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Sator Arepo Tenet Opera Rotas Price: £25.50 Currently unavailable. RRP - £29.99, our price = £25.50 Board Game; 2-4 Players; Ages 8+ by Scribabs Hidden inside the sinners’ pit of the antique library are cursed tomes, heretical books, treatises on witchcraft and black magic, and precious volumes of Kabbalah, all of them written in strange and lost languages. Each book has been placed precisely in the pit, positioned according to exacting rituals; their function - to prevent chaos from emerging from the pit. The Keeper is entrusted to stop the souls of the damned from escaping - something they attempt continuously - by touring the labyrinth and keeping the power contained in the books strong enough to seal the abyss. Only the Keeper knows the rituals and the exact position of every volume as he’s the sole person with access to the \'Sator\' secrets. SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS is the seal that keeps the souls of the damned from flowing away... But the power of the old Keeper is waning, and the sinners’ pit has felt this, using the breath of the damned to slowly shift the volumes which compose the “Sator” across the labyrinth in order to open a passage for their souls into our world. Thus, the four Acolytes of the Keeper have been entrusted to recover the holy books that have been moved across the labyrinth. Each volume contains a key which lets one understand some of the arcane words of the \'Sator\' and thereby regain control of the labyrinth. The Acolyte who first recovers the four holy books that the Keeper has asked him to find will be able to access the “Sator” and become the new Keeper. GOAL OF THE GAME Each player represents an Acolyte and tries to be the first to recover the four books that the Keeper has entrusted to him (the four books in the color of his pawn). The sinners’ pit is an intricate labyrinth of Footbridges and mobile walkways that can be moved by gears and pulleys. They can be turned and pushed in order to create a safe path over which the Acolyte may safely walk the abyss. To move Footbridges, each Acolyte may read from the book “Incertus Movet in Aere Sospeso,” which is a kind of user’s manual explaining how to manipulate the walking passages to meet his needs. The more Footbridges the Acolyte moves during his turn, the farther he will be able to walk. What’s more, he will be able to use the content of his own “Liber Fidei,” a set of prayers, thoughts and ascetic books, to perform apparently impossible actions (such as the manipulation of time and space) thanks to the power of his faith... GAME REVIEW BY COUNTER MAGAZINE Scribabs 2-4 players, 60 minutes designed by Federica Rinaldi and Enrico Pesce reviewed by Ben Baldanza The ``Sator Square\'\' is a four-time palindrome that dates back to 79 AD. The five words of the title, when written line by line, form a square that reads the same in all four directions. This construct has been ascribed religious or mystical powers at various points in history, but now is used to name an interestingly-themed maze race game. Each player tries to be the first to recover their four lost books from the ``abyss\'\', a 14 by 14 grid that functions as the game board. A series of walkways in six different configurations are initially laid out, but there are not enough walkways to cover the grid. Through the game, players shift and rotate bridge pieces on the grid, and slowly advance their Acolyte (playing piece) along the created paths to reach their four books. The setup of the game is a bit more elaborate than most. The four books for each player are placed onto the grid using a special set of cards. These cards ensure a different setup for each game. Then the walkways are placed, and this process takes a few minutes as each player in turn lays one of the footbridges on the grid, placing a book on them if appropriate. The walkways will not be continuous but each book must end on a bridge. This set up defines the initial strategy and moves for each player, but through the game the walkways move enough that this strategy will need to evolve. Lastly the cards are dealt out, and there are two types of cards in the game. The common deck is called the ``Incertus Movet in Aere Sospeso\'\' deck, and these cards create the ability to move or rotate specific pathway pieces. In addition, each player gets their own set of eight ``Liber Fidei\'\' cards. These are a set of prayers that allow a player to do some powerful things with the maze, but they are used only one time each. Each turn, a player gets six action points that can be allocated to card play. Before playing cards, a player can swap cards by spending one or two of their six points. Spending one means discarding two cards from the hand, and drawing one from either the common ``Incertus\'\' deck or one from the personal ``Liber\'\' deck. By spending two, two cards are still traded for one but the card selected can be chosen from the choice of deck. Swapping cards becomes useful later in the game when the ability to move a specific type of walkway becomes critical. Playing cards requires action points. The Incertus deck has two types of cards - those that allow rotation, and those that allow movement. In either case, one of the four different walkway types is shown on the card and only that type can be moved or rotated by playing that card. Rotating a piece 90 degrees takes two action points, and rotating 180 degrees uses four points. Movement cards use points equal to the amount of movement; one point for one square, etc. The Liber cards have various uses and each action will take two to five action points. The obvious purpose in playing the cards is to set up the path to get the books. The subtle and clever use of the cards is that they determine how far your Acolyte will move. Each play of the Incertus cards generates one movement point for the Acolyte, while playing the Liber cards creates no pawn movement. This mechanism forces the bridge maze into constant movement, as players must move or rotate pieces in order to move their Acolyte to collect the books. It also means that players tend to work on the immediate next few steps each turn, rather than define a long-range path strategy that. Pick up one book before thinking too hard about how you\'ll get to the next one, as by that point the board will look quite different. The Liber Fidei cards are inscribed with a lot of Latin and each is powerful. One lets you move an opponent\'s Acolyte, while another lets you place a Gargoyle. Once placed, the Gargoyle can only be removed when someone discards three cards from their hand for this purpose, and until then the walkway where the Gargoyle sits on cannot be moved or rotated, and no Acolyte can pass through it but must instead plan to travel around it. Other Liber cards let you make multiple move or rotations in a single play, move your Acolyte faster than normal or even jump over empty squares of the abyss onto a new footbridge. Once played, the Liber Fedei cards are placed face up so that everyone knows which powers are still available, as each player starts with the same set of eight cards. The trade-off for use of these powerful cards is that often they are the only card that can be played due to their action point requirement, and the Acolyte will not move unless that is part of the Liber card\'s power. The game ends as soon as one player collects their fourth book. Collecting the books happens simply by moving the Acolyte to the space where the book stands. Players must not only ensure quick and efficient movement for their Acolyte, but also must keep pace with the success of the others or risk falling back. Every rotation or move of the walkways can help or hurt players, so it is very possible that your plans will be thwarted indirectly by someone else just doing what is right for them. Using the Liber cards when most effective and spending to swap cards rather than use what you have are both ways to get advantages. There is some luck in the card draws and even in the initial placement of the books; though the setup cards make each game different, there are certain combinations that simply require more land be covered for some of the players. The game does not suffer from this, though, but rather these help to increase the game\'s replayability. The game works well with families as the ideas are straightforward and the actions are short-term in nature. The brooding religious theme, carried through in the colors, graphics, and extensive use of Latin on the cards (none of which is needed for the game play) gives the game a distinctive feel. Combined with a simple but effective set of mechanisms to move the bridge pieces, the game feels nicely original in a world with a lot of retread designs. More ...

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