary

Lorenzo il Magnifico is a very good Euro that just works smoothly and has enough restrictions to make you think but not make you cry 🙂

Jesta ThaRogue