Dionysia

Players: 2 players
Play time: 15 min
BGG rating: 7.1

All of Athens has turned out for the Dionysia, a grand theatrical festival to honor the god Dionysus. Impress the crowds with your well-crafted drama to win the playwriting competition as well as the favor of the gods! Draft and craft a better drama than your opponent to secure the favor of the gods at this year’s Dionysia. As you take a scene from the central stage and add it to your developing play, you’ll need to decide whether to start a new act (to a max of 3) or add it to the top/bottom of an existing act. Create specific scoring patterns of dramatic elements through careful arrangement of your scenes while taking advantage of powerful effects available through each act’s key (topmost) scene. After each play has 3 acts of 3 scenes each, players score each act based on its key scene and pattern. Whoever has the most points is favored by the gods and wins the playwriting competition! Shuffle all 18 scene cards and reveal 3 of them in the shared stage between the players. Each turn, the active player chooses one of these scenes and adds it to their play, then refills the stage for the next player. To add a scene, the player may create a new act in their play (to a maximum of 3). They may instead choose to upstage or downstage the existing scenes in an act, placing the new scene at the top or bottom (respectively) of the act. The topmost card in an act is the key scene, which sets the scoring conditions for the end of the game. Many cards also have immediate effects that occur when that scene is placed in the key scene position. Each card features an assortment of dramatic elements that are used to create scoring patterns of rows and columns. Once both players have a tableau consisting of 3 acts of 3 scenes each, these patterns are evaluated based on the key scenes for each act. The amount of favor earned can vary depending on the key scene, with each set of 3 specific icons in either a row or column earning the listed amount of favor. The player who earns the most favor is the winner!