Game: Solomon's Temple

Thread: Solomon's Temple -- Review

gschloesser — 2007-06-29T18:48:45+00:00

Designer: Doug Gray
Publisher: Cactus Games
2 Players, 1 – 1 ½ hours
Review by: Greg J. Schloesser

Cactus Games is a firm that is dedicated to releasing games that possess a Judeo-Christian theme. Solomon’s Temple is one of the games in their line, and is loosely based on the Old Testament account of the fabled temple of King Solomon. Two players attempt to construct and furnish Solomon’s Temple, while defending the temple against the powerful Babylonian army. Unfortunately, the story is FAR better than the game, which suffers from some poor design decisions.

Each player receives a large board depicting the foundation of the temple, including spaces where the four main structures and gates will be constructed. There is also space for an assortment of other cards, including prophets, kings, priests, altars and even the scapegoat. While they do help keep things organized, the boards are actually way too large and consume too much table space.

In spite of the presence of the boards, the game is primarily a card game, with players attempting to collect and play structures, gates and furnishings. Each player receives an identical set of cards, which contain the aforementioned cards as well as an assortment of other cards. Players begin with eight cards and one prophet in play. The only ability of a prophet is to allow the player to place and move Babylonian army cards, a very strange historical correlation.

A player’s turn consists of four phases:

Draw Cards. The player fills his hand to eight cards, immediately playing certain cards if drawn. These cards are placed on the spaces provided at the bottom of each player board.

Military Phase. The player rolls a die to see if he is susceptible to attack on this turn. There is a 50/50 chance that the Babylonians will be active, but only if the player has an active prophet in play. If so, the opponent may play Babylonian army cards, which allows him to place new army token on the opponent’s board. He may also move these tokens, attempting to position them next to gates or the temple. If any armies are in these positions, he may play “Destruction” cards, which allows the player to destroy an adjacent gate or two furnishings and/or structures in the temple. These cards are reshuffled into the player’s draw pile, and the rampaging army is removed.

This phase of the game, like many others, is heavily influenced by the luck of the draw. If a player gets lucky in drawing army and destruction cards, he is able to place numerous armies onto his opponent’s board. Once placed, armies are extremely difficult to remove. This means that they will easily destroy any gates and furnishings placed by a player, which is quite frustrating. The active player can only play cards to affect the invading armies AFTER they have had a chance to wreak havoc and destruction.

A further insult is that a player’s prophet card is discarded if an opponent successfully attacks his temple. Since a player cannot perform military actions without a prophet, this is a severe handicap … and a player is virtually powerless to prevent this loss. Terrible.

Building Phase. The player may build ONE piece of the temple. Gates can be built without restriction, but in order to add furnishings to the temple, the corresponding structure must be constructed first. There are three structures: the Outer Porch, Main Hall and Holy of Holies. Each of these areas has 2 – 8 furnishings. Herein lies one of the major problems in the game: there is exactly ONE of each of the three structures in a player’s deck. It is quite possible that one or more of these cards will be buried in the deck, and not surface until much, much later in the game. This means a player will be unable to place any of that structure’s furnishings, and these cards will clog the player’s hand. The player does not want to discard these furnishings, as there is also only one of each of these cards in a player’s deck. So, once discarded, it is impossible to get them back into your hand until the discard pile is re-shuffled. This could take a long, long time, as there are one-hundred cards in a player’s deck. This is yet another ludicrous design decision.

But building isn’t as easy as described. Before a player has the chance to build, his opponent may play a Sin card to halt the building. In order to overcome the Sin, the player must have an altar and priest in play, AND play an offering card. This combination is difficult to achieve, so many building attempts are aborted.

The one-build-per-turn restriction is also troublesome, as it causes the game to drag on and on. The two King cards liberalize this a bit, allowing gates or structure cards to be played as instant cards, but this has a minor affect on the game. If I ever play again … and I won’t … I would insist on allowing players to be able to perform multiple builds on their turn.

Discard Phase. The active player may discard as many cards as he desires. As mentioned, a player’s hand often becomes clogged as needed structure cards have not been drawn. Often, a player must discard desirable cards just to give him a chance to draw one of those desperately needed structure cards.

Once a player manages to construct all four gates, three structures and fifteen furnishings, and keep the Babylonians from destroying them, he still must play the “Filling the Holy of Holies” card to claim the victory. It should come as no surprise that there is only one of these cards in the deck. Once drawn, the player must never discard it, so it will likely occupy a space in the player’s hand for a long time before it can be used … if ever.

