A quick system rundown; skip past this for a general overview if you prefer!

The starting player rolls dice at the start of each turn (everyone takes from the same pool) and depending on what dice colors and numbers you take, you'll get either gems, tiles, or mana. The dice play a significant role in how many moves you can take that turn and your resources.

A complete closed or line pattern with your tiles will allow you to take the tiles off the board (giving you more space), and gain you points from your collected gem sets. You keep the tiles that you remove, and once you have 3 tiles of the same color you can exchange them for a gem.

Any time you make a tiny circle with the circle thirds in the corners of the tiles, you get gems or mana. You cannot remove the tiles however, unless they're also a complete pattern.

Laying your tiles and deciding when to complete patterns is where the balancing-act really comes in. Do you go for a longer pattern, more tiny circles, or points, but bring yourself closer to the end? In that respect it feels a little like a more intense Dominion mechanic.

Use the gems to make sets for points, or as cost for laying down a magic/item card.

Use mana to change gem colors (so you can make the sets for points) or to buy tiles from the discard (distile?!) pile. Mana is also used to activate the magic and item card powers. They're worth 1 point each at the end of the game.

The card spaces at the bottom of your board play 2 roles. When taking dice, if you are over or under the number of pips shown on the goal die (the last die in the roll that was not taken by a player) you either pay a penalty or get a reward. However, you can also pay gems to lay magic and item cards in the slots and take their effects instead.

Okay, let me get a little into how I felt about the game overall. I can definitely see myself spending hours playing this, and I almost wish there was a single player option to sit and practice the mechanics. The system is really neat and unique, I don't know of another game that quite balances so many things at once without feeling insanely heavy. And actually this isn't too hard to learn, so it doesn't feel like an undertaking. It feels like a cute initiation into magic school. Where you get your, ahem, Diploma. ;)

In terms of downsides, and there weren't many, the mini circles were a little hard to see, and will be extra hard for color blind players. But the next edition will apparently have icons added to them to fix this. Having a summary on the back of the player screen would also really help in the decision making. There's so much to do each turn that having a reminder of the costs and points would be extremely helpful for the first few plays. Another thing that needs tweaking is the cards. I found they weren't enough of a boon to spend the mana to use, and more than anything I wanted cards to block my opponent.

Having said that, a great thing about the game is that I never once felt like I was stuck or had nothing to do but wait for resources. There was always something to do, even when you get bad dice. And the whole; creating something really beautiful helps, too.

There were a few things that need polishing, and the designer herself said there's some tweaks she's making for the next edition, so it can only get better, (oh damn, this means I'll have to buy another version, huh.) but even in its current state I loved it and I'm glad I bought it. It's a little language dependent because of the cards, but the rest is all symbols or English, so once you know the mechanics it's very playable.

And even if you can't play it, just having it as a display on your board game shelf adds about 200% of fantasy game feel to your home, so you know, there's no reason not to have it. It's hard to get; mainly sold at Game Market, so if you come across it, snap it up!

Language dependency: ●●●○○

Learning the rules: ●●○○○

Price: 6,500-13,000 JPY (cardboard or wooden version dependent)

Overall rating: 4/5

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