Murano: Light Masters

If your eye has ever been drawn to the wondrous masterpieces of Murano glass or you love to play beautiful board games, then Murano Light Masters is definitely worth your attention!

Components

In Murano Light Masters we will find the following content: 1 game board(2 sides), double sided selection ring for the board, 4 individual workbench tablets, 46 glass shards (10 blue, 10 green, 10 yellow, 10 red and 16 transparent), 24 creation cards (four categories), 16 advantage cards, 4 category tiles, 63 lira tokens (37*1, 10*5, 18*10), 1 first player marker, 4 player aid cards.

Gameplay

Place the game board in the centre of the table, it is placed right in the box, which is very convenient. Give each player a workbench tablet, a aid card, 4 lira and 5 creation cards. The players shuffle the received creation cards once in the closed hand and do not change their order in their hand again (this is important!). Next to the field, lay out the category tiles and an advantage card for each category. Place one shard(red, blue, green, yellow) on the markets in the corners of the field. Identify the first player and give him a first player token. Now you’re ready to start creating masterpieces!

Starting with the first player on his turn, a player must take the mandatory actions and as many optional actions as he wants. Let’s look at the mandatory actions:

– Collect. The player turns the selector on the field clockwise so that it points to the next pair of shards, then the player takes the shards the selector points to from the warehouse in the centre of the field and places them in the boxes on his workshop tablet.

– Negotiate. Here the player has three options for action, but must do only one:

– Exchange. Place one shard from your workshop on one of the four markets (corners of the playing field) and take from the vault the shards that are available according to that market. However, a transparent shard aka joker cannot be taken this way.

– Purchase. Spend 2 lira and take all the shards from one of the four market on the playing field and place them on your workbench tablet.

– Selling. Sell at least 1 shard from your workbench tablet for 1 lira. If you sell all the shards, then also for 1 lira. This may seem unprofitable, but once you understand the game the action will not cause more questions.

-. Execute one or more creation cards. Each time you execute an creation card you can only execute the top card in your hand, which is why you can’t just change their order during the game. To fulfil a card you need to drop the required number of shards from your workbench tablet that match the requirements on the creation card, you can replace the missing shards with joker shards (if you have them). You receive as many lire for the fulfilment of the creation card as the number of empty cells left on your workshop tablet after the order is fulfilled.

If you have enough shards left to complete the next card, you may complete it immediately, in which case you also receive a 2 lira bonus for completing two cards per turn. All completed cards are placed face up to the left of your workbench tablet.

Now that we are done with the mandatory actions, let’s take a look at the optional actions, or those that you can perform at any time during your turn. Namely:

– Reverse the order of the creation cards in your hand. By paying 1 lira you may rearrange the first creation card in your hand. A player may perform this action as many times as he has lira.

– Turn the Ring. A player can spend 1 lira to turn the ring on the playing field anti-clockwise by one division. This can be useful, for example before your shard collection action or at the end of your turn to confuse your opponents’ plans. A player can also perform this action as many times as he has lire.

– Activate one or more advantage cards. Each of your completed creation cards has a category (symbol in the upper right corner of the card). This allows you to turn a card face up and place it to the right of the workbench tablet to use an advantage card of the corresponding category. This can be either an additional free action applicable at any time or an enhancement to your primary action. If there are two categories on a card, you can still only use one of them, but you can choose which one.

The game ends when one of the players plays their last fifth (in a game of 2 player sixth) creation card, then all players take their turn before the 1st player so that everyone has time to take an equal number of turns. The players then count up the earned lira and the player with the most coins is declared the winner.

Final Opinion

Murano Light Masters caught my attention as a lover of beautiful and tactile components that are a pleasure to touch and shift in the process. It seems simple and uncomplicated at first, but it’s the management of components in a limited storage environment while still being driven by a race to fulfil orders that adds to the excitement. It’s not always obvious whether it’s better to complete one invention and get more coins by selling all the extra shards, or to try to collect shards to complete two cards at once? It all depends on how your opponents will play – slowly and relaxedly collecting beautiful coloured shards or rushing to execute orders. Murano Light Masters is easy for beginners – from the second or third game they almost never look at the aid cards and quite naturally perform all the necessary actions, sometimes even beating experienced board game players who at first glance may underestimate the depth of gameplay and the necessary techniques for resource management. The number and combinations of advantage cards, double-sided playing field and shard selection wheel add to the replayability and make each game unique. And if you are also a lover of beauty you will be doubly pleased in the process to admire the amazing masterpieces on the invention cards and catch the reflections of light in the glass shards. Murano Light Masters definitely deserves its place on a shelf in my collection!