My kids already have a new favorite board game. Oricalco they’ve stormed into my house leaving behind their favorite options to date, and having played several games with them already, it’s easy to see why.
Oricalco it has everything we love: dice for killing monsters, building cities, trading resources, and mechanics that are simple enough to understand in a matter of five minutes but mastering them perfectly is a much deeper task.
Orichalco, Atlantis and the legend of Plato that turned out to be true
Orichalcum is a legendary metal from Atlantis that until just a few years ago we believed a legend to match the submerged city. Listed in Plato’s writings as the most precious metal after gold, the truth is that all traces of the material seemed to have been lost with the mythical city and, like it, had crossed the borders of fantasy.
In 2017, however, a shipwreck from the 6th century BC was found that, among other cargoes, contained several orichalcum ingots, a mixture of copper and zinc that, according to Plato himself, could be found on the island of the Atlanteans in large quantities. amounts.
And that is precisely the starting point of this Oricalcoa metal as a bargaining chip with which we will have to take the Atlanteans to new lands before the disaster occurs that according to the myth sank their island.
As explorers, our objective will be to explore the new island where we will settle, carry out the necessary constructions to found a new city and, of course, clear the entire area of monsters so that life there is as fruitful as possible.
How to play Orichalco
With a completely empty map, in our turn we will choose between a series of cards to get exploration tiles and, together with them, a series of actions that will allow us to continue with our expansion.
The cards and tiles are placed randomly, so perhaps you are very interested in getting a type of terrain but not so much the action that it brings, and in that struggle between choosing what is best for you and repudiating what interests you least, is precisely where Oricalco focuses all its mechanics.
With five types of terrain that we can place at will adjacent to our already placed tiles, the importance of how we link some terrains with others will be the key to being able to create wonders that serve as victory points (using four different terrains) or collections of three or more pieces of the same terrain to win the favor of the gods of each region.
From there, everything is reduced to also choosing which actions are the ones that are going to help us the most, being able to build, get soldiers, mine orichalcum or battle against the monsters that will appear when we place a volcano tile on our island.
A board game for the whole family
Five victory points and an island cleared of monsters is all we need to win, so between creating terrain combinations, building buildings that give us passive abilities, and trading soldiers, orichalcum, and monsters for extra actions, Oricalco It ends up being one of those games where you always have a lot to do and it’s hard to want to get too many turns ahead of yourself.
With a skull per dice that guarantees the death of even the most dangerous monsters, adding soldiers to be able to roll more dice or getting buildings that change their faces for more skulls guarantees that the smallest ones can also stay alive in the game despite bad luck.
In fact, despite the fact that the box recommends players 12 years of age or older, my 7-year-old son has done perfectly creating land combinations and managing his resources to get the most out of his buildings.
Oricalco It is another of those jewels from the creator of 7 Wonders Duel You’ll love it if you’re looking for an accessible and easy-to-explain game with which to fix the typical rainy Sunday afternoon in which you don’t know what pastime to grab onto.
