Also known as Tarot Storia, Shahrazad is a one or two player tile laying game from Japan. The tiles are square, but they are each named after one of the major arcana of a tarot set. However, the artwork is depictions of scenes and characters from well-known fairy tales. Therefore, there are twenty-two story tiles and two score tiles. I should point out that I received this game as a review copy.
The idea is that the king has demanded entertainment in the form of stories and you need to craft these stories by playing tiles to a tableau in the centre of the table. In the two player game, the players take turns, but they are playing cooperatively to achieve a common score and, hopefully, please the king.
Gameplay
The story tiles are shuffled into a deck and each player is dealt two tiles. In the two player game, players alternate taking turns, while in the solo game the solo player takes every turn. On your turn, you either place a tile to the tableau or replace an existing tile, then you draw a new tile from the deck. This means that after replacing and drawing you will have three tiles. You cannot take the replace action on consecutive turns – you must instead place two tiles and then draw back up to a hand of two.
Every tile that is placed has to touch at least one tile in the tableau, but alternate columns are offset by half a tile vertically. This means that after the first tile is placed there are six possible positions for the second tile. In the two player game, no column may hold more than three tiles, but this is relaxed to four tiles for the solo game. There is no limit to the number of columns.
The stories need to hang together, no retconning, no MacGuffins, no deus ex machina. What this means in game terms is that any tile which touches a lower-numbered tile on its right is flipped over, effectively removing it from the tableau. The spaces created in this way may disrupt some story threads and any path from the left-most column to the right-most that hits one of these face-down tiles or gaps means that the story thread represented by that path has just petered out without reaching a satisfying conclusion. All tiles only belonging to that path are then flipped over also.
Scoring
Once this is done, the (much reduced) tableau is scored. We are looking for the largest contiguous group of tiles of a particular colour. There are four colours – red, blue, yellow, and black. Score each colour group according to the area or number of tiles in its largest group. Subtract one for every face-down tile. Subtract one for every gap – every empty space in the middle of a column. The total is the score for the round.
The game is played over two rounds, but before beginning the second round, the players are allowed to retain one column of tiles. On the other hand, all face-down tiles are removed from the game and returned to the box.
The final score is obtained by adding scores for both rounds.
The two scoring tiles can be used to keep track of the score – one side for the solo game and the other side for the two player cooperative. The final score is converted to a verdict on the stories from the King.
Artwork
Lovely artwork on the box, the tiles, and the rulebook. The theme is fairy tales, but the art style is very anime/manga. I would score this a 4/5 for artwork.
Complexity
Shahrazad is not a complex game, but it’s surprising. Trying to make the best groups and not to lose tiles through poor placement is not easy. It’s a pleasant, relaxing puzzle and quite a quick game to play. I think it’s probably a 2/5 for complexity.
Replayability
Achieving the King’s pleasure with a “Truly Wonderful” or “I’m not crying, you’re crying!” is a tough enough challenge that there’s a decent amount of replayability in this fun little game. I’ll give it 4/5 for replayability.
Player interaction
This is really a solo game with a two-player mode. In two-player mode there has to be some discussion (without revealing tiles in hand) of the best course of action to take. On balance, it’s probably a 2/5 for player interaction.
Component quality
Good thick cardboard is used for the tiles and the printing and finish is good. The box and cardboard insert work well. I think this is 3/5 for component quality.
Conclusion
I enjoyed playing Shahrazad, it’s a fun puzzle. I think there was previously a version with cards instead of tiles. The tiles are much nicer to play with, but the downside is that they are harder to shuffle. If you like tableau building games, such as Arboretum, then you should give this a go. My overall score for it is 70%.
