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In this third game in Lookout's Zavandor fantasy setting, it's all about dwarves. And mining. And gemstones. And other enhancements for the mines that need to get developed further during the game to have full effect.
4 different gems are the currencies in this game. However, when collecting income you draw cards from 4 different mines (card stacks) with each having its own distribution! The number of gems you earn depends on the upgrade level of your dwarves. Gems are used to either win new objects for their mine through simultaneous 4-way auctions, or to enhance their mines, objects, and victory point count. Another innovative part is that each object has to be upgraded to fully use its benefits, e.g. a level 1 dwarf only gives you 1 income per round, some level 3 dwarves give you 3 income.
On the King's way through the mountain, the requirements for upgrading some special cards always change, and only the player who wins the sapphire auction knows where the next turn will lead to. There are shorter and longer paths to the Coronation Chamber, where the game ends. The game lasts between 10 to 12 rounds.
- Likes tech trees
- Dislikes blind auctions
- Not a big fan of trading
- Had a really rough time with this game
- No catch-up mechanism
- Little bit of a runaway feature
- Player who has first player turn order breaks ties, leading to missed opportunities.
- Settlers of Catan
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Auction — The reviewer dislikes blind auctions and notes their importance in this game.
- Engine Building — Identified as a core element of the game.
- Set Collection — Related to collecting mines of four different colors.
- Tech Trees — A mechanic the reviewer likes.
- Trading — The reviewer is not the biggest fan of trading, comparing it to Settlers of Catan where it feels bad to give opponents an advantage.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- So, one of the things that is problematic about having a board game collection is that they're margins too many.
- We decided to kind of go through our collection and try to play as many of those games as possible.
- And on BG its ranking is a 6.4 out of 10.
- So, I don't like blind auctions. I don't like them at all.
- So, this has a little bit of a runaway feature to it. Not my favorite.
- And dice is a big critique of mine in this game.
- Um it's just so swingy and so like you lucky.
- And so you just don't get the things that you've invested in because you do get to invest in things.
- This game really really rubbed me the wrong way in a variety of ways and it made me feel like I have seen implementation of these features, this kind of tile placement done much better.
- And so I feel like just to like luck into getting a five over the three is kind of ridiculous.
- And then the last thing is there is not equal turns with three players and that was like not in my opinion I I never like a game that doesn't give players equal chance to play or some kind of makeup for that.
- This game is not going to be played again, no matter how many players it says is best with.
- There's a cool feature in this game, which is that this center space spins for every player.
- Um this game had a kind of fizzle ending for me.
- I could not wrap my brain around this game.
- So we're probably going to get rid of Castelli.
- We've made so many leaps and bounds and different mechanics and things that I really enjoy now as a gamer that I don't necessarily enjoy and didn't enjoy when I first started gaming that were kind of like the staples or the mainstay, the kinds of mechanics that um just rub me the wrong way andor make me feel like I don't have a chance in the game.