Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
The charming town of Positano is located on Italy’s Amalfi Coast, a picturesque cliff-side locale known for its colorful homes and steep streets. But Slugfest Games would have us believe that it’s also populated with cutthroat real-estate developers who just want to block people’s view of the ocean.
Welcome to the game of Positano!
Positano Overview
In Positano (the game), players attempt to earn the most points through clever card play and outguessing your opponents. Your task, dear friend, is to construct villas on Positano’s (the village) cliffs such that the residents have beautiful views of the sea. Your opponents are unfortunately trying to do the very same thing and will stoop at nothing to prevent your homes from achieving those views.
Over the course of a number of rounds, you’ll bid for first pick of building materials, cliffside position, and the chance to gild your rooftops with bronze, silver, or even gold. And if your plans just happen to foil those of the other players, then so much the better, right?
Positano, A Round
At the beginning of a round, take a moment to set up the Lot tiles, Block tiles, and Build tiles. After the first round, these are drawn from their respective stacks.
Lot tiles range from 1A (on the lowest section of the cliff) to 4D (the highest) and provide spots where players build villas skywards, as well as potentially meet Goals randomly selected at the beginning of the game.
Block tiles provide building materials that can be used during that or future round’s build phase. It’s important to always have blocks on hand, as you might be stuck in later rounds and not be able to expand upwards.
Build tiles give instructions on how players are able to build that round. Building a gold roof or bronze? “Overbuilding” (constructing a villa higher than zoning allows)? Change the roof of an existing villa from silver to gold. Or even increasing the height of a previously constructed villa.
Bidding
Players each start the game with a hand of cards: 7 bid cards and 6 booster cards. The bid cards each feature 3 numeric values; one for each phase of that round. That means if you’ve got a really high number for the Lot phase, but lower numbers for Block and Build, then you’re almost certainly getting first pick of Lots, but you might get the scraps for Block and Build. But you also have a booster card, which features a single value that gets added to all numbers. This booster is quite useful because every player is trying to bid just enough to scrape by so they can save their high numbers for when they really need it.
For example, if you play a bid card with 30 Lot, 70 Block, and 20 Build, with a 22 booster, then your final bids for that round will be 52, 92, and 42—let’s just hope it’s enough to buy a miracle! There’s also a nifty tie-breaking mechanism: each bid section shows a number of stars. On the off chance there’s a tie in any given round, the player whose bid area has the most stars wins. Neato!
Now just do the same thing over a course of rounds, and whoever has the most points at the end of the game is the winner.
Thoughts on Positano
Just like in many bidding games, the goal is to get what you want for as little as possible. But since Positano doesn’t have money, you’re largely going to be mentally outmaneuvering your opponents rather than outspending them.
Each player has the exact same decks (not counting the tie-breaking stars which are different across decks). And while you might not be working towards the same goal, allowing yourself to be outbid means that you could lose the choice you wanted—nay needed—to seal your plans for the game. Do you use your highest card right away, the board game equivalent of using a cannon to kill a fly? Or do you save it for when you really need it? Only time will tell whether you made the right decision.
The game features just enough strategy to keep clever gamers engaged, without so much that it overwhelms casual players. The inclusion of the randomly selected goal cards also keeps things fresh as they all focus on different areas of the game: most villas in the A or D column (in the B and C columns), most villas exactly 3 stories tall, most leftover blocks, etc.
The initial release features a 4×4 grid of locations, with up to 4 players. There’s already plans for an expansion, which increases player count, along with the cliffside, and also includes rules for solo gaming, should that be your thing.
Positano is as breezy as the weather on the Amalfi coast, and you’ll likely spend at least some of your time admiring pastel blocks and tiered play area. You see, Positano has what we at Meeple Mountain call Builder’s Satisfaction. This is a term we coined many years ago to indicate a game whose final state is unique, distinct, and satisfying to achieve. Positano is an attractive game and bigger than it ought to be, with large colorful pieces, and at the end you look at this cardboard cliffside and perhaps imagine what life might be like if you were a member of the wealthy elite who could afford a home such as this.
But then you remember that you spend all your money on board games instead of real estate and you’re content to look at the Slugfest Games alternative. After his first play of Positano, a friend of mine said, “This is great. This is what a bidding game should be like.” I have a hard time topping that quote, so I’ll just leave you with that, along with a recommendation that you should give Positano a try (the game, not the village).
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