Signorie Board Game First Impressions

Signorie: Pick a dice, put it down, and do a thing.

Then work out how far from 13 you are…

Italy during the 15th century was a country full of intrigue and magnificence. The tumultuous political conditions created the perfect breeding ground for the birth of a new form of government (called Signoria) and the rise of the most ambitious noble families. After having acted in the dark for a long time, the time has finally come for them to take control of the cities and shape Italy’s future. Their stories will go down in history.

In Signorie, you will play the role of a Signore, a Lord of one of the most prestigious families of the Renaissance.

You’re trying to score points by doing things… The things aren’t very clear though even though I’m sure it all makes sense. I was collecting tokens, putting people in cities, moving up tracks… for points.

Let’s do a VERY blunt overview and then sum it up at the end.

Dice

The main part of the game revolves around dice. There are 5 colours of dice and you take a turn picking one to put on your player board.

The colour you pick determines where it goes on your player board and this shows you which action you can take. These actions let you gain money, place men and women, get new men and women and move up on tracks…

Instead of taking the action, you can pay a cost in money to add a white disk to the action under where you place the die. This means when you play a die of that colour you get a few bonus actions. These were really powerful.

There were 4 dice of each colour rolled each round and no player can take more than one of a colour and you only pick 4 which means 1 colour will go unselected. The actions are numbered 1-5 left to right and the die needs to be higher than that to place or you have to pay the difference in money.

But you can’t afford to play all high-value dice as you get a bonus at the end of the round if the 4 dice you take total 13 or less.

Tracks

This is the track you move up on. You place these male figures on them and move them up by taking actions and getting bonuses for things. Then you can then move them onto another area of the board and you gain points for how high up the track they are.

You move them depending on the number on your die so you have to work this off against keeping your dice total under 13.

This is the map part where you pick up flag tokens for some reason. They’re worth end game points and each player has a different ‘need’ for these flags. All in various combinations, but I have no idea why.

To claim a flag you put your guy in the lowest numbers space on the track. Then take the relevant one. As the game goes on, the lower numbers will be taken. So you have to put your guys on higher levels… This is linked again to the track above so you need to move the guys up to do this as well.

You can also place your women in the same way to get the flag on their side of the board. This is still linked to the rank the guy has achieved on the track.

After 6 or so rounds there is end-game scoring then someone wins via points.

Signorie Summary

It’s OK…  I hate to say it’s missing a theme. But I really didn’t know what I was doing, or why most of the time. I get some of it but I can’t get it all to fit together.

There is a lot I like about Signorie and all the bits work together very well. But as a game but it’s just missing something.

I like the dice drafting, balancing low vs high dice, managing the tracks etc. Also collecting the flag things and adding bonus actions to my player board. All things I enjoyed doing and I thought worked well and I know I can do better next time.

In game terms Signorie is good, it’s just not enjoyable in a way that I like. I feel the exact same way about Orléans.

Jesta ThaRogue