The year is 1822. After years of decay, it is time to rebuild the medina, located at the foot of the Atlas mountains. The architects and engineers of the city work to erect large and beautiful palaces and to renovate the damaged city wall. As the reconstruction of the old city progresses, the city's inhabitants flock through the alleys, and the contours of the new city gradually reappear!
Each turn, players must place two pieces on the board, either augmenting an existing building or starting a new building if the current building of that color is finished. Each player will claim one building of each of the four colors by the end of the game, giving one point per wooden piece attached to the building.
Also, if you own the largest building of a particular color you get a bonus for that color. Finally, there are bonuses for the player who most recently connected one of their buildings to the walls, which grow from the four corners of the city.
Medina is a tense game by the great designer Stefan Dorra.
In 2014, Medina was re-released with new components, as well as changed and 2-player rules. See Medina (Second Edition).
- creates beautiful 3D cityscape
- better than almost any other game at this
- satisfying city building
- reviewer hasn't played recently
- cityscape
- urban development
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- these games have amazing table presence by which i mean people are going to glance across the room and go what is that person playing and i want to play all these games
- stacking games have table presence like nothing else
- looks beautiful it looks like a load of sweets on the board
- one of my favorite games of all time
- i don't like that sort of game i find that one of the most frustrating game mechanisms
- the central marble dispenser is your main draw in this game
- absolutely brilliant strategic game quite complex game
- it's actually my favorite of the mask trilogy
- i'm almost scared to say this but i don't really like azul very much
- biggest most overlooked game on this list