Build Alhambra together

🏰 Sabika is another exciting and fresh SPIEL 22 title from Ludonova and Germán P. Millán, the designer of last year's Bitoku.

In Sabika you play as nobles helping construct the gardens, towers and palaces of Alhambra, carving poems into its walls and trading with cities near and far. The unique selling point of the game is its triple-rondel for taking actions - it grabbed our attention at least. 😅

You have two workers on the outer ring who mainly do construction🔨, one on the middle ring who sends out ships to trade ⛵, and the last worker on the inner ring who carves poems 📝.

During a round you all activate your 4 workers one at a time, then the round is over. You have income, end of round scoring and payment of tribute, followed by a clean-up phase. After 5 rounds the game ends and the one with the most prestige wins. 🏆 There are many ways to collect prestige and it’s up to you to string your actions most effectively.

Initially I thought the rondel might not be too restrictive because most actions are on it twice, but you can only move 1-2 spaces. Any additional movement or landing on a spot with other figures will cost you money, and money is not easy to come by (but easy to spend).

At first we felt like we can’t achieve much with a single action, but as the game unfolded, we discovered some great combo possibilities! That feels amazing.🤩 It is really tight and crunchy though so correct timing of your workers is crucial. The poems can also give you ongoing effects and can steer your strategy. The unusual thing in the game is that buildings can be bought with only 1 resource but you can optionally spend additional resources to get more prestige.

A critique point is the extremely huge 9-fold board. Together with the player boards and resources you will need a really big table. There is a lot of aid on the board though which is nice, but opera binoculars are a must if you are not eagle-eyed 😜.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Sabika, especially as there weren’t as much buzz around it as I expected, but we are happy we got it! It is well put together and provides a fun puzzle. 🥰