The Palaces of Carrara Review

The Palaces of Carrara from Game Brewers is a remake of the original with the same name. Each player is attempting to get the best deals that they can for building supplies in order to develop and build up the various cities of the Tuscany region of Italy. The new version plays the same as the old but there is also a new advanced version. On your turn, you can choose to buy materials from the wheel on the board. Any time you buy, you can advance the wheel one slot causing everything to get cheaper along the way. If you have the right amount of materials, you can choose to build any of the available buildings or monuments. Here's the thing, though, certain regions can only use higher quality materials. If you build a monument, you can either build from the ground up or you can upgrade an existing tile. These will also let you take improvement tiles to make your scoring tiles even better. The last thing you can do is score. When you score, you'll choose to score either a city, a building, or landscapes on your player board. This will get you points or money. The game ends when a player has used all their scoring markers or if there are no more buildings. Whoever has the most points wins.

The advanced variant keeps the game mostly the same but it adds in some new concepts. You'll flip the wheels and any time you empty a section, you have the option to pick up a decoration or a statue. Decorations are added to buildings and increase their score. Statues allow a new scoring option for buildings as long as you have them. There are also several new scoring options added to the game.

The Good: There's a reason this game was remade 10 years later, it's super clean and elegant. I love that they added the advanced variant but it's not something that's forced upon you. If you're a purist and want to play the classic way, go ahead. There is an extremely tight economy as well. You'll run out of money very fast so you'll need to score more often than you probably planned to. It all comes together nicely.

The Okay: Having not played many "older" games, you can definitely feel its age in some places. Some of the overarching concepts may not resonate with some people. I personally don't know if I'm sold on the advanced variant. It feels like the statues and monuments were added for the sake of being added. It's not a bad way to play it but I think I preferred the classic way to play.

Final Thoughts: The Palaces of Carrara is a Euro game for Euro gamers. It's relatively dry and uneventful but it's also beautiful and works perfectly. You won't be dealing with conflict but you can still upset your friends by buying what they need at the perfect time which is very satisfying by the way. There was nothing I outright disliked in this game which is a rarity. I would highly recommend this. Especially if you're looking for a Euro that may or may not be new to you.

Thanks to Game Brewer for providing me with a review copy.