Cathedral
My wife and I have really been enjoying the game Cathedral lately. I picked up the travel edition a while ago and it is excellent. It’s the exact same game as the larger version, except with magnet pieces and a much easier to handle box. I’m really impressed with the quality, with beautiful hardwood pieces and a really nice wooden storage case with a metal clasp and handle. The game of Cathedral itself is a pretty easy abstract strategy game where each player places down differently shaped pieces on a grid to try and wall off portions of the board. The person who ends up putting down the most pieces wins.
The game is akin to checkers or chess in the sense that it’s really easy to learn but can be as easy or hard as your opponent makes it.
But with all this praise there must be a dark cloud, and it’s a biggie. I haven’t seen how the pieces are stored in the full version, but in the travel edition the pieces need to be placed in perfectly, like in the picture up there, to get the plastic cover on that holds them in place. Unfortunately the only guide you have to putting them in is this plastic cover that only helps by either fitting on top or not - very little help in putting the bits back in the box. The first time we played it took me an entire half hour to get them back in. This oversight is surprising given the overall quality of the game and is the kind of thing that could bring me to banish it to the back closet, along with our spanish language Monopoly, never to be seen again. My wife and I really enjoyed playing though, so I decided to take all the pieces out again and create a guide of where the tiles go. I sized the image so that it can be trimmed and laid directly into the bottom of the box, allowing me to put the pieces right on top when we’re through.
So, for anyone else that decides to purchase the game, or has shelved it in frustration, I have provided a copy of the map here for your downloading pleasure.
By the way, if you’re interested in checking out Cathedral then you can find it at a lot of places. But, if you are local to the Berlin, NJ area then you should pick up your copy at All Things Fun! - my (and your’s too if you’ve ever been) favorite gaming store.
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