The Hungry Gamer Previews Opera Magna
Transcript
Ooh, that looks tasty. Welcome folks to the Hungry Gamer and back with another crowdfunding preview. And today we're talking about Opera Magna from Ludus Magnus Games. And what this game is is this is a Euro contract fulfillment game in which you are building up this cathedral and basically trying to be the best on it. It is a I'm going to say a cube pusher, but it's the fanciest damn cube pusher you ever saw. Now, with that being said, if you are not interested in how this game is played, you want to jump to my final thoughts, then you would go to the timestamp on the screen right now. For those of us still here, let's briefly talk about how this game is played. So, the game's going to play out over nine rounds. And what's going to happen is every round you are going to move one of your workers. You are going to play a card, which will mean that one card that's already out there will get the boot. Then at the end of the round, you will draw a new card. A new card will come out. When all the cards are gone, then the game will end.
And as you go through these stacks of cards get more and more powerful or more and more expensive depending on your perspective. And as you play through, you'll be getting the materials you need to build these parts of the cathedral. Now, that's the broad overview. So, let's talk about what happens on a turn. So, as I said, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to move your worker to a new place and place that does not have one of your worker. And there are three locations and each location has two spots. So, this guy here could move up here. He could move to here or he could move to here. And so, I'll just use the middle as my example. So, let's say I came to here. The first thing that would happen is is that this card here would cycle out of the game. Then these would slide down like so.
And then I would take a card out of my hand and then I would slide it on in like so. And now because I'm on top, what I'm doing is I am now going to have the opportunity to activate whatever special power is at each location, and then I will pay all of these resources here. So, in this case, with my player board here, that would be three metal. I'd go down there, and one sand. Like so. Then, I would get everything down here. So, then I would get two sand, and a wood. Now, that's not a great play. I set this up at random, but that's how you get your resources. You'll also notice these little caps here. They're not hard caps.
If I were to gain another wood, then this one would simply pop over like so. And I'll talk about what those do in just a bit. Let's say if I had to say pay one wood and I had one, then this cap would move down for each one that I need. Now, you'll notice on some of these here, like over here, that there are refined goods. And those are these up here. Every time you make one of those, you'll simply put one of your tokens here, and they go up here because you can't keep them round round. You can degrade them. I could degrade my stained glass window to get myself a sand at the end of the turn, but I could not keep the stained glass window. And these things are the things you're going to be using to build your buildings. And you'll be using these to build your buildings, and build the cathedral. So, let's talk about that a little bit. As you can see here, this one particular building, it costs two wood. So, if So, if at the end of my turn, I had two wood, I could spend two, and then I can build this card here. And now I have a choice.
I look at the level, and I see it is a basic level card, and then I can either slot it under my board this way, which will give me a discount moving forward. Anytime I had to pay metal, I pay one less. Or, I could slot it under the board on this side, and And going to say anytime I gain a bell, I gain one more. And you could slot as many of these as you want on either side. Now, what's important on this side is now I have a wagon, and that means I can send one of my fancy goods over here to build the cathedral. And that's where these come into play. So, as you can see here, I can send one and I have a glass, but my glass token has not reached this first certificate. But, if it was over here, then I could spend this and take that and put it right over here, and I would gain two points. Each one that you place is going to give you a different bonus.
Then after I was done building, I would then be able to draft a new card. Say I just drafted this one right here. And then I would draft a new one of these cards as well. And as I said, I can take anyone I want, and there is a cost depending on what you take. We'll say I paid something, I took this one. These would then slide down. We take the next one. It would go out, the next player would go. And as I mentioned, as you go through, these will clear out, and this will be how the end game eventually gets triggered. At the end of the game, you're going to score points based on what you have over here. You'll score points based off the buildings you placed on your right, and a few other things as well. But overall, that's how this game works. So, with that being said, what do I like about this game? First thing is, it says an hour.
Pretty close. It's pretty close. When we played the first time we played a four-player, it was probably an hour and 20 or so. And so, I It really is a quick, a snappy game, and it feels right at that speed. And then, well, the main thing that I'm going to say, which is the main thing about this game, is the way the markets work. It's glorious. It's just glorious the way that works. I love Every turn, you're going to get to buy and sell from that market, but you're slowly shifting what's there, and you're slowly shifting the cost and slowly shifting what you need. If you play your cards right, get it cards right, you can suddenly hit the same thing every other turn just about. Actually, every turn really, you can just go up down up down really. And I love the way it works. It is so interesting how you are well, cube pushing really, but it's so elegant the way that it works and I just love it. I even love in the larger player count games you're trying to figure out, oh, I can put this thing out. I'll get it once. It's possible that thing that you wanted and you put in there is gone by the time it comes back to you and that is exciting and I really really like the way that works.
I also like that they set it up to where it's the top and bottom as I said. You could go doink doink doink doink doink if you wanted. And I really like that because it gives you a little more freedom to keep juicing the one thing that you really need, but there will be a cost as you do that and it just works really well along with that the way that the end game triggers when the cards run out and the cards are getting better and better, but they're also costing more. More stuff is appearing on the top part of the card and on the bottom part of the card. So, that becomes really interesting as well. And then along with that the way those certificates work, it's really clever that you have to get good enough at getting sand to send a window out to the Opera Magna, but the fact that you can also spend those certificates as the resource very cool as well. Very cool as well. The times I've played, not once have I ever been like, well, I can't do anything here because I don't have the stuff.
Really clever the way that that works. Next thing I'll say is it's a very cool and hard choice to decide which side are you going to slot those things on cuz the discounts are real good. Cuz remember you got to get those certificates up to do things and get them big points, but those powers you get if you put on the other side, those are really good, too, or really juicy in-game scoring. Really clever hard choices being made with that tableau building. Really, really like it. Very, very cool. The last thing I'll say is it's a pretty satisfying in-game. There's a lot of kind of scoring that happens at the end. It's not just your buildings, it's stuff that happens out on the main board and all those things, but it's pretty darn satisfying the way it works. And yeah, it's a nice end of the game. With that being said, what are my quibbles with the game?
It's dry. I mean, you know, I keep talking about how it's a cube pusher. And now to me, some of my favorite games are cube pushers. Let's be very, very clear. This is a cube pusher. Perhaps the most elegant cube pusher you've ever played in your life, but that's still what you're doing. You're turning this into this so you can take this to put it here and get the That's what you're doing. Next thing I'll say is it comes with a little booklet with all the iconography on there, and boy, howdy, do you need it. There's a lot of icons on there. Buildings do a lot of different things, and they have a good appendix, to be clear. It's just a printout piece of paper for this prototype. It's a good appendix, but you absolutely need it. There's a lot of stuff going on, and enough plays you'll get it and it'll be snappy, snappy, but you'll be looking stuff up definitely first time you play.
Next thing I'll say is we didn't have this happen a lot in our four-player game, but there is definitely a potential for AP, especially as you get towards the end of the game. You're like, "Okay, I got to get this one more building so I can send the thing, or I got to get the right thing so I can knock up the certificate and get the resource I need to send it out to the Opera Magna." You can have moments where you're like, "Ah, how do I do that? Okay, I can go to this one. If I go to this one, then okay, I can replace this one cost with this thing. That'll get me to No, I don't need that. But if I go to the bottom, then I can replace this thing. But they don't have the cost You can get a little bit of AP at the end. And the last thing I'm going to say is, which is in direct conflict with that, and in direct conflict with me saying how much I like how fast it is, this is one of those games that feels like it's ending just as you're getting to where you're like, "Yeah, I got a good engine."
And then it's over. I find that pretty satisfying, but if you're the type that wants to build an engine then juice it for a while, this ain't the game. But there you have it, folks. As always, if I've made any mistakes in the rules overview, please let me know in the comments with the timestamps so I can get that in the clean up subtitles. If you found this video useful, please like, subscribe, share, maybe become a channel member. As always, thank you so much for watching. Have a wonderful, wonderful day.