The Magnificent

Roll up, roll up and welcome to the marvellous world of The Magnificent! This is a Euro-style strategy game by Eilif Svensson and Kristian Amundsen Østby. Their previous game – Santa Maria, also by Aporta Games – featured clever dice drafting. So too does The Magnificent. This time the theme is within the beautiful, mysterious world of the circus…

The Magnificent players solo or multiplayer up to four players. In it you are rival circus owners, competing attract audiences to your spectacular shows. You draft dice, and in doing so extend your own camp of entertainers. These are Tetris-style polyomino tiles, so there’s individual tile-placement strategies at play.

But alongside placing these tiles, you’re looking to set up performances the likes of which audiences have never seen. Which die will you draft to accomplish this? You need to consider the pip value, as well as colour. This determines the strength of your action, where you’ll then either build, travel or perform. The more of a single colour dice you draft, the more efficient and powerful your turns.

As with every mid-weight Euro-style game like this, there comes wonderful decisions. You want strength to perform better actions. But at the end of each round you must pay the total pip value of your largest group of the same-colour dice. Herein lies the strategy: can you afford to go for the mega-actions?

The Magnificent takes places over three rounds of four turns each. At regular intervals you’ll discard Ringmaster Cards and score them. You start with a hand of four Ringmasters, so who do you score, and when? Sounds like you’ll have to spin a few plates… A bit like your performers! The Magnificent is not only a crunchy Euro, it’s also a stunning, beautiful game on the table, too.

Player Count: 1-4 Players
Time: 60-90 minutes
Age: 14+