Sadly, Solomon’s Temple is a poorly designed game. One’s success is exclusively determined by the luck of the draw. Getting needed cards early is vital. Otherwise, the game quickly deteriorates into frustration, as each turn becomes nothing more than trying to draw the needed cards. The prohibition against building any furnishings before the corresponding structure card is in place is the main culprit, and a major design flaw. The “sin” and military rules are also terrible, and contribute to the game’s downfall.

I am particularly irritated since folks will be tempted to purchase this game based on its religious theme. I’ve seen the game in Christian bookstores, and I am troubled that folks will buy it and likely be very disappointed. This could easily dissuade them from trying any further games that are beyond those found on the shelves of local Toys R Us or Wal-Mart. That is a shame. Good religious-themed games can be made – Ark of the Covenant, Settlers of Canaan, and Settlers of Zarahemla are all examples. Sadly, Solomon’s Temple is not one of them.

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Kimball Bent — 2005-05-23T13:03:58+00:00

Thread: Does anyone have the Redemption Promos that are included?

Tuxhedoh — 2005-03-06T05:07:06+00:00

If anyone has the Redemption Promo cards that are included with this game.. I'm looking to buy them. Let me know. Thanks.

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EJKemp — 2005-03-05T19:09:42+00:00

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Melsana — 2005-02-06T15:25:48+00:00

Basic components of Solomon's Temple

Thread: Re:User Review

Latria — 2004-03-11T04:04:14+00:00

TomVasel (#24475),
Sad to say, all the commments from Tom is true. Having said that, this means that the theme of the game is indeed compelling and this game deserves a second chance, and the Christian community certainly needs more good strategy games aside from all the trivia games. Given the reasonable track record of Cactus Game Design, I am reluctant to trash this game immediately, and would appreciate seasoned gamers like yourself help to "fix" this game with a suitable amount of rules changes. I sincerely feel this game just needs more playtesting to work out fine.

Some tweaks that work for me so far:
1) Unlimited discarding allowed.
2) Increase hand size to 10
3) Building of furnishing cards allowed without structural cards.
4) The purpose of levites cards are changed from getting structural cards to getting furnishing cards and structural cards starting from the bottom of the personal drawdeck. (so that players do not have to finish drawdeck to finish the game)

I would be most happy to hear more opinions on these changes, and more ideas.

Thread: User Review

TomVasel — 2003-12-30T16:16:56+00:00

I wrote my first review on Settlers of Canaan, a Settlers of Catan variant aimed at the Christian market. I was extremely enamored with the game, and it’s one of the games that helped me dive headfirst back into the wonderful world of board games. So it only seems fitting that my hundredth review is about Solomon’s Temple (Cactus Game Design, 2001 – Doug Gray). As a Christian, I was disappointed in the fact that most religious games were terrible rip-offs of popular secular games, and hoped that the excellence of Settlers of Canaan and Redemption was a herald of better games to come.

So was Solomon’s Temple a worthy successor to these other games by Cactus Games? The answer, sadly, is a resounding no. Not only is it an inferior game in every way, it’s one of the worst games I have ever played. Very few times have I quit playing a game in the middle, because I am determined to finish games, hoping to find some goodness in them. Solomon’s Temple contained no such goodness, however, and the more we played, the more tedious the game became. My wife, a very long-suffering player, begged me to quit, and I was only too happy to oblige. The best word to describe the game would be tedious, and that may be a little too positive and nice! When I play a game, I want it to be fun, not work!

To setup the game, each player receives a large game board, a deck of cards, and five Babylonian army movement tokens. The boards are set up, and each player removes a prophet card from their deck, placing it in the appropriate “prophet” space on the board. Each player shuffles their deck and draws eight cards. One player is chosen to go first, and then play alternates between players.

A player’s turn is made up of four phases. The first phase, Draw Phase, has the player draw up to eight cards, replenishing their hand. During this phase, a player may play card such as Altar, Levite, Prophet, etc.

The next phase is the Military Phase. The opponent is the first to play on a military phase. If the player whose turn it is has a prophet, the opponent must roll a die (with three stars and three sword symbols). If a star is rolled, the people “listen” to the prophet and the opponent may not play any Military cards. If a sword is rolled, or there is no prophet, then the opponent may play Military cards that allow them to place Babylonian armies on the board, and wreak havoc with already placed armies. The player whose turn it is then can play as many Israelite Army cards as they want to.

