Lorenzo il Magnifico

I love Luciani, so letting Lorenzo il Magnifico pass me by when it first came out was one of those small mistakes that eventually stares back at you from the shelf. The complete edition, with all its comforts and expansions, was enough to stop me resisting. In its base form, I found a nice, tight euro, with the right length and satisfying brain-burn without becoming a chore.

At its core, it is worker placement: you build your choices around placing workers and try to extract value from a limited, competitive space. The interaction does not need to shout in order to exist; it is there in the pressure on available spots and in how other players’ choices force you to adapt.

With the expansions, the game opens up considerably and the table gains more things to keep track of. The families from Pazzi Conspiracy enter through an auction, so the group needs to understand when it is worth applying pressure and when it is not. If you let them go too cheaply, as we did, they can give someone a meaningful lead before everyone else reacts.

On my first play, I was not blown away because we played the absolute simplest version. Even so, it was already clear that, with the right additions, it could rise a long way: it has interest, fair brain-burn, and it does not outstay its welcome. I can now plainly see it as one of the group’s classic “play anytime” euros, alongside our other favourites — and yes, it will get plenty of table time in winter, unless we get locked indoors again.

Updated session

I saw it again at five players, with everything included — Houses of the Renaissance, Pazzi Conspiracy, and the rest — precisely because heavy euros that work this well at that player count are rare. The experience was clearly better than the base game: it flowed smoothly even with players who had not played it before, had a very close finish, and confirmed that Lorenzo is better than I had given it credit for. Our only mistake was adding Pazzi without enough knowledge of the game: we did not put enough pressure on the powerful families in the auction, so we handed them a lead. It did not ruin the game, but it could have made it even tighter.