Firenze

In the Florence of the 12th-14th centuries, the city’s powerful and influential families don’t just compete with each other in trade and politics. They also try to outdo one another by building tall, mostly square-based tower homes as status symbols. In this game, you are master builders working on the families’ construction commissions for such towers. Each player competes to earn the most prestige points, by completing the commissions from families and the church and placing their seals on the work they have done. When someone plays their final seal the other builders get one more turn before the final scoring. Coloured bricks are the currency of the game and there are cards to both help and hinder your progress. On a turn a player must choose a card from the display, taking the bricks from it and paying a brick to every card skipped. There is an opportunity to exchange 3 bricks for one on display before the player works in their construction site. Players can have multiple towers they are working on at once. However for every brick they wish to add in a turn there is an extra cost, and if any towers are not increased in a turn then they will be torn down as abandoned construction. Players must pay attention to other projects, so that commissions they were counting on are not snatched away before they can claim them. This game won the second prize at the "Hippodice e.V. Authorenwettbewerb" (game designer contest) in 2008 under the name "Die Architekten von Florenz."