Sankore Board Game Review

Sankore is game in which you are building a university in Mali, North Africa, where the students gain experience and become the teachers themselves, giving lessons on mathematics, theology, law and astronomy. Each lesson taught triggers actions that can be performed in one of the four main board areas. Alongside this you will be taking or returning favours to the emperor, known as Mansa Musa.

Setup

It took me 90 minutes to setup and teach this game, which sounds like a lot. This, however, was down to my poor planning: I had not finished reading the rule book before my friends arrived and so I ended up learning and teaching the game, as I went along doing the setup. It also took a while to punch out all the game pieces and organise them when setting up the very first time. Now that I know what all the pieces are and have bagged them up appropriately, I think teaching the game a second time to new players would only take about 20-25 minutes.

The setup instructions are very clear. There are a couple of pages highlighting general areas of the board and a main setup page, which has a clear to follow numbering system, so you know exactly where to place pieces. There are a couple of steps using a cloth bag to randomly draw meeples, prestige and books, so having a few extra opaque bags to hand (not included in the game) may reduce the setup time. The rules are easy to follow and is full of examples.

Actions

There are five main actions in Sankore, and you choose two different actions per turn. These are enrolling new students (which you will use in a woker placement fashion), establishing a class (selecting the action spots your students will be using), teaching a class (which activates further actions on the main board), gaining favours (Bonuses), and graduating a student (Retiring a student for end game scoring).

Gameplay

Wow the art of Ian O'Tool shines once again, the board is so beautiful! But it is at first a bit overwhelming, with icons and colour. However after a while the layout and icons make a lot of sense. I'd like to draw attention to one detail, which is a printed resource wheel located where the astronomy, mathematics and theology areas meet. This resource wheel depicts where each commodity (salt, books and gold) can be obtained and spent. I hadn't even noticed this wheel until my partner pointed it out halfway through the game, but it turned out to be really helpful for understanding key game mechanics. Effectively, you need salt to perform well in the theology area, which can be gained from the astronomy area. The astronomy area requires gold, which you can get from the mathematics area. And lastly, the mathematics area requires books, which - you've guessed it - can be gained from the theology area. The fourth area, law, grants various bonuses.

Turns can be very quick although some might get bogged down in 'analysis paralysis', due the options available to you and the bonus actions that can be gained. Our game lasted approx three hours. This is a heavy game. There are a lot of options to consider. One player said it was like playing four games at once.

Prestige

Prestige tokens are the victory points of the game, but not quite (see Scoring below). They can be gained in a number of ways. Players can trigger an area majority scoring in each of the four areas on the main board once a certain number of students from that discipline have been enrolled. Prestige gained this way is slotted into your player board. If you don't have the space due to taking too many favours then you lose the prestige. Each player board has space for 22 prestige tokens, however you all start the game with eight of these blocked. Other ways to score prestige include completing objective cards, fully maxing out particular meeple tracks on your player board, graduating students and from the final scoring of the mathematics school.

Scoring

Scoring is reminiscent of a Reiner Knizia game and this does not change in Sankore. The prestige points you accumulate throughout the game do not have a fixed points value and may not be worth anything at all. During the course of the game, as a cost for actions, books have been making their way into the library. Each shelf checks for discipline majority at the end of the game and assigns either two or one points for 1st and 2nd majority. Therefore each prestige can be worth between 0-6 pts each.

Errata

One of the rewards on the favour track is to enrol a student for free from any area. This led to a student in a high position being picked and revealing a high shared knowledge value, which was then used claim spots in that area. This rule seemed a bit off to us, as it could also be used to trigger scoring unexpectedly. But we couldn't find anything in the rulebook saying it couldn't be done. The designer has since clarified this and has stated that meeples should slide to the left and only the knowledge or bonus on the rightmost spot can be used. This rule is in the rulebook, however it only appears in the solo rules section.

Conclusions

This game has a lot of systems entwined and is definitely on the heavier side. I found the possibilities of different levers to pull very appealing and wow does this game have table presence.

Sankore also has a ton of replayability. You won't be able to do everything well and will have to concentrate on a couple of the four disciplines each game. The bonus tiles or objective cards you acquire may also steer your strategy. Even the positioning of available students might encourage you into particular disciplines. I only concentrated on two of the four schools in my play through.