Finally, collect the reward on the taken tile and the reward indicated on the player board for the chosen instrument. What a journey. Lacrimosa suggests thematic saturation but leaves most of it in the imagination of the player. Sure, we’re given a five-movement unfinished composition, a map featuring prominent cities in Europe, musical notes on tokens and in-era artwork. Even the end-of-round bonus tiles showcase era-specific date ranges. And yet there’s not a lot here that truly connects to a narrative experience outside of the passage of time. No historical tidbits, no juicy gossip, no career highlights. But Devir knows how to produce a game, and they continue to choose great designs that are a lot of fun to puzzle through. Even with the thematic disconnect, I’d still place this in the upper tier of Devir’s collection, right below The Red Cathedral. And if you’ve taken time for yourself to heal from the news of Mozart’s sudden passing, there’s no better time than the present to see if this new addition to the mid-weight strategy game is as impressive to you as its inspiration is to so many others. A game of Lacrimosa is played over five rounds, each of them corresponding to a different creative stage in Mozart’s life. Each round begins with a Main phase where you take actions, followed by a Maintenance phase where you clean up and prepare for the next round. At the end of the fifth round and endgame scoring, whoever has the most victory points is the winner of the game. The last action, this fancy cross, is, thematically, you’re paying these composers to work on Mozart’s mass. Practically speaking, this is a little area control mechanic wrapped up with some engine building.

Wow. This game is gorgeous. The visually arresting box art for Lacrimosa is the most memorable box I’ve seen in the last five years. Thankfully, the artistic touch doesn’t end there. Devir spared no expense in the quality of the components in Lacrimosa, to the point where it is simply a pleasure to play. I get endless (probably too much) pleasure in the player board, which actually allows you to slide the cards inside it and stops them perfectly in place. It just feels right. Less Complex Than It Seems Either way, when you buy a card, you remove it from the market and slide all cards towards the right, then place a new card in the leftmost empty slot. Cards do get less expensive the longer they’ve been on the board, broadly speaking, but please also note that the four rightmost cards will get burnt at the end of each round.Players score the corresponding victory points for each of their markers in those sections. This is a very unique strategic element that can have a profound effect on final scoring in the game. If you love efficiency euros, you’ll enjoy Lacrimosa. It’s not going to become your favorite game, but you’ll have a decent-to-good time. Even if you love efficiency euros, it’s not worth seeking out in my opinion. Let Lacrimosa come to you. The theme is a welcome change from farming and war, even if it makes absolutely no intuitive sense in terms of gameplay, but there’s so much more to learn here than the decision space rewards. In the second section, single note has the majority again. Blue has a single and a double note, earning 6+3 = 9 points. Purple has a single note and earns 6 points. Royal Court tile exampleIf you take a city tile, you discard the tile to the side of the board after you gain its reward. The rewards could be resources, money, victory points, actions, and more. For example, there’s a city tile that grants you 3 VP for each religious music Opus card you have. This is one of the Opus card set collection benefits I mentioned above. Alternatively, if you take a royal court tile, you gain an immediate reward, then you take the tile which has an endgame scoring objective based either on Opus works you’ve funded (Opus cards in your tableau) or for your participation in completing the Requiem, which brings me to the fifth and final action in Lacrimosa.

As for the Pax Pamir remark, there was nothing disingenuous about it. As I sat down to teach a table of four Lacrimosa, my friend Nathan sat down with three people who’d never played Pax Pamir. Pax took maybe five more minutes to teach, and both games finished around the same time. In fact, I think Pax Pamir finished a bit earlier. With games like Pax Pamir, the rules overhead and playtime are often cited as the reasons for not playing. “It’s kind of late,”“I don’t want to learn a complicated game right now,” etc. Lacrimosa will appeal to many of the same people, but it doesn’t present as that sort of endeavor. Given that it is, I find it salient to note that Pax Pamir, even with its rules questions and exceptions, could be managed in the same amount of time. You are entirely correct to note that Lacrimosa is a smoother initial playing experience, but that wasn’t the point of the comparison. Players continue taking turns playing 2 cards from their hand into their player board and taking actions until all players have played 8 of their 9 cards, completing 4 turns. The 9th card is held over as part of your starting hand for the next round. Then there’s a Maintenance phase for income and cleanup to prepare for the next round. The final action is the requiem action, representing your involvement in Constanze (Mozart’s widow) pursuit to finish the final 5 movements of Mozart’s last work. This involves hiring 1 of 2 randomized composers to work on these sections in specific ways. There are so many different ways to play Lacrimosa that we haven’t yet settled on any primary strategy. Players may seem to be surging ahead with their tactful acquisition, performance, and sale of music, or they could be charging around Germany, visiting city after city. Players could be building progressively more powerful memory cards and leaning on period bonuses or Royal Tiles, or they could be banking on contributing the most to the Requiem, and scoring huge end-game points.

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So if you want the tile in that section from the top composer, you’ll need to put your token with the eighth note side facing up, you immediately get the bonus listed next to where that token was on your board, then you have to pay the cost shown on the tile you want. These get more expensive as you get deeper in the pile, so earlier is better.

Lacrimosa can be overwhelming when setting it up for the first time. Once you’ve processed all of it (or had someone explain it to you), it makes a lot of sense and flows well. Regrettably, this is not a game our kids were terribly interested in playing. This isn’t really a surprise to us, as the theme is a bit more adult, and it is on the complex side. I do think a game savvy 12-year-old can play this game mechanically without issue. But it takes a special kid to be interested in composers from the Classic period. Solo There are two elements in Lacrimosa that seem to trip people – the iconography and the area majority scoring for the Requiem. The icons for Documenting a Memory and Commissioning an Opus both focus on writing. They were similar enough that most players got them confused at least once. The physical production of the game is excellent. The triple-layer player boards are well made, and even handsome. The process of inserting your cards into the slots is tactile, practical, and makes the game incredibly tidy. It would be so easy for this playspace to be a disaster, and it isn’t. That said, the player boards increase wear on the cards, and some players will struggle with inserting their cards into such narrow slots.The left-most Opus costs 3 Talent points (2 + 1 showing above the card) and 8 ducats. The middle Opus costs 2 Talent and 8 ducats. The Memory card to the right costs 1 ducat and 1 story point of any kind (shown below the card) Perform or Sell Music Religious music is less expensive, but never raises money unless combined with a special power. Travel There are five main actions as well as free bonus actions associated with resource conversion. The five actions are as follows: I really dig Lacrimosa; everything from the theme, to the gameplay, to the components, feels smooth and well-crafted. I found the art to be lovely and very fitting as well, so kudos to Jared Blando and Enrique Corominas for their contributions. Plus, it's great that you can play Lacrimosa with four players in less than two hours, and it doesn't overstay its welcome. Double-note composer has the majority here. Yellow and Purple each have one double-note marker: they each earn 4 points. Blue has a single-note marker and earns just 2 points.

Final Score: 3.5 stars – A medley of mechanisms and quality production are almost enough to supplant the fact that Lacrimosa is missing a few notes.Thank you for reading, Hal, and for your comment. I agree that this review doesn’t work. It is too long for how little there is to say on its subject. I tried something—Hey, this game is too long for what it’s doing, what if the review were equally stagnant—and it didn’t work.