In Dunaïa each player is a tribal chief, erecting buildings, assembling artefacts and trying to fulfil the prophecies, in order to become a protector of the Dunaias!
2-4 players
60 minutes
Designer: Thomas Dupont
Publisher: Sébastien Caiveau
Publisher: BLAM!
https://blam-edition.com/en
Each turn, players will draft dice to awaken a Dunaia on their player board, and thus activating both sites adjacent to it. This way, players gain metal flowers and memory chips, but also construct buildings with more powerful effects or endgame points. Then the player ‘recycles’ that die by placing it on the main board or any completed level 1 building, allowing them to take a special action. During their turn, players can also pay memory chips to gain artefact fragments and extra actions, like moving their Dunaias.
The game ends when the 3 prophecies are fulfilled, or when a player completed his or her ninth building.
Players receive points mainly for prophecy tiles they acquired, completed buildings and artefacts.
Despite its easy and straightforward rules, Dunaia pleasantly surprised me with the level of depth the game offers. It manages to combine dice drafting and engine building in a very fresh and tactical way, with the timing of which Dunaias to activate being way more crucial than I thought it would be. Also seeing your player board evolve over the course of the game, with more powerful buildings to activate and possible combos to create feels very satisfying for me. I easily see Dunaia to become one of the surprise hits of the year!
Tabletopping 