The Red Cathedral First Impressions

The Red Cathedral has players build the thing together.

Together, but apart.

Autumn is not the best time to climb up on a scaffold in Moscow, but it is still far better than doing so in the winter. Tsar Ivan wants to see results and our team will prove to him that we are the best builders in the city. We are sure to finish off those decorative arches with the brightest shining stones and ensure our place on the list of the government’s trusted workers.

The Red Cathedral Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

Players will take turns picking one of the 3 available actions. The first is to claim a Cathedral card by placing a banner token on it.

The second is to build or decorate the Cathedral by paying the cost in resources and gaining the reward. Importantly, any unfinished card beneath the newly completed one will cost its owner reputation.

The third action is the fun one, acquiring resources. Pick any dice, move it clockwise around the spaces on the board equal to the number of pips and take the action on that space. When taking resources, you times the amount gained by the number of dice in that space, then reroll them all.

This being a euro game there is a lot more to it. The most interesting is you can unlock abilities on your player board, making the action for each of the colour dice more powerful.

How do you win?

When a player completes their 6th Cathedral card the game ends.

Players gain prestige for completed Cathedral cards, and bonus points if they have Banners and/or Ornamentations on them.

Most prestige wins.

Main Mechanisms

Resource management, the dice thing is a bit of a Rondel.

There is also a bit of area majority when you score the Cathedral columns.

USP

Nothing unique here really.

Theme

Decent theme I guess. As far as I’m aware it’s not based on a real Cathedral.

Setup

Put all the bits out just like any other euro really.

However, the cards for the Cathedral are a random setup based on a card draw so this is the fiddly bit.

Components & Artwork

Standard euro game stuff here. I did like the little banner tokens though.

I didn’t really notice the art when I was playing.

Ease of Teaching

There are only 3 actions which is good. Each is fairly complex with its own thing going on.

Similar Games

I was reminded of Merlin (video review down on this Essen 2017 page), due to moving around a circular board to take actions.

The Red Cathedral Review

Positives

Variable setup on the dice board, Cathedral and the player boards are double-sided.

Competitive without feeling too restrictive or back-stabby.

The way the dice work to take the actions is really cool.

Negatives

Overly complex for such simple gameplay.

Summary

Not surprised a game from Devir is enjoyable.

Jesta ThaRogue