In Patrician you and your fellow opponents are working to impress the patrician families of Italy in the middle ages by building towers with your wealth. During this time, families were inspired to build magnificent towers in order to show off how prosperous they were. The taller the tower, the more influential the family was. Patrician is an area majority hand management card and board game originally published in 2007, but has now been re-released by Calliope Games. There are 2 added modules you can play with; the game is for 2-5 players, takes under an hour to play and recommended for players 8 years and older. Get back to a classic euro feel in this light strategy game of towers.
What’s in the Box?
- 145 Wooden Tower floor pieces in 5 colors
- 20 Prestige tokens
- 1 Double-sided game board
- 5 Reference cards
- 55 Building cards in 10 colors
How’s it Play?
You will be competing with the other players to gain the most prestige tokens with the points listed on them by having the majority of tower pieces in a city. You will also be able to get bonus points to supplement your main avenue for points by collecting certain cards. The game is played in a clockwise direction, and when there are no more cards on the board, the game ends. The player with the most points wins the game.
Each player starts with 3 cards in their hand. The card has at least one color city shown on it, but possibly two. On a player’s turn, they choose one of their cards from their hand to play face up in front of them. The city shown on their played out card is the city that receives a tower piece.
There are two squares that indicate there can be two towers in each city. When you place a tower piece, you can choose which stack you want to place it on, or if no pieces are present, which stack you would like to start. You are trying to have the majority of pieces in the stack. Each city has a roman numeral shown on it. This represents how many tower pieces can be in that city in total. Once that number it hit, no more pieces can be added and that city is scored.
The tower with the most pieces determines who gains the higher of the two prestige tokens. The player who has the majority of tower pieces in the tallest tower wins that token, and the player with the most pieces in the other tower gains the other prestige token. So essentially players are determining which tower they want to be the tallest, and then which tower they would like to try to win majority in, by placing their pieces strategically.
On a player’s turn, after they place their tower piece indicated from their card, they then take the building card that’s in that city’s spot. This card is placed into that players hand to use in the future.
Some of the cards show a special action on the bottom, which could be moving a tower piece from one tower to another in the same city. Another bonus lets you pick up any card on the board, not just the one in the location where you placed your tower pieces in. Lastly, you replace the card you picked up to place in your hand with a new card from the deck.
At the end of Patrician players count up their prestige tokens. Additionally, for each set of 3 matching portraits you earn 6 points. Players total up their points, and the player with the most points wins the game.
The Verdict
This is the second edition of Patrician. It originally was published in 2007, and contains very basic euro mechanics that are solid, as they work very well. This version of the game has been looked at with eyes from 2024 with new art, extra content, and a refreshed presentation. The gameplay basics are the same, so if you have played the original, the same things you have enjoyed from it is still in this version of the game.
Players need to plan well with both using cards to play their tower pieces in places they want to compete for the prestige cards, but in addition, they want to play in cities where they can pick up cards to perform future actions. Players place their card out each turn on top of their own discard pile, and they can always looks back to see what cards are underneath the others. This might be needed, as you don’t want to gain cards and end the game with just 2 matching portraits; you want to take advantage of your work of getting those cards and complete the set so you have 3 of each matching portrait to gain the additional 6 points.
Patrician is very simple and straight forward. The complexity comes with the small decisions you make that add together to form your overall strategy. If you are placing down random tower tokens, or not collecting specific cards that might be more worth while to you, you will probably not end up with the most points. But, if you go in competing for areas you need or want to to win more and more prestige tokens, and leave the others to others that you don’t waste your time with them, you might have a good shot in winning the game.
Patrician is also good because I can play the game with my kids and enjoy myself. While they can understand how to play, the strategy is a bit more challenging. With time, things will click more for them and they will understand why they might want to play their cards in a certain order, but they definitely still had fun playing.
In addition, there are 2 added modules, trade routes and the delegates, which add additional complexity to the game. The game includes additional tokens and cards used in these modules, which feels great, as you gain some of those small “expansions” without needing to buy another full expansion for the game.
Overall, definitely a game I’ll be coming back to and one that’s good for the whole family.
Images via Calliope Games
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