Designers: Acchittocca, which includes: Flaminia Brasini (Coimbra, Egizia, Leonardo da Vinci), