Potala Palace

What is Potala Palace

In 7th century, the Tubo king Songtsen Gampo gave orders to build a great palace on Red Mountain, name it “Potala”, means “the holy place”, in order to marry a noble chinese princess Wencheng from Tang Dynasty. According to legend, the princess Wencheng was a devout follower of Buddhism. When she married Songtsen Gampo, she brought with her as part of her dowry a precious statue of the Buddha that awaken a demon living in the Red Mountain during the construction of the Potala Palace, he tried to disrupt the work every night by destroying what had been built during the day. To prevent this, King Songtsen Gampo consulted an oracle, which advised that the demon be appeased with the offering of the body of a man or woman. Princess Wencheng, with great courage, volunteered to be sacrificed.

After two hundred years, with the perdition of Tubo Dynasty, the Potala Palace were damaged during wars in 9th century, there were only ruins left, making the demon awaken again.

Until in 17th century when the 5th Dalai Lama came to power, he commanded his Rinpoches (the players) with they monk-workers, to rebuilding the palace immediately and vanish the demon once for all, making the Potala Palace a new home and a spiritual tower for the next generations of the Dalai Lamas.

Potala Palace is a euro-game with deck building and worker/dice placement mechanics, where players take on the roles of Rinpoches who must assist in the reconstruction of the palace using their dice (workers) to acquire new resources and cards to improve their decks, allowing them to build new facilities such as halls, statues, reliquaries, thangkas (a type of Tibetan tapestry), thus accumulating "merit points" (victory points) and achieving enlightenment by completing the "Great Mandala" at the end of the game. The game features a day and night mechanics where players' deck cards can be flipped upside down, completely changing their effects, further expanding the strategic possibilities of the game, but beware of the demon's jealousy, as he may come during the nighttime to destroy something the players have built.

Game details

Players

2–4

Age

+14

Duration

120 min

Difficulty

—

Type

Board game

Year

2025

Mechanics

Deck, Bag, and Pool Building · Tile Placement · Worker Placement with Dice Workers

Categories

Ancient · City Building · Religious

Designer

Gaetano Foschini

Publisher

Black Mamba Games