The next phase is the Building Phase, in which players can put different cards on the board. Most “furnishing” cards cannot be placed until a certain structure card is already on the table. (For example, none of about six Furnishing cards can be played until one card – the Main Hall card is placed on the table.) A player must announce his intent to build – during which time an opponent may play one “sin” card against theme. A player may play a Burnt Offering card to cancel the “sin” card, but only if they have a priest (only a good one) and an altar in place. Confused yet?

The next phase is the Discard phase, where a player can discard up to two cards. If at any time, during the Building Phase, a player has completed the entire temple (eighteen cards), and plays the Filling of the Holy of Holies card, they win the game! There are a lot of other rules in the game, regarding the play of cards, but if you want to figure them out – go waste your money on the game.

Some comments on the game…

1.) Components: I almost put the second board in my “extra game pieces” drawer when I first opened the game, not thinking two boards were needed. I was surprised when reading the rules to find out that I was mistaken. Frankly, the two boards are way oversized, and for a two-player non war game, this game takes up more space than any other I have played – and most of it unnecessary. The boards are of good quality, if a bit drab. The dice are regular six-sided dice with stickers on them, and the Babylonian armies are plastic stand up pieces, also with stickers. Overall, I think the game designer was going for an “ancient” look, but ended up with drab instead. The cards are of a decent quality, except for two problems. One, the corners are not rounded, and are in fact rather pointy. This makes them irritating to play with and shuffle. Secondly, the text is in all capitals and is very difficult to read. A bad game can be enhanced a little by its components. A bad game with poor components gets even worse, and that’s the case here. All of this fits in a nice square box which I found wasn’t very sturdy, as it split with only a little pressure on it.

2.) Rules: My head almost exploded after reading the rules for the first time, so I finally had to just play the game to try and figure them out. All the cards can do different things, and aren’t explained well on the card or in the rules. The way the phases are set up, especially the Military phase, are confusing, and make the game rather hard to explain. The layout of the rules is poor, and there are very few examples of game play. There are, however, rules to deal with broken parts of the game – and I can’t believe that play testers actually thought we would like certain parts of the rules!

3.) Theme: This is really the only good thing I can say about the game. As a Christian, I was very impressed at how the game was accurate with its details concerning Israel and its dealings with God. Biblical scholars might like that part of the game. But theme – fun = stinky game, and theme alone is not enough to carry this game through.

4.) Stupid Things: One can only build one thing per turn. If one cannot get a structure card they need, they cannot build any of the furnishing cards. One can literally sit for half an hour, trying to get a certain card in their hand – with almost nothing to do for this time! Also, if you get eight furnishing cards in your hand (entirely possible), the game can get stuck – since if you discard one of them, you cannot win, and you can’t play them until you first play a structure card. The rules address this, and just tell you to reshuffle, but it’s a stupid thing that should never happen.

5.) Fun Factor: I had fun until I started reading the rules. My fun began again when we put the game away again.

6.) Tedious: The game is slow and boring, and mostly players just wait around until they get the cards they need. Most of the cards have only one use, which leaves almost no strategy for the player. Play good cards on yourself, and bad cards on your opponent. There is no joy in winning this game, and there’s almost as much joy in losing – because the game is finally over!

So I do not recommend this game at all, even if it’s given to you for free, since the components aren’t much use in other games. The game is long, boring, and the opposite of fun. The one good thing in its favor is its theme, which is accurate, but that alone does not a good game make. If you want Biblical theme, you will have a whole lot more fun reading the Bible than you do playing this game, and you’ll learn a bit more too. Stay away from this stinker!

Tom Vasel

Thread: Re:

davedanger — 2003-09-11T18:17:57+00:00

Sir Loin o Beef (#9833),
Under the cactus homepage, are email addresses,
including the desingner's.

Thread:

Sir Loin o Beef — 2003-06-23T14:01:16+00:00

I just picked this up from Amazon for $15 and taking advantage of the free shipping. The component quality is excellent. Two large, mounted boards (1 for each player) and good quality cards. Reading throught the rules, it looks to have a great deal of card strategy and hose-your-neighbor possibilities. In playing though, it kinda drags. It took my son and I about an hour to run though 7-8 turns. Which, normally, isn't to bad but we really hadn't accomplished much. Our temples were probably less than 1/4 complete.

I think it has great possiblities as a good card game but play has to be sped up. I'm thinking the die-roll (allowing opposing armies the ability to attack) can be dropped and just make the attack available each turn. Also, the various sin cards really hinder you from building especially when the "Burnt Offerings" are so hard to come by. I'll eventually work on it some and see what I can do. I wish the publisher had a FAQ or designer input.

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Kirkadoo — 2003-05-12T12:48:44+00:00