The new blog post – All you need is… twist!

I start explaining the rules of Basilica to Tony, and after 30 seconds, he already rolls his eyes. He heard those rules in dozen of various games. Put a tile on the table and put a worker on it to secure the area. Tiles must be adjacent. Tiles of the same color create a region. More workers in the region win control…

His facial expression is something between “Are you done?” or “Ignacy, you are killing me here.”

He played Carcassonne a million times. We all did.

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The beauty of the modern design is self-consciousness. Designers take pieces we all know and use them in a new way. They add a slight twist here and there, and suddenly we – gamers – are surprised and excited; we feel something fresh and innovative is here.

Basilica seems like a classic tile-laying game. With this unexpected twist – it has multi-use tiles. And this one detail adds so many new layers of strategy and tactical joy. Let me show you. Look at this picture.

I could draw tile 4 and build a blue region. Tile 1 will immediately flip and become a Green/Blue tile that I can draw later (or could be drawn by my opponent). The order from 1, maybe it was a threat to my strategy, is gone; taking tile 4, I killed the order at the same time. The Green/Blue tile becomes available, though. Is it good for my opponent?

I could draw a tile 5. I build a green region. The crown icon in the corner means the Queen advances, and the scoring may happen. Do I want trigger scoring? Do I want to slow the game or speed up? What is the situation on the table – scoring now is good for me?

What’s more, if I draw a tile 5, then tile 2 flips and becomes available as a yellow area tile. My opponent will now have tile 6 (yellow) and the new 5 (yellow), and that might be terrible for me…

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Designer of Basilica, Łukasz M. Pogoda introduced twist. Took the basics of Carcassonne we all know and shook things with double-sided tiles. The standard side is to build areas, and the Order side is to mess with opponents. Do I want to grow my region, or do I need to play an Order? Do I hate draft area tile, or do I hate draft Order tile? Do I…

https://portalgames.pl/en/buy_basilica/

Welcome to PORTAL GAMES

We are bookworms. Movie maniacs. Story addicts. We grew up reading Tolkien, Howard, Herbert, Dick, Lem… We were watching Willow, Blade Runner, Never Ending Story, Robin Hood…

And yet, we don’t write books… we don’t make movies. We don’t make those things, because we make games. We make games that tell stories.