Published by Board&Dice, Tiletum is set during the Renaissance, with players seeking to build cathedrals, please nobles, trade at fairs, recruit characters and build houses. If that seems like a fairly eclectic and possibly confusing mix then you’d be right; the theme is probably not going to excite everyone. However, designers Daniele Tascini and Simone Luciani have devised some neat mechanics...
Scoring tiles are randomised each game and the core mechanic involves picking from the rolled dice to take resources and actions. The clever bit is that a high die will give you lots of resources but few actions, and vice versa. I’ve not seen anything quite like this in other games, so kudos for bringing us something new to play with.
Players will be moving their merchant around Europe to build houses and will send their architect to European cities to build columns which allow cathedrals to be constructed. You will be recruiting characters, winning contracts and moving up the king's track to determine turn order. If this sounds to you like a lot of options then you’re right. What's more, bonus tiles abound, many of which grant you bonus actions. Each time you place a character you get additional actions, and if you get a noble into play that'll give you even more actions.
None of the actions are particularly complicated, so Tiletum is not an especially heavy eurogame, but there's a lot going on. That means that working out what’s the best move can seem like an impossibly daunting task, and your opponents can do so much on their turns that it’s exceptionally hard to plan ahead.
Turns can be long then and there's a strong risk that analysis paralysis (AP) can kick in - so if your experience mirrors our plays at Board's Eye View you may just prefer Tiletum as a two-player game rather than at the maximum player count of four. And you can certainly avoid other players' AP with the included solo mode designed by David Turczi and Jeremy Avery.
(Review by Paul Moorshead)