The Meeple Guild has been gaming together for years, so you might expect we’d have a pretty good sense of which new games will be a hit with the group.
That isn’t always the case.
Recently, Sauros, designed by Cole Smith and published by Tangerine Games, arrived courtesy of randolph.ca.
I tore through the cellophane, curious to see what was inside. While dinosaurs were undeniably “hot” a quarter-century ago, thanks to Jurassic Park in 1993 and the Toronto NBA expansion franchise adopting the Raptors name a couple of years later, dinosaur mania has certainly cooled since then.
Inside the box were some wonderfully chunky tiles engraved with colorful dinosaurs and related iconography. I’ve since seen others compare them to Mahjong tiles, but my immediate thought was that they felt a lot like the pieces from Hive. Either way, they are satisfying to handle and make an excellent first impression.
The remaining components are functional, but they don’t quite match the quality of the dinosaur tiles. The scoring markers are simple cardboard chits, and a scoring track board would have been a better solution. Likewise, the player boards are cardboard. While perfectly serviceable, neoprene mats would have complemented the premium feel of the tiles much better. The designers also missed an opportunity to include alternate board layouts on the reverse side.
The rulebook is well organized and easy to follow for a game that combines two familiar mechanisms.
The dinosaur tiles represent four different suits, and players compete in a trick-taking format over seven rounds. The game uses a standard “must-follow” rule, requiring players to play the led suit if possible, along with a changing trump suit that varies from trick to trick.
Winning tricks isn’t directly tied to scoring. Instead, the winner of each trick gains two tiles while the remaining players each take one. Those tiles are then placed on individual player boards as part of the game’s tableau-building element.
This is where players begin creating scoring patterns using the various icons found on the tiles.
For example, an isolated claw icon scores two points, while two adjacent footprints score five points. Interestingly, three adjacent footprints score nothing. Players can also earn points for connecting tiles of the same color and through several other scoring combinations.
One noteworthy aspect is that the player boards are asymmetrical, with players rotating to different boards from round to round. On paper, that sounds intriguing. In practice, however, the differences between the boards never felt significant enough to meaningfully influence strategy or final scores.
The scoring options became one of the major points of discussion as The Meeple Guild dissected the game after several plays.
While Sauros offers multiple paths to score points, those paths do not feel particularly well-balanced. The highest scores tend to come from building a large cluster of a single suit or focusing heavily on the bone-and-egg scoring combinations. The other scoring opportunities simply don’t seem competitive if victory is the goal.
Meepler Adam wasn’t particularly impressed with the trick-taking portion of the game, questioning whether it added much to the experience. I could see the strategic value; however, as card play directly influences the tiles available for building toward a particular tableau strategy.
For me, the combination of trick-taking and tableau building helped keep the game feeling fresh. It is easy to teach, plays quickly, and offers enough decision-making to remain engaging throughout.
Ultimately, Sauros, which plays three to five players, proved surprisingly divisive within our group. Adam didn’t care for it very much. I, on the other hand, enjoyed it quite a bit. Trevor found himself somewhere in the middle, occupying the no-man’s-land between those two opinions.
That split reaction may be the best summary of Sauros: a game with some clever ideas and excellent components that will likely appeal to some players far more than others.
About Author
Calvin Daniels is a Saskatchewan-born, self-taught journalist. He is currently Editor of Yorkton This Week, with 35-years in the newspaper business.
Sauros divides The Meeple Guild
That isn’t always the case.
Recently, Sauros, designed by Cole Smith and published by Tangerine Games, arrived courtesy of randolph.ca.
I tore through the cellophane, curious to see what was inside. While dinosaurs were undeniably “hot” a quarter-century ago, thanks to Jurassic Park in 1993 and the Toronto NBA expansion franchise adopting the Raptors name a couple of years later, dinosaur mania has certainly cooled since then.
Inside the box were some wonderfully chunky tiles engraved with colorful dinosaurs and related iconography. I’ve since seen others compare them to Mahjong tiles, but my immediate thought was that they felt a lot like the pieces from Hive. Either way, they are satisfying to handle and make an excellent first impression.
The remaining components are functional, but they don’t quite match the quality of the dinosaur tiles. The scoring markers are simple cardboard chits, and a scoring track board would have been a better solution. Likewise, the player boards are cardboard. While perfectly serviceable, neoprene mats would have complemented the premium feel of the tiles much better. The designers also missed an opportunity to include alternate board layouts on the reverse side.
The rulebook is well organized and easy to follow for a game that combines two familiar mechanisms.
The dinosaur tiles represent four different suits, and players compete in a trick-taking format over seven rounds. The game uses a standard “must-follow” rule, requiring players to play the led suit if possible, along with a changing trump suit that varies from trick to trick.
Winning tricks isn’t directly tied to scoring. Instead, the winner of each trick gains two tiles while the remaining players each take one. Those tiles are then placed on individual player boards as part of the game’s tableau-building element.
This is where players begin creating scoring patterns using the various icons found on the tiles.
For example, an isolated claw icon scores two points, while two adjacent footprints score five points. Interestingly, three adjacent footprints score nothing. Players can also earn points for connecting tiles of the same color and through several other scoring combinations.
One noteworthy aspect is that the player boards are asymmetrical, with players rotating to different boards from round to round. On paper, that sounds intriguing. In practice, however, the differences between the boards never felt significant enough to meaningfully influence strategy or final scores.
The scoring options became one of the major points of discussion as The Meeple Guild dissected the game after several plays.
While Sauros offers multiple paths to score points, those paths do not feel particularly well-balanced. The highest scores tend to come from building a large cluster of a single suit or focusing heavily on the bone-and-egg scoring combinations. The other scoring opportunities simply don’t seem competitive if victory is the goal.
Meepler Adam wasn’t particularly impressed with the trick-taking portion of the game, questioning whether it added much to the experience. I could see the strategic value; however, as card play directly influences the tiles available for building toward a particular tableau strategy.
For me, the combination of trick-taking and tableau building helped keep the game feeling fresh. It is easy to teach, plays quickly, and offers enough decision-making to remain engaging throughout.
Ultimately, Sauros, which plays three to five players, proved surprisingly divisive within our group. Adam didn’t care for it very much. I, on the other hand, enjoyed it quite a bit. Trevor found himself somewhere in the middle, occupying the no-man’s-land between those two opinions.
That split reaction may be the best summary of Sauros: a game with some clever ideas and excellent components that will likely appeal to some players far more than others.
About Author
Calvin Daniels
Calvin Daniels is a Saskatchewan-born, self-taught journalist. He is currently Editor of Yorkton This Week, with 35-years in the newspaper business.
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