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Introit et Kyrie
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is dead. Well, he died in 1791 so this shouldn’t be a shock to anyone, but this is the set up for Devir’s new game, Lacrimosa. Designed by Gerard Ascensi and Ferran Renalias, this midweight euro game, is based on the famous unfinished Requiem in D Minor that Mozart left this mortal coil working on. His last conscious action on his deathbed was composing the Lacrimosa movement of this Opus Requiem, giving the game its name.
You, as one of his sponsors, will meet with his widow in order to participate one last time in the funding of the works of the Austrian genius. Also you will reminisce and retell all your memories alongside Mozart, in order to make sure that she portrays you under the best light when writing her memoirs, and enter history as Mozart’s most important patron.
Sequentia
The game is split over five rounds, each representing a period in Mozart’s life. During each round, each player will take a minimum of four actions, placing cards from their hand and placing them on the top and bottom of their portfolio. These beautifully designed dual-layered boards are where most of your action will take place. Players will receive a hand of nine dual use cards. This hand will never increase or decrease in size but throughout the game you might buy upgrades for these cards in order to boost their power. Along the top of your board (portfolio) are four slots in which your cards can be placed (one per turn).
Depending on what card you put there will dictate what action you take that turn. It is such a simple and smooth action selection, not to mention the incredibly satisfying act of sliding the cards in itself. On the bottom of the portfolio are another four slots. However, cards put here are not addressed until the end of the round where whatever you have placed will offer starting resources for the next period. Then after a little cleanup, you remove your cards, shuffle your hand and begin all over again. Despite it’s, slightly longer than it needs to be teach, the gameplay sequence is fast, smooth and simple and will offer up chained actions meaning you can achieve a lot more as the game goes on.
Offertorium
So what can you do exactly? There are five core actions in the game. One is to tell stories of travelling around with the man himself. The centre of the main board is dedicated to a map of Europe. You will pay certain resources to travel from one major city to the next and take designated reward tiles for doing so. These tiles vary from one-off effects such as monetary bonuses or resources to end-game scoring. A simple mechanism but each round that goes by upgrades the tiles left behind, offering a risky decision as to grab that tile while you can or to wait and hope nobody takes it before you can nab its powered up version.
The second action is to tell tales of works you had commissioned from the genius. You can buy Opus cards from the market row at the top of the board, of which there are four types. Symphonies, Operas, and Chamber or Religious pieces. Then as a third action you can choose to either perform them for money or sell them for a mix of resources and victory points. A lot of the end-game scoring tiles will depend on your collection of these commissions so deciding whether to sell or keep can often be a difficult decision. Your fourth option is to journal. This simply means to upgrade your story cards from the market row. You pay the resources for the new card and then replace the bottom row card in your portfolio with this new one. Each period will release stronger and stronger cards but deciding what cards to replace will be tight as you will need to make sure you keep access to all possible actions for future turns.
Sanctus
The final action, and perhaps the most interesting, is working on the Lacrimosa itself. The bottom of the main central board is designated to the unfinished score. This part of the game offers a strange area control mechanism. As patrons you are commissioning one of two selected composers (there are four options in the game) to work on parts of the requiem. The composer who added most to each section by the end of the game will win the control and then each player who backed them will gain the most points. Anyone who backed the other composer in that section will also get points but far less than the other.
There are five sections to Mozart’s Requiem and so players will push to get as many of their tokens down as possible as this really bumps up the scoring at the end. This type of area control feels totally unique. There is a constant battle between which composer to back. It might depend on who offers the best bonus at that time or which you can actually afford. But you always need to keep an eye on who is controlling that particular section and how many points you might get out of it at the end. Of course, there is nothing quite so satisfying as watching someone go all in on one only for you to outweigh them in the last turn!
Agnus Dei
There is something quite daunting about Lacrimosa. At first glance it has a slightly alienating subject matter that might intimidate people who feel they have to know about Mozart or about classical music in general to enjoy the game. This is not true. However, there is no getting around the fact that this game will appeal more to people who either have an interest in music or in Mozart. The theme is so unique in the world of board gaming that appealing to that niche demographic is not a bad thing. Too often, publishers try and appeal as broadly as they can which can create a quite forgettable experience but Lacrimosa implements its theme very well. However, if you are a fan of euro games and enjoy the mechanisms of resource and hand management then I really encourage you to give this a try. If you weren’t interested in the theme before, I guarantee that by the end of the game, it will be singing.
