Sagrada: The Three Expansions

If you enjoyed Sagrada, you’ll LOVE these expansions. But which should you buy first?!

Note: We were gifted these games by Floodgate Games for unbiased reviews

If you’ve not played Sagrada before, go and check out my review of the base game before reading this one!

We love Sagrada. It’s simple, beautiful, fun and easy to teach. But a lot of players enjoy a little more complexity in their games, or they’ve played Sagrada so much they want a new challenge. Fortunately there are three little expansions to add an extra dimension or two to your stained glass window, and even more fortunately I am going to talk you through each one, then you can decide which you want to buy 🙂 although we were gifted these games it’s important to point out that it in no way influences our review of a game!

Passion

What’s included:
-6 Inspiration Cards (special abilities which give players unique advantages)
-6 Rare Glass Dice (rare dice which are treated as wild colours)
-6 Rare Glass Boards (help you obtain Rare Glass Dice)
-7 Rare Glass Private Objectives (for scoring points using your Rare Glass Dice!)
-6 Symmetry & Balance Public Objectives (new public objectives that reward symmetry and balance in players’ windows)

This expansion has a number of modules – you can use some or all of them if you wish, each one aims to enhance the art of window building.

First you have the inspiration cards, which are shuffled before giving one to each player. They each have a unique ability which that player can use, they can make tool cards cheaper to use, allow you to swap dice with the round track, give you the chance to reroll placed dice etc. This module just adds in a little bit of asymmetry to players, so you can attempt to make the most of your own ability at the expense of your opponents.

Then you have new “symmetry” and “balance” public objectives which are added to the deck from the original game to mix things up, for example getting three points for each carbon copy dice either side of the middle column of your window. So if you manage to get a blue five in the top left and top right, you’re already onto a winner! These are great as I play a lot of Sagrada it’s good to get some new objectives, and these are really a challenge!

The main part of the expansion is the Rare Glass dice, boards and objectives. This module allows players to add Rare Glass dice into their window, which can be placed next to any colour dice, and have their own objectives related to them. Before play, you randomly select a Rare Glass Board which determines how players will obtain the clear glass dice, these vary from paying extra favour tokens to swapping it with an already placed dice.

You can only take one clear dice each during the game, but where it is placed will greatly effect your score at the end. Each player gets a private objective related to their clear dice. For example you might score 3 points for every dice in your window with the same number as your clear dice, or score the sum of all the dice adjacent to it.

I really liked this expansion – it does what any good expansion should do, it adds more variety to what’s already there and introduces some new concepts to enrich the gameplay. I particularly enjoyed trying the symmetry and balance objective cards as new ways to score points, and the clear dice are adorable! This expansion is hard to beat.

Get this expansion:
https://floodgate.games/collections/games/products/sagrada-passion
Check this game out on Board Game Geek:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/263695/sagrada-great-facades-passion

Life

What’s included:
-12 new orange Masterwork dice (which score points)
-6 new public objectives
-12 double-sided window patterns (specific to this expansion)
-Masterwork board
-22 Apprentice cards (to gain unique advantages or new ways of scoring points)
-2 Tool Cards

The main two attractions of this expansion are the new orange masterwork dice, which offer new scoring options, and the new “Apprentice” cards, which give players one-time benefits as well as end game scoring bonuses.

The new window patterns have spaces that when you cover them with dice, you gain an Apprentice card. Most of them give you a one-time ability to use to your advantage, such as ignoring certain dice placement restrictions that round, swapping around dice in your display, gaining new tool cards etc. but some of them offer new ways of scoring points instead. They are a great addition to the game, an extra dimension to play making it more strategic – get those spaces covered as soon as possible so you can plan when to use those Apprentice Cards.

The orange “Masterwork” dice are another route to points in the game, they score you points if you satisfy the conditions on the dice. Most of them require you to have matching dice at either end of the arrows on the dice- there are penalties for failing and rewards for succeeding! You also earn favour tokens as a reward for taking the more difficult dice.

This module is quite simple but offers a great twist on the game. Think carefully about which orange dice you gain and where you place them – they not only score points for having their conditions met, they also count as a unique colour and value for the public objectives in play. Also, it really helps that they look awesome, as does the board they sit on!

The other additions are two new tool cards and six new public objectives, both which relate to the Masterwork dice module.

I love this expansion. In all honesty it’s worth getting for the Apprentice cards alone – they are fantastic. The Masterwork dice are really cool too and I love having new objectives to add into the mix. Is it better than Passion? It’s tough – I prefer the Passion expansion but Sam prefers this one – they are both great so why not get both?!

Get this game:
https://floodgate.games/collections/games/products/sagrada-life
Check this game out on Board Game Geek:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/301561/sagrada-great-facades-life

5-6 Player expansion

What’s included:
-2 player boards
-40 dice
-12 favour tokens
-2 tool cards
-2 score markers
-6 window pattern cards
-6 private objectives
-6 private dice pool boards
-dice tray

There’s a lot included in this expansion! First and foremost this now allows you to play with two extra players, so if you’ve got a large family or gaming group and you want to play Sagrada with them, then you definitely need this expansion. Most of the contents relate to this – more dice, player boards, favour tokens, private objectives and score markers. However there is an extra element which is included to spice things up and perhaps make the drafting phase a little less crazy – the private dice pool.

In standard play with six players, you roll 13 dice each round, which is a lot! This can make it a little easier to complete your window and satisfy objectives, so that’s why you might want to try the private dice pools instead. If you play with the private draft pools, each player takes one of the draft boards at the start of the game and two dice of each colour. They roll them and place them in their draft board (the position of dice doesn’t matter).

Each round you just roll one dice per player plus one (so 7 dice in a 6 player game) and on your turn you pick one dice from the shared pool and one from your own pool (in either order). This is much more interesting because you know from the start the values and colours of ten of your dice, but you have to choose wisely when to play them. It also makes the draft dice a bit more cut throat as you only get one per round, so you can work out what will annoy your opponents the most 🙂

With this expansion it really comes down to the size of your playing group. If you want to play with 5 or 6 players then absolutely get this expansion, but if you’re usually playing with 4 or fewer, we’d suggest getting the Passion & Life expansions first as these add more to the gameplay, and the private draft pool is only really necessary at larger player counts. As with the base game and the other expansions, the pieces are beautiful, I especially love the cute dice tray and the private draft pool boards.

So there you have it, the three expansions add so much to an already fantastic game. There’s more great stuff such as public and private objectives, as well as completely new mechanics, dice colours and actions, which we heartily recommend trying out!

Get this game:
https://floodgate.games/collections/games/products/sagrada-5-6-player-expansion
Check this game out on Board Game Geek:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameexpansion/244262/sagrada-5-6-player-expansion