Sailing Toward Osiris previews

Initially thought this was a medium light worker placement resource collection game but realised that there is a lot more strategy involvement. The game plays over 4 seasons – each season is defined by the funerary barges movement up the nile and this determines the locations which can be used for worker placement however monuments can be constructed all along the Nile following specific placement rules. In each season the players have one action per turn – thus down time is to a minimum between turns and this continues until all players cannot or are unwilling to take an action – players can then withdraw while other players continue with their turns until all withdraw. The board is partially reset at the end of each season with workers and some resources ( and unconstructed monuments ) being returned to the supply. Glory points are given during the game mainly for Monument Construction and further points are awarded at game end for the number and sites of all a players monuments. Further actions and modifications of the rules are possible with the use of Boon and City cards. Eg allows the movement of a monument already constucted or the collection of further resources. There is virtually no player conflict during this game although your actions can affect another players actions as a result of resource availability or site for placement of workers and monuments. I only played this as a 2 player game but found that the 2 player rules tighten the board considerably by placing non-player monuments on the board at the beginning of the game thus making many building sites unavailable (as would happen in higher player count games). Total number of resources available in the supply were also altered according to player numbers thus we often found that resources wanted were not available at that time and thus had to take a different type of action during our turn until resources had been returned to either the supply or made available in the market. Components we found excellent – all the monuments, resources and workers are wooden; the board is beautifully illustrated with small icons to help with monument placement rules and card stock is ok for cards that are not continually being handled. Colours are good for colour blind issues. The rules are easy to understand – being only 10 pages long with large font and lots of pictures – there is a printing error on pages 6,9 and 10 in relationship to one Boon card – should read Boon of Osiris not Horus. I think the game would be a great stepping stone to more complex worker placement/ resource management games and even though only played it twice so far at this stage it is staying in our collection.