Lantris - Königliche Landschaften

The king was so dissatisfied with the design of his landscapes by his cartographer that he decided to try a landscape architect this time. So he launched a call for up to four prospective landscape architects to apply for the post. "Design me a landscape worthy of a king," he said to the applicants who had gathered for the presentation in the castle's large reception hall. "Whichever of you makes my landscapes bloom will be given a permanent post as royal landscape architect, all others may keep the cartographer company in the dungeon - and now get to work!" Now, if you think you're up to the task, follow us into the kingdom. With Lantris, we'll find out who will be the next Royal Landscape Architect.

In December 2020, the still quite young publisher Kuriosum Verlag published the small laying game Lantris. In the game, two to four players aged seven and up must try to fulfill royal orders of varying difficulty by laying out landscape tiles.

To start, easy and difficult orders and all landscape cards are stacked separately. The starting tile is placed in the center. Each player gets three landscape cards, two easy and one difficult order, three architect figures and an overview card.

By order of the king

The game is played turn by turn until the pile of orders or the pile of landscape tiles is empty. The active player has three possible actions on his turn:

1. Play a landscape card
2. Deploy or move an architect (optional)
3. Fulfill a Royal Order (optional)

The square landscape cards are divided into four fields and always show a combination of landscape types (ice, city, forest, water, desert). Landscape cards must always be placed against or on top of the existing landscape. When placed, at least one edge must be adjacent. If a player wants to place a card on the landscape, he can decide whether the card should cover one, two, three or four fields (i.e. completely). Then, you can claim an area by using an architect. A claimed territory cannot be occupied by another architect. In the course of the game, however, it can happen that two architects occupy a common territory by growing together.

In the last step, the player can complete an order. Easy orders are mostly contiguous areas of the same landscape type in Tetris format. Heavy orders are large adjacent areas with two different landscape types (e.g. 4x water and adjacent 4x desert). After a player finishes his turn, he refills his hand cards. He can freely choose between easy and hard orders. It is important that he has three landscape tiles and three orders in his hand at the end.

At the end of the game, the victory points of the completed royal orders are added up to determine the new royal landscape architect.

The next round to the kingdom

As soon as all players are familiar with the basic rules, there is another mode for advanced players. In this mode, a marker on the territory is exchanged for the architect after a mission has been completed. This frees up the landscape for the other players. The player who owns the marker is no longer allowed to use the area. The only way to remove the marker is to cover the landscape card with another landscape card and thus change the type of landscape, e.g. from water to desert.

Every one of us knows it

Lantris is one of those games where you say without any expectation: ok, let's play one round. And the one round turns into six or seven rounds, because the game offers a nice mechanism that goes down well with all players. In addition, the game contains more interaction than one might expect at first glance. After all, everyone is building the king's lands together and you have to keep an eye on your opponents in order to spoil the completion of an order with a not so suitable landscape.

The manual is easy to understand, but the overall design looks a bit dusty. One is currently used to other things from the current titles - or simply blind. The quality of the material is perfectly fine, though, and you shouldn't be blinded by the appearance. With Lantris you get a nice game with a working mechanism that has already spent many rounds on our table here in the family - and will also spend in the future!