Deus

Deus is a game from 2014. Back then it was nominated for many game awards. I remember it as a highly regarded game. I did not have a chance to play it then. I only played it for the first time recently, and I played on online implementation. 

In Deus, you develop your nation one building at a time. Some help you score points during the game. You will capture barbarian villages and earn points. Temples you build will score points at game end. Leftover resources in every type will be compared among the players, and whoever has the most scores points. So yes, this is a point-scoring Eurogame. 

The core mechanism in the game is based on card play, and it's a very smart system. Simple yet effective. Cards come in six colours. Five of them are related to five different Greek gods. They are also related to specific building types, and specific aspects of your nation, like trading, military, or resource production. The sixth colour (purple) is related to temples. To build one temple, you need to have first built one each of the other five building types. A temple scores points at game end based on a specific criteria. If you decide to build a particular temple, you need to be working towards its scoring criteria too. 

On your turn you have only two options - build or pray. To build, you need to have a card to build, the required building materials, and the game piece in your player stock. Your card tells you what building it is and what power it has. You start the game with several game pieces in hand, and the rest is still in the general supply. If you use up all the pieces of a certain type in hand, you will need to get more from the general supply before you can construct that building type. You need resources too. If you are short, you can spend money in lieu (but it's expensive). If you don't have enough money either, then you need to wait till you have produced enough resources or earned enough money. 

When you construct a building, you activate its power. If you have constructed other buildings of the same type in the past, all of them get activated too. This is an amazing feeling. You are snowballing your building powers. Your empire becomes more and more powerful. 

Your other option on your turn is to pray. Praying is basically doing a reset. You will discard some cards and redraw to your hand limit. The first card you discard will be the god to pray to, and depending on which god it is, you get different benefits. The first benefit is a game piece related to that god, which you claim from the general supply. Notice how this mechanism creates a challenge for you. Let's say you want to build a blue type piece - a ship. You have a blue card and you like the power. However you have run out of ship pieces. That means you have to pray and discard a blue card to gain a ship piece. So are you going to discard that blue card you like? And then hope to draw a different blue card which also works well for you? Or do you keep this blue card, but discard other cards for now, hoping to then draw a different blue card which you will later spend for claiming a ship piece? Doing this means you are waiting one more pray cycle. 

In addition to claiming a game piece, praying also gives you benefits related to the god you pray to. You may get resources, money, victory points etc. When praying you may discard additional cards from your hand. The more you discard the bigger your reward for praying. Yes, burning more cards shows your piety. You are going to draw back to your hand size anyway, which is five. 

There is a certain tempo to your play, between playing cards to construct buildings and praying to reset your hand. You may construct several buildings then pray, or sometimes you may pray a bit more frequently to cycle cards and take the god benefits. You can keep cards you like when you pray, but there is a cost to it. Sacrificing fewer cards when you pray means getting a smaller reward from the god you pray to. 

The play area may look small, but this setup below is for a 2-player game. With more players, the board is bigger. Also it is actually not easy to expand your empire. You can only build on a new spot if it is next to your existing building. Some buildings can only be constructed on specific terrain, or you want to build them on specific terrain. You compete for terrain types. Some spaces are barbarian villages. If you surround them you... ahem... integrate them into your empire and score points. That's another thing you compete for. You don't actually fight your opponents. You just compete for land. 

This is such an elegant design. The hand management is interesting. The core mechanism is simple and the game runs smoothly. The interesting decisions are all integrated with this simple core mechanism. I like it when a game gives you seemingly few options, but there is much to think about behind these options. You need to think carefully how to make the most of the hand you draw. Which are the buildings you want to construct, which is the god you will pray to, and which are the cards you will sacrifice to the god. The buildings have many different abilities, and players will develop empires with different characteristics. There are many possible combinations. It is satisfying to see how your nation's abilities compound. This is something you want to fully utilise. Deus is a tableau building game and a Euro style civ game.