Test // SAGANI

Submitted by Denise Janssen on 17. June 2021.

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The spirits of nature seek harmony! The Elements strive for a balanced power relationship so that their full potential can be developed!

In the new SAGANI game by famous author Uwe Rosenberg, players must skillfully place tiles of nature spirits next to each other in order to restore perfect harmony and thus achieve victory. SAGANI was already on our gaming table as a prototype at the end of 2020, which is why we’re excited to see what the full version of the game has in store for us.

SKELLIG GAMES has made SAGANI available to us for our review.
This does not affect our rating!

This is what the game is about!

As mentioned earlier, the 1 through 4 ends of the game must cleverly place the Nature Spirits tiles next to each other in a way that meets their requirements in order to appear. Nature spirits tiles have a front and back, which contains all the necessary information. On the back of the tiles there is a small image of her nature spirit with the fixed number of victory points. Players get these victory points once they fulfill the requirements of the nature spirit. These requirements can be found on the front of the tiles in the form of small colored arrows. Each color corresponds to a type of nature’s spirit: green for the forest, red for fire, blue for water, and white for the wind. The higher the Nature Spirit score (1, 3, 6 or 10 points), the more arrows there are on the tiles. The number of arrows is always the same, though, so that players always know, for example, that a 10 victory point piece has 4 arrows (which will be important later).

Arrows are especially important when placing new tiles while turning. During a turn, the active end of the game chooses a piece of the open screen and places it in its own playing area. For each arrow on the tiles, the end of the game must place a game token on the piece and then check the adjacent tiles (if any). If one or more arrows point to a tile of the desired color, the arrow can be covered with a game token. In order to use as many arrows as possible, players can flip the tiles as they like before placing them in their area. In addition, it does not matter how many squares are between the arrow and the tiles of the desired color. Therefore, the arrows only indicate one direction in which a piece of a certain color should fall. The result is that as the game progresses, SAGANI becomes more and more a great puzzle in which players try to use as many arrows as possible.

If the last arrow on a tile is covered, the piece is turned on its back and the points on the piece are credited to the end of the game on the player’s center board.

It is important to note that players should be careful with stock-covering tokens as quickly as possible, because completing the token is the only way to get back the game tokens. If players have to put a token on a token even if they don’t have any available, they have to refer to the so-called “paradox” tweak. These discs permanently give players more game tokens, but they cost 2 points for each disc, which can be quite a pain.

Since the number of tiles in the open screen is not updated after every turn, the selection of tiles is very important. If the end of the game only has one piece left in the open screen, they have the option of drawing an inverted tile from the draw pile instead of the tiles. From this piece, only the color and number of victory points are known, so that players do not know which arrows are in front. Unmarked tiles are placed above the center player panel. If a total of 4 tiles are placed above the player’s center board in this way, there is a so-called “intermezzo” where players in ascending order of victory points can choose a piece of that width and place it in their playing area.

Then the open screen is refilled with 5 tiles (whether there is a break or not). The game ends immediately once the player has exceeded a certain number of points, which varies according to the number of players.

Game Variations

In addition to the normal game in which the game ends from 2 to 4, SAGANI also offers a solo mode that can be played with two playing times of different lengths. In the quick variant, the end of the game must score 75 points with the fewest squares possible, while in the long variant each individual piece of the game is placed. The goal is to place the tiles in a way that displays the fewest tiles possible at the same time, as bonus points are awarded as long as only two tiles are active at the same time. In this way, high scores can be created and broken.

What’s in the box?

The main component of the SAGANI game box consists of a total of 75 tiles, all of which are made of high quality and very durable cardboard. In addition to the tiles, a central playing board and a total of 110 wooden tokens of different colors are included for players (plus 10 red odds discs).

The artwork of the toy box and the game materials are of particularly high quality and give the game its own style. The little objects are very creatively designed and are equally suitable for every age group.

The grammar book explains the rules very compactly, while supporting texts with graphic examples. Grammar questions do not remain open when reading, making them suitable for “quick reading before the first game”.

Tags: tile laying, 1-4 player, puzzle