Sanctuary

• Designer: Matthias Wigge
• Publisher: Capstone / Feuerland
• Players: 1-5
• Age: 12+
• Time: 40-100 mins
• Played twice with pre-production copy provided by publisher
• Played six times more with a real copy (provided by publisher)

In Sanctuary, you will plan and design a modern, scientifically-managed zoo for animals and visitors. A supply of 135 unique zoo tiles provides you with animals, buildings, and projects. In every game, you want to find the best mix from those available to build the most successful zoological establishment. Different effects on the tiles will help you to achieve conservation goals and to increase the attraction of your zoo.

Each player has a set of four action cards to manage their gameplay, and the power of an action is determined by the slot the card currently occupies. One of those cards will let you play projects, and the other three cards will let you play animals of a specific habitat: forest, rock, or water.

Sanctuary is based on its predecessor Ark Nova, but modifies and simplifies many of the mechanisms of that game in an elegant and surprising manner. Your goal to find the best way to puzzle together your animals, buildings, and projects on your zoo map is an ongoing pleasure!

Each player gets their own board (and plays on a matching side to all the other players) which represents their zoo.  Players take a set of action cards, and each player places the arrow on their purple Projects card so that it points to their position in player order.  The other three action cards are randomly placed in the other 3 slots.  The tiles are shuffled and six of them are placed on the Market display board.  Finally 5 Conservation objections are chosen and placed on the conservation board (out of ten possible options). 

On a turn, you first do the two mandatory portions (taking a tile and then performing an action with a card) and then decide on a few optional actions.

1a] Take a tile in range – Take a tile from the display board that is in range, the range being set by the position of the arrow on your purple Projects action card.  (Note that this is the only time that range applies to taking a tile; if you get a tile later in your turn, you can choose from anywhere in the display).  

1b] Use an Action card – shift one of your action cards downwards a bit to show you are using it, then perform one of the two actions listed on it – allowing you to either draw tiles or play tiles from your hand to your board.  If you take an action to play a tile, the value of the action (i.e. the number that the arrow on the card points to) must be equal or higher to the level printed on the tile you are playing. If playing an animal tile, you must use an action that matches the habitat of the animal.

Tiles must be placed on empty spaces, and they must always be adjacent to a previously placed tile or your zoo entrance.  You cannot rotate your tiles, the title must always be at the bottom.  Some tiles give you placement bonuses, take these immediately as you play them into your area.  For instance, if you are able to place a male and female tile of a species adjacent to each other, take a Conservation marker. Finally, once played, tiles may have either one-time or ongoing effects.  You can tell the difference by both icon and color of the box for the effect.   

Once you have completed the action, take the card used for the action and slide it all the way to the leftmost spot on your board, moving all the cards in between to the right. 

2a] Play a Building (Optional) – you may play one blue building tile, but you must be able to meet the condition for playing found on the bottom left of the building tile. This may also trigger other effects.

2b] Support a Conservation objective (Optional) – you can support exactly 1 Conservation objective by counting the number of icons in your zoo that match the objective you want to support. You can discard conservation markers to increase your total. Place an unused Achievement marker with the matching number of icons face down on the conservation board under the particular objective you are supporting.

2c] Upgrade Action cards (Optional) – each player has a set of 4 upgrade markers, each with a different criteria.  You can discard one of your upgrade markers whose criteria you have met and then flip over any of your Action cards to the upgraded side.  This increases the action value by 1 as well as possibly giving you better action options on the card.

Once all of these options have been considered, there is a bit of cleanup.  If you have more than 6 tiles, you must discard down to this limit.  Replenish the tile market by sliding everything down and refilling from the top. Finally, check to see if the game has ended  There are three possible end conditions:

• A player has used all four of their Conservation markers
• A player has filled in his entire player board
• The tile supply is exhausted

The game ends differently depending on which end game trigger is met.  If a player ends the game (by using all their Conservation markers or completely filling in their board), that player takes the 10VP bonus token and then everyone else gets one more turn before the game ends. Anyone else who manages to meet the endgame criteria on their final turn gets a 5VP bonus tile.  If the tile supply is exhausted, the game ends immediately and no one gets a bonus VP tile.

Players now calculate their score

• Points on all the tiles in their player board
• Points on Achievement markers played to the Conservation board
• 2VP per pouch marker
• 2VP per conservation marker 
• 10/5 VP for endgame bonus tile if acquired

The player with the most points wins.  Ties broken in favor of the player with the most animals in their zoo.

My thoughts on the game

Sanctuary was sold to me as the quicker, easier, more streamlined version of Ark Nova.  That pretty much got me super interested.  I know that Ark Nova has a LOT of fans in our hobby, but I always found the game a bit long and super complicated with lots of little steps needed to do anything.   I was never a big fan of Ark Nova, though admittedly, I had really only played in less-than-ideal settings (generally at conventions).

Sure, the theme is all Ark Nova, and the action card system felt very familiar.  All of the pieces in Sanctuary are hexes, and it immediately made me think of Suburbia – a game that is very dear to me (As I’m the developer)….  

As with many tile laying games (not just Suburbia), a lot of the strategy is getting the right tiles in the right places.  You have to always place adjacent to previously played tiles or your zoo entrance, so you sometimes pick up a tile that you want to play, but then need to wait a bit until you are able to play it in the optimal location.  There are plenty of tiles that require adjacency to other certain tiles, though there are also plenty of bonuses that apply globally.  It’s a fun challenge to work out where and when you will play the tiles to your zoo board.  

Now that I’ve played it a bunch, I’ve definitely seen (and tried) a number of different strategies – and that bodes well for the future lifespan of the game.  In my first game, I got blitzed by an opponent who tried to fill his board as quickly as possible.  You can possibly play a tile each turn with an appropriate action.  If you play tiles that require empty spaces, you can add those tiles facedown from your hand.  You can also play an “extra” tile on your turn if you have an appropriate building in your hand.   

In another game, I tried to focus on two particular icons and tried to maximize the synergy in scoring bonuses for that icon as well as maxing out the conservation bonus for it.  While mostly successful, it was defeated by a player who went for the well-rounded approach, triggering the game end by getting his four conservation achievement markers down quickly.

I’ve also been crushed by someone who focused on two continents and got all of the projects and bonus buildings to go with those.  

The game allows for all of these different strategies because it gives you plenty of options to get tiles.  You’re guaranteed one tile per turn, though you’re limited to your reach in the market based on the position of your purple action.  Further, if you choose not to play a tile from your hand, you can draw one or two more tiles.  Above that, many of the tiles give you tile drawing actions, either as a bonus for playing that tile to the board or an ongoing effect dependent on future tile plays.  It was actually surprising how often the 6 tile hand limit came into play.  

Tile luck is still obviously a thing here (as it’s a tile game), but in a 4 player game, we got down to the last ten tiles in the draw pile when the end-game was triggered.  Also, running out of tiles is a game ending condition, so it’s clear that this is a situation that can occur.  I like this aspect of the game as it means that you’ll see most of the tiles in a game.  Also, as I mentioned above, as it’s fairly easy to draw tiles, you have plenty of choices for strategy – and oftentimes, the ability to switch direction entirely given that wide choice.

There are definitely things to consider each turn, but the game doesn’t feel overly complex.  Everyone in my two teaching games pretty much felt comfortable with the flow of the game by the midpoint – though there’s obviously a bit of a learning curve with all of the tiles (until you’re familiar with what is possible on the tiles, it takes a bit longer to process them to figure out their value).  

The game definitely plays quickly, even in a learning game, and we’re down to around 20 minutes per player now.   The turn flow is very streamlined – choose a tile and add it to your hand, then use one of the four action cards available to you.  As with Ark Nova, the strength of the action is based on its location in the line, and then once used, it moves back to the weakest position in line.  You often have to time your actions well to move particular action cards to their desired place in line – generally in order to play a high value tile to your board.

Upgrading your action cards is also a huge benefit – as you essentially gain a +1 on your action power regardless of its place on the line.  The first upgrade can actually come fairly early in the game as you can trigger one from your first conservation achievement – and this can be had with as few as 2 matching icons in your zoo.  There is a fine balance here though, as you can shut yourself out of a huge conservation score by declaring in that category too early!

I had projected this to be a big hit when I first played the prototype, and the production version is definitely becoming a big favorite around here.  It has been great at both 2 players as well as the full player counts, and that has also helped it continue to be played.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Larry:  Ark Nova is better, but this also plays very well and will undoubtedly be a better choice with 3.  Sanctuary is still probably too long for 4 players, which is a bit of a downer, but this is still a very good game that I’ll be happy to play again.

Dan B.: I understand why fans of Ark Nova might not like Sanctuary as much (or at all), since it does remove some aspects of the original that are interesting. However, removing those things streamlines the game enough that I would generally prefer to play Sanctuary, although I’d still be willing to play Ark Nova, especially with two players.

Mark Jackson: Sanctuary is easier to teach than Ark Nova, shorter to play, and still very enjoyable. For solo or two players with lots of time on our hands, my preferred way to play is Ark Nova with Marine Worlds expansion. With more players or limited time, Sanctuary is the way to go.

I will note that Capstone has two solo challenge sheets as downloads on their Sanctuary page (under Resources) that make the solo game of Sanctuary more interesting.

Doug G.: Shelley and I had a great time with this game, feeling much as Dale does that while we respect Ark Nova, this is the game that will stay in our collection going forward. In fact, it made my Top 5 of 2025. We discussed the game extensively back in December on Episode 1024 of our podcast (https://traffic.libsyn.com/garrettsgames/GarrettsGames1024.mp3) as well as in a video review here: Garrett’s Games Reviews Sanctuary from Capstone Games and Feuerland Spiele!

Nate Beeler: I love Ark Nova. But sometimes it’s a bit more of a game than I want in the moment. Sanctuary was presented to me as a way to get my Ark Nova fix in an easier to swallow smaller dose. It didn’t play out that way in my experience. What I got instead was a third of the fun of Ark Nova in two thirds the time. Meh. I’ll stick with the original, and if I don’t have time or energy I’ll play one of many better games at Sanctuary’s weight.

Jonathan: Sanctuary is an excellent weeknight game. Enough to feel like more than super-filler, but not too much after a workday.  I am not sure if the Ark Nova tie-in helped or hurt it.  Ark Nova is a hot game among heavy players and I love it on BGA. Sanctuary is a game you can play while chatting or lamenting the tile the player to your right took.  If you can accept the luck of the draw, give it a go. I am learning that I am a sucker for games that include cards/tiles with tags.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!  Dale Y, Mark Jackson, Doug G., Jonathan
• I like it.  Larry, Dan B., Craig M.
• Neutral.
• Not for me…Nate Beeler