Bigger than a church

Did you know there are Seven cities in the Irish Republic. DONT look them up. Guess and stick them in the comments. Bet you get it wrong….
Cathedrals was a random find in Easons who started stocking a few board games as an experiment I assume. The experiment will fail btw If they maintain the high prices for them. It was cheap €11.99 and comes beautifully presented in a wooden case with wooden pieces. It’s the magnetic travel edition and it’s a lovely little objet d’art presented in a polish wooden case that itself opens to form the playing field. 

The game is very simple. Each player starts with a dozen plus wooden Tetris type shapes that they take turns to place on the 10×10 grid. The grid is surrounded by a perimeter wall and the goal is to complete walled off sections that then become your exclusive reservations for your pieces. If this was a video game there would be a Bling! Sound and a change of colours. You can place pieces anywhere on the grid (except enemy owned reservations) but the real trick is to grab spots and deny them to your opponent so they have nowhere to place their pieces. Play continues until players cant place any more pieces (it’s a tight board) and the player with the least pieces Unplaced wins. 

Play begins after one player places the neutral awkward and big cathedral piece somewhere on the grid and the other player places their first piece. 
It’s a really nice game. It’s fast. A game will last five minutes. To be correct you need to play two games with each player taking it in turns to take the slightly advantageous first turn and then add both final scores together to decide whom won. It’s very moorish and coupled with fast means you’ll play a half dozen games before you realize how long you’ve been playing. 
This is a real coffee table game. It looks lovely. Now it’s not polished ivory but it’s good enough to leave lying around without it looking untidy and it’s simple enough that you’ll press visitors to play it when they call. 

There’s definitely a little depth to it. A little trickery and subterfuge. It’s not chess. It’s a five minute game and one bad move will cost you the game. Which is fine. For the asking price it’s punching well above it’s weight. I recommend it and it’s coming on the road trip
Figure out what the seven cities are ?
Huzzah!
Vic