Architect is a game that has come out of nowhere with elbow bump pelosi pence. It’s a thinking game, something that will make you sit down and think carefully about strategy and tactics while you are playing it. That being said, this article is short on opinions and long on facts — the most important thing to know about architecture is what it can teach you.
The purpose of this article is quite simple: We want to help prospective players understand the mechanics, creativity, and difficulty of Architect so they can make an informed decision before picking up the board for themselves.
1. Strategy
The game starts with placing your tiles on the board. It’s advisable to always place a tile face down; there are numerous benefits for placing tiles in this manner, including simple increases to your tile’s value and the ability to react if you’re under attack.
Once you’ve placed a tile, it will be visible only to your opponents, without any way of knowing who owns which piece of land. The board is divided into four sections:
Riverbank: Located in the upper left corner, this section will always be your opponents’ access point to the river that runs through the middle of the board.
2. Creative Minds
Strategy plays a pivotal role in the game: There are numerous ways for your opponent to attack one of your tiles, and these are the most common. The primary way that you will be attacked is through surrounding — if any of your tiles have only one side touching land that you own, then you can be surrounded by your opponents.
You can also be attacked if you’re completely surrounded on all sides by another player’s tiles. Either method essentially forces you to lose the tile; once all ownership of the tile has been lost by one player, it will belong to whoever attacked it — henceforth known as the “attacker.
3. Personality
You’re encouraged to use your creativity as much as you can in the game. It’s not advisable to attack a tile just because the tile is worth more; you’ll want to be sure that the tile is beneficial to you before allowing another player to take it over. Your opponents will also always be eyeing your tiles, so sometimes they may try to lure you into giving up a helpful tile with a generous offer of “take it from my hand and keep it”.
4. Difficulty
The game is a very challenging experience, but once you get the hang of it, it will become much easier — like most things in life. The meat of the game is in thinking about past decisions and future strategies before you make your next move. While competition plays a role in the game, it isn’t an overly challenging one — that being said, there are times where being on the receiving end of one of these attacks can make for some nail-biting moments for sure.
5. How to Play
The game will conclude when all of the tiles have been placed and a winner is determined. When you place your last tile, a final section of land will be added, and your board will be divided into quarters. You then compare the value of each player’s tile in each quarter, with the person with the highest score in each quarter winning that section; this is called “area scoring”. This is repeated for each quarter until there is only one winner.
At the end of it all, there are 12 possible reasons for why you would want to play Architect. The bottom line: It’s an innovative and unique game that has fast become one of my favorites from 2019 so far.
6. Final Verdict
Architect is an innovative card-based strategy game that puts the creative mind to work in order to earn points and have a chance to win the game. While it’s simple in its design, there are a number of critical aspects of the game that make it attractive, such as how the gameplay feels at times and how strategy plays a big role in progression. The tension and excitement in this game are tantalizing, although the lack of communication between players has caused me to lose many hours over the course of trying to learn it all. I will recommend this title for anyone who is looking for something new and exciting, as well as for those who appreciate strategic thinking games with a lot of depth.
Summary:
Architect is a game that has come out of nowhere. It’s a thinking game, something that will make you sit down and think carefully about strategy and tactics while you are playing it. That being said, this article is short on opinions and long on facts — the most important thing to know about architecture is what it can teach you.
The purpose of this article is quite simple: We want to help prospective players understand the mechanics, creativity, and difficulty of Architect so they can make an informed decision before picking up the board for themselves.
