A mighty Designer Duo

When Fabio Lopiano and Nestore Magnone sit down to create a game together, you can expect great things. ☺️ Shackleton Base was recently done by the same duo, and it was one of our most highly regarded games of last year, so naturally we were excited to hear that 🕌Baghdad: The City of Peace is being designed by them - coming to crowdfunding next week by @alleycatgames . Having played the prototype just now, it is safe to say they are cooking up something good again. 😁

The game reminds me a bit of 🏰Viscounts of the West Kingdom and 🍎Newton - in a good way! 👍 Both are games that I adore. One reason is the card play, as symbols on cards you have in play will limit your actions. The other is the way you lock in certain scoring criteria as you sail with your ships and build the central palace - of course the overall feeling of Baghdad is quite different, there are lots of fun ideas. 😉

The central board itself is a rondel, which is one of my favorite game elements. 🙌 To put it simply, you will move to the next quadrant each turn, either picking up a tile from the city to place on your board, or constructing a new building to get ongoing bonuses, or help build the great palace in the middle. Of course to do all of these you have to have the correct icons, money and goods tokens - so a lot of forward planning is needed! 

🃏Cards are at the center of the game. 🧐 Each turn you play one, sliding other cards to the right. At most you will have 3 cards out, and every time a card falls off you get to activate it - but only if you match its requirements, which is another element to watch out for when planning for future turns.

💬After learning the rules I thought playing Baghdad would be fairly simple, but there are actually multiple things layered on top of each other adding up, and most of them are interconnected in cool ways, thus there is a lot to consider each turn. Many bonuses and combos can be triggered, but only if you do well. There is a possibility for some analysis paralysis, but also for great amounts of fun. 😁

Stay tuned for more coming next week. 😉