Stonespine Architects Review

boardgamequest.com:

Thunderworks Games is one of my favorite publishers. Besides running great crowdfunding campaigns that are efficient and deliver on time, they make games that are simple to learn, have fun decisions, and have decent to excellent replay value. They are most known for their shared universe, the World of Ulos, currently consisting of eight games across different genres, including Cartographer, Roll Player, and Roll Player Adventures.

Due to my love of the three Ulos games mentioned above, I was excited to get the opportunity to review Stonespine Architects. Not only is it set in the World of Ulos, but it was also created by Jordy Adan, designer of Cartographers. The cherry on top is that it is a drafting game, one of my favorite game mechanics.

Does Stonespine Architects live up to its Ulos heritage, or is it the Upside-Down House of dungeon architecture?

Stonespine Architects is a competitive card drafting and dungeon construction game for one to five players. Each player is trying to build the best dungeon (score the most points) during play, with games lasting between 45 and 60 minutes.

Games last four years (rounds). Each year is made up of three phases:

After the fourth year, points are tallied and the player with the most points wins and earns the title of Master Architect!

What made me feel like a dungeon building champion:

The main draw for this game is the chamber card drafting and building your dungeon. This also happens to be my favorite part of the game. The decisions can be tough. You get a good chunk of points by connecting cards to the entrance and/or exit (double if connected to both) by aligning doors on the shared edges of adjacent cards. Trying to balance creating these paths for end-game points versus drafting a card that generates gold in this phase so you get the first crack at buying an item from the market can be difficult. Of course, there is always the loved/detested choice to “hate” draft as well, although given the short length of the