Base price: $12.
2 players.
Play time: ~15 minutes.
BGG Link
Check it out on Kickstarter!
Logged plays: 3

Full disclosure: A preview copy of Dionysia was provided by Button Shy. Some art, gameplay, or other aspects of the game may change between this preview and the fulfillment of the Kickstarter, should it fund, as this is a preview of a currently unreleased game. 

Alright, back to Kickstarter previews! There are a few in the next couple months, so thankfully I’m … behind, as always. I’d love to blame it on Game Changer, but honestly, it’s just been a lot of life stuff, lately. I’m doing well! Just a lot going on. Ask me about it at Gen Con sometime, or one of the PAXs I attend. PAX Unplugged is my favorite, but I have the most downtime at PAX West. Anyways, con season is on the horizon, so another thing to be excited about. That and crowdfunding, though they go hand-in-hand. This week we’re back with another game from our friends at Button Shy, so let’s check it out!

In Dionysia, your goal is to tell a tale worthy of the gods and ages. It’s the tradition of your people and you don’t want to let them down! You’re not the only game in town, however, so you’ll need to pit yourself against another person whose sights are set on tales of heroes and glory and combat. It’s a whole thing. So tell the stories, sing the songs, and set those tropes in motion so that your words are remembered and your characters immortalized. Will you be able to enthrall your audience?

Contents

• Setup
• Gameplay
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

Setup

Almost none. Shuffle the cards:

Deal three into the center near the deck; you’re ready to start!

Gameplay

Not a particularly intense game from a rules standpoint. Your goal is to craft a play worthy of the gods, and that’s a process in three Acts.

Each round, players alternate taking one card from the center and adding it to the top or bottom of Act 1 / Act 2 / Act 3. You must declare which Act you’re adding a card to when you place it, so no shifting acts around later. As you do, you’ll potentially activate instant effects and start setting up combos for later. Once both players have taken a card, refill the center back to three and start a new round with the player who went last taking the first turn.

After all cards have been claimed, the game ends! Each player scores their patterns, earning points for each instance of the topmost pattern on their three Acts. They can be left-to-right or top-to-bottom, and they can overlap with other instances of the same pattern (so if you had a pattern that was three consecutive pots, four consecutive pots would be two instances of that pattern [the first three and the last three], for instance. The player with more points wins!

Player Count Differences

None; two-player game.

Strategy

• It’s not necessarily a bad idea to deny your opponent the cards they need. The cards are pretty multipurpose, so you really can just take something and kind of figure it out as long as it’s not specifically unhelpful for you. Plus, that might be just the thing that messes up their pattern or blocks a high-scoring move for them.
• You can also leave them with only bad choices, depending on what their cards are. Towards the end of the round they won’t necessarily have great options, especially if certain Act Cards only reward them if they’re missing certain symbol types. Forcing them to take one is definitely not great for them, even more so if you took the only card that was useful.
• Keep an eye on your patterns, but you’ll only score so much from them. They’re the bulk of your points, generally, but not all of your points, you understand? You still want to set up your Acts so you have other options for earning points.
• You don’t generally want Instant Effect cards at the top of your Acts at the end of the game unless you’re really crushing it on patterns. Some have more points for patterns, but you might have better luck with the cards that have end-game scoring options for their Acts; they’re usually worth a good number of points, too.
• Changing your patterns late-game is a recipe for disaster. You don’t have to stick to them entirely, depending on how you’ve set up your board, but I wouldn’t necessarily recommend trying to completely overhaul the thing. A few are more flexible depending on placement, but a lot are not. That said, there is at least one card that lets you rearrange an Act…
• There are only so many cards with each symbol; overindexing on them might not work if your opponent has some. Just don’t expect pots or knives or skulls when all their respective cards have already been played; that’s a recipe for heartache.
• Keep in mind when you’re going to get the first turn next round. You essentially get to pull twice, so you can set up more effective placements or combos if you’re paying attention.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• Thematically and art-wise, this game is immaculate; I love its whole vibe so much. It’s got that Hercules / Grecian urn vibe going for it and I love the theming! It’s a lot of fun and the art looks impeccable. Big fan.
• There’s a good bit of strategy for a little game! Placement and ordering matters as well as patterns and how they shift. The spatial puzzle is nontrivial.
• I really want to give bonus points to players if they can describe the plot of their play at the end of the game. I’m not going to, but I might still make a few opponents tell me more about their play or something.
• It’s got a similar vibe to Skulls of Sedlec, if y’all Button Shy fans are fans of that. I think it’s the high-concept theme and very challenging placement that bring that out for me, but there’s also a good spatial puzzle to both games, as fans will remember! I was a huge fan of Skulls of Sedlec, so I’m always down for something that feels similar.
• High portability is always good! The Button Shy advantage! Sometimes I take 15 of them on trips with me, being honest.

Mehs

• The text is pretty small, but what can you do. It just means you should double-check the Act effects to make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into. I’ve made the occasional mistake though now I’m much more familiar with the cards. That’s always the disadvantage of text over pure iconography: cards are kind of small.

Cons

• Having to declare the Act you’re playing to feels a little clunky, just as a consequence of there being no real space or indicator that you did that. I don’t especially worry that players will forget which Act is which, but I do generally like having some way to distinguish that I played to Act II or Act III when I’ve placed cards. Naturally, with Button Shy, that’s not going to happen, and it’s not a huge problem, but there will certainly be times during the game where you wish you could migrate cards from one Act to another, for instance.

Overall: 7.75 / 10

Overall, I think Dionysia is pretty fun! I’m a sucker for any Greek themes, and though the mythology isn’t the theme, it’s the mythos-as-meta-theme that I’m really into! Here, you’re getting to craft a story for the masses, and following certain tropes and patterns and using certain devices is going to get the crowd behind you and earn you points (and hopefully fame and favor). I like that a lot, and I like how that’s been modeled into the game itself. I almost wish there were more to it, but then we’d be getting closer to Before There Were Stars…, which fell a bit flat for me. This is more spatial puzzle than storytelling, and even though I don’t like having to declare my cards and my acts before I have all three, I like the other components a lot. I’m intrigued by the solo variant that’s on BGG; I’d love to see how that folds into the main game without a second player. Something to look forward to on that front. I bet the wallet is going to look incredible, also. I do think Button Shy focuses a lot on spatial reasoning games, and this is no exception, but that means that I think if you’re already playing some Button Shy games and enjoying them, you’ll likely like this one too. I’ll be interested to see how it fits in with the other similar games: you see some more than others (Sprawlopolis and co, Skulls of Sedlec vs., say, Seasons of Rice, another great Button Shy spatial title). Who knows; I’m not a marketer. If you’re a fan of spatial reasoning, Greek mythos, or you just want to try your hand at play construction, Dionysia might be right up your alley! I think it’s neat.

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