Sardegna Gateway Area Control Board Game by Stefan Dorra | 30 Minute | 2-4 Players

Great game. Engaging, easy to learn but hard to master. Convenient to keep in my game bag as some extra to play between the bigger, longer games.

Very fun game, great production. I love the work Playte are doing and I hope they keep releasing forgotten classics. I would to see reprinted other Stefan Dorra classics. I don't love the aeshetics. I think the art is too generic and a bit soulless, but the game is great and the production is 10/10.

Excelente juego de mayorías!

It’s pretty easy to get the hang of, and it’s a lot of fun to play. The build quality is excellent, and the way the board closes saves quite a bit of space. Highly recommend!

This is a very interesting strategic game that is very fun to play. The design of the game is innovative in itself as it is a very compact package with the box itself becoming the board. It's almost a puzzle when folding it back up again to put the game away, but it's a neat design and makes the game very portable for travel. The game itself is an area majority type game with action selection. Each player is trying to gain influence in different provinces around the map in the hope of scoring the most points at the end of each round. Influence in a province is gained by placing items that each player has on the board. Forts and villages stay in one place once placed. Ships, villagers and priests can be moved to different provinces once placed on subsequent turns. Every player has the same number of different actions they can take each round and can choose to play them in any order on their turns. The actions are based on 7 character cards that each player has, all of which can be played once per round. I won't describe all the actions, but one of the characters is a sentinel, which once played initiates the scoring for that round, and everyone gets their set of played character cards back. Thus one player in the game on each round can choose to effectively end that round and apply the scoring as it stands. This can be a very strategic move as other players strategy might be based on keeping the round going longer. The neat aspect to scoring is that different provinces are going to score each round and players are ware of which ones will score this round and for the next round to be played. It's a real balance trying to score best on a round and set yourself up for the next round. The game is quite easy to teach, straight forward to set up, but like all good table top games it is very strategic and there is a lot of choice in the turn taking to optimize your position. The game is also very visually appealing, the artwork on the character cards is simple but very well done. The items, forts, villagers, priests etc. are nicely made painted wooden pieces. And the aforementioned board itself is a fantastic design with the way it becomes the box itself, however it is not perfect in it's ability to lay flat and aligned on the table top. All in all a very enjoyable game which is also not too long in duration.

Beautifully made and with interesting game mechanics. I particularly liked the unfolding box design. The main reason for 3/5 rating is how poorly the game instructions are written - typos are not a big deal, but multiple differences in rule verbiage between quick lookup sheet and rulebook were a big disappointment. This is something you can get over if you write up your own cleaned up version of the rules, but some frustration should be expected on the first few games. Examples of poor verbiage: 1. Quick lookup card, "Commander": "add 1 villager to any unfilled province". Rulebook never mentions "unfilled" requirement in description of this card, instead stating "add 1 villager from your supply to any province". There is a similar difference for "Priest" and "Architect". It is possible to come to conclusion that quick lookup card's "unfilled" refers to the limit of max 7 pieces per province, but this really needs to be stated in the rulebook section explaining the card as well. 2. Quick lookup card, "Farmer": does not list requirement for villager in province you are harvesting at. Rulebook does. 3. Quick lookup, "Sentinel": verbiage implies only the player who played this card retrieves his cards. Rulebook has all players retrieve cards (which makes sense from game mechanics). Above differences in verbiage make a big difference on what a player can actually do and will lead to disagreements and frustration when one new player reads the rulebook and the other new player is using the quick lookup card to plan his/her turn.

In a world where it seems board games are getting so big and bloated (in their size and form factor), it’s quite refreshing to see a game that packs quite a lot into such a small package. This isn’t some gimmicky small game that contains next to nothing inside, you’re basically getting a full sized Euro game in a box 5x smaller than normal - which is awesome! The box itself transforms/folds out to become the boards you will use to play, which might annoy some people just with how it’s impossible to get it to lay completely flat. For me, a totally fine trade off for what it provides. As far as gameplay goes, it’s a super fun area control game that took me by surprise! The art style is super refreshing and the game play is unique where, each round, only 2 scoring locations will trigger (as opposed to just the whole area/every location). This is a nice refreshing twist that adds in additional strategy compared to some of the normal area control type games you might be used to. The one downside for me personally, is that I’d really only recommend this game at 3-4 players. Sure it plays at 2, but given the nature of area control games, more people is better. My score doesn’t lower because of that because I wouldn’t expect this to play best at 2, but I typically play 2 player so just something of note. It’s got a pretty streamlined ruleset and while difficulty of learning is always super subjective, I’d say for more of the general public this will lean more on the tougher side if you’re not something playing modern hobby board games all the time. Overall it was a fun experience and recommend if you’re looking for a great game in a small package!