The dome of Florence's cathedral is one of the wonders of the Renaissance, and Opera Magna asks a fun question: who actually hauled all that marble? This new Eurogame puts you in the boots of 15th-century merchants supplying the great building site of the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, and it has a pedigree that will make Euro fans sit up.
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Start organising for freeOpera Magna is designed by Tommaso Battista, a co-designer of the acclaimed dam-building heavyweight Barrage, and Stefano Castelli, a co-designer of the marble-dropping hit Potion Explosion. That is a strong pairing, and the headline mechanism plays to it: a dynamic market where the value of every resource shifts with each action players take. Sell when timber is scarce and you cash in; flood the market and you watch your margins collapse. Read the room and the table, not just your own engine.
It is also pitched as the tighter, more elegant side of the hobby rather than a four-hour epic. Opera Magna is a resource-management game built for a deep experience in a contained running time, and it is language-independent, with only the manual and appendix carrying any text, which is handy if your group spans more than one language. That comes as a slight surprise from publisher Ludus Magnus Studio, the Rome outfit better known for big miniatures games like Black Rose Wars.
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Set up your group for freeThe campaign is live now on Gamefound. If a cutthroat Renaissance market sounds like your group's idea of a good evening, it is a fine excuse to get everyone round the table, so line up a game night and see who corners the marble trade.
Sources: Gamefound | BoardGameGeek | Ludus Magnus Studio
