Sagrada Review

Intro

Sagrada transforms the art of stained glass crafting into a surprisingly engaging dice puzzle that's captivated players since 2017. You're competing artisans working to create the most beautiful window by carefully placing colorful, translucent dice onto your personal grid. What starts as a simple concept quickly reveals layers of tactical decision-making that keep you coming back.

This gem plays beautifully with 1-4 players in about 45 minutes, earning a solid 7.47/10 rating from the board game community. The rules are straightforward enough for families to jump right in, but there's enough strategic depth to satisfy more serious gamers. Think of it as accessible on the surface with plenty of room to grow your skills.

How It Plays

Each player gets a window pattern card that shows their personal 4x5 grid with various restrictions. Some spaces require specific die colors, others demand certain numbers, and many are completely open. The catch? Dice of the same color or number can never sit adjacent to each other, horizontally or vertically.

Every round starts with rolling a pool of dice equal to twice the player count plus one. Players then draft dice in snake order—first player picks one, then it goes around the table with the last player taking two dice before reversing direction. This creates delicious tension as you watch the perfect die get snatched just before your turn.

Once you've drafted a die, you must place it on your board following all the color, number, and adjacency rules. Sometimes this is impossible, which means you skip placement and gain a favor token instead. These tokens let you buy tools that bend the rules in various ways—maybe letting you flip a die to its opposite side or place it without following color restrictions.

After four rounds, everyone scores based on three randomly selected public objectives (like having columns with no repeated colors), one secret objective card, and bonus points for leftover favor tokens. Highest score wins.

Highlights

The visual appeal hits you immediately. Those chunky, translucent dice look gorgeous against the window patterns, and completing a board genuinely feels like creating art. There's something deeply satisfying about watching your stained glass window come together, especially when you nail a tricky placement that sets up multiple scoring opportunities.

Sagrada strikes a rare balance between accessibility and depth. New players can focus on basic placement rules and still have fun, while experienced players will obsess over maximizing their tool usage and reading the draft to predict what dice remain available. The learning curve feels just right.

The tool cards add fascinating tactical wrinkles without overwhelming complexity. Each game features three random tools, so you're constantly adapting strategies. Some let you manipulate die values, others help with placement restrictions, and a few let you redraft dice entirely. The escalating cost system—where tools get more expensive after first use—creates interesting timing decisions.

Draft dynamics keep everyone engaged throughout. You're constantly weighing immediate needs against denying opponents perfect dice, and the snake order means turn position matters differently each round. The tension of watching your ideal die sit in the pool, hoping it survives until your pick, never gets old.

Solo mode deserves special mention. It uses an elegant dice removal system that simulates opponent picks while maintaining the core puzzle experience. Many multiplayer games bolt on lackluster solo variants, but Sagrada's feels purposeful and engaging.

Criticisms

The dice can occasionally feel overwhelming for newer players. Between adjacency rules, window restrictions, and tool interactions, there's more cognitive load than first appears. Analysis paralysis sometimes strikes when players see multiple valid placements and struggle to evaluate long-term consequences. This usually improves with experience, but initial games can drag.

Luck dependency bothers some players, particularly those who prefer games with more direct control. Bad dice rolls can absolutely wreck your plans, and sometimes the dice pool just doesn't cooperate with your window pattern. While tool cards help mitigate this, you still need favor tokens to buy them, creating a potential spiral where unlucky players fall further behind.

The scoring system, while functional, lacks the elegance of the core gameplay. Calculating final scores requires checking multiple objectives and counting various dice arrangements. It's not complicated, but it feels somewhat disconnected from the beautiful simplicity of placing dice. Some objectives also prove much harder to achieve than others, creating balance questions about their point values.

Conclusion

Sagrada will delight anyone who enjoys spatial puzzles, beautiful components, or games that blend luck and strategy. Families looking for something more engaging than typical dice games will find plenty to love, as will couples wanting a solid two-player option that plays quickly but rewards repeated sessions.

If you're drawn to games like Azul or Splendor—accessible rules hiding meaningful decisions—Sagrada deserves a spot on your shelf. Just be prepared for the occasional frustrating dice roll and embrace the puzzle-solving journey rather than demanding complete control over your fate.