Sandcastles

• Designer: Alex Cutler
• Publisher: Pandasaurus
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 8+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

It’s a perfect day at the beach, and the only thing left to settle is whose sandcastle reigns supreme! Sandcastles is a drafting and tile-laying game for 2-6 players in which everyone building their own sandcastle, tile by tile, over 15 rounds.

Each round, one player reveals tiles one at a time and passes them around the table. Every player must decide in the moment whether to claim the current tile or hold out for something better later in the round — but once you take a tile, you’re done for that round, whatever comes next. The tile you claim gets added to your sandcastle, a 5×5 grid anchored by your Starter Tile at the bottom center. Sand tiles build up from the ground following the rules of gravity, while sky tiles float at the top and drop down to rest on your highest sand tiles at game end.

Scoring rewards players for building strategically:
• Windows score based on how many appear in each horizontal row, with points jumping at specific thresholds.
•Starfish score when placed adjacent to others of the same color, and collecting all five colors earns a bonus.
• Shells, shovels, and buckets each carry flat point values, with end-game bonuses for whoever collects the most of each.
• Filling your top row with five sky tiles earns a bonus as well.

The player whose sandcastle totals the most points wins the title of Best Sandcastle at the Beach!

To start, each player gets a Starter tile – it is put in front of the player as the middle tile in the bottom row of a 5×5 grid.  The tiles are mixed face down on the table, and the supply for the game is created based on player count (15 tiles per player).  

In each round, players will draft a tile to add to their sandcastle.  The starting player for the round draws a number of tiles equal to the number of players, keeping them face down. Then he flips over one of them and decides to keep it or not.  If they keep it, it is placed into their sandcastle (more on this in a bit).  If they don’t want it, they pass it to the player on their left and that player has the same options.  If the tile goes all the way around to the last player (who hasn’t taken a tile yet this round), that player is forced to keep it.  Once a player chooses a tile in the round, they must pass for the rest of the round.

When you place tiles, you (sort of) follow the rules of gravity.  For sandy tiles, they must be placed on the lowest level of your 5×5 grid or directly on top of another sand tile.  For sky tiles, they are placed at the top row of your grid and they hover there until the end of the game.  At the end, they will drop down and settle on top of the column of sand tiles beneath them.  It is important to remember that you cannot rotate the tiles, they must always be placed so that their tile number is in the bottom center.

At the end of a round, the next player clockwise becomes the start player and the process repeats itself.  At the end of the fifteenth and final round, players score their castle.

• Birds – score points based on the number of birds on your sky tiles
• Windows – for each row of your castle, score for the number of windows found there
• Starfish – Each pair of same colored starfish that are orthogonally adjacent is 3pts. Starfish can be used in multiple pairings.  Also 5 point bonus if you have at least one of each of the 5 different colors of starfish
• Shells – 1 point each, 3 point bonus to the player with the most
• Shovels – 2 points each, 2 point bonus to the player with the most
• Buckets – 3 points each, 1 point bonus to the player with the most
• Sky Tiles – 5 points if you have 5 Sky Tiles in your Sandcastle

The player with the most points wins. Ties broken in favor of the player with the most sky tiles.

My thoughts on the game

Sandcastles is a new small format game where players push their luck to draft the best cards for their sand castle. The sequential play or pass system really is interesting.  Early on, the active player may pass on a decent card hoping for something better – but man, it can really get dicey when you’re down to the final one or two cards in a round!  While it takes a bit longer than a traditional drafting system, I really like the excitement that Sandcastles brings to this phase of the game.

Placing the cards is pretty simple, just stay in a 5×5 grid, making sure that land tiles follow gravity and sink to the bottom and ignoring physics for the sky cards.  Though it doesn’t seem like much, I would have appreciated either paper boards or punchout 5×5 frames to keep players more aware of their boundaries.

Admittedly, each of the 15 rounds in the game plays out like all the others, but your desires may change based on what you have collected thus far and what your opponents are trying to do.  I will say that it’s harder to take things defensively in this game because you simply don’t know what might come next. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to fall on your sword to prevent a later player from getting a matching starfish icon unless you want the tile yourself… because there is a pretty even chance that a later tile could also have the same icon.

(Editor rant on) So, let’s talk a bit about the new strategy to completely ignore formatting with modern game titles.  To me, the title is “Sand Castles”, but if you search for this online, you’ll not find it as the official title is “Sandcastles”.  I had a similar issue with Sanc Tuary.  Couldn’t find that one on the ‘Geek either.  It’s a minor thing, but it does handicap people who are trying to search for it and learn more about it.  (Editor rant off)

The rules are pretty easy to get through, though the scoring can be a bit complicated the first time through.  There is a helpful score reminder given, but only one copy on the back page of rules.  I feel like the scoring is complicated enough (i.e. having to count the windows and remember the starfish patterns) that each player should have their own scoring reference.  I made some copying and pasting the rules pdf found online – but this is something that I feel could have been included.

Sandcastles is an engaging game that definitely doesn’t take too long to play.  There are only fifteen rounds, and players only get one tile per round.  (Not sure why the 4p game hasn’t been changed to 16 rounds to ensure that all players get the same number of turns in each drafting position).  The auction system keeps everyone involved, and there are some tough choices to be made; players will have to choose when to push their luck for a better tile as opposed to taking the sure thing now.  This is a nice little filler game, and I suspect we’ll be playing it through the summer when we want a quick and easy game. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y, John P
• Neutral.
• Not for me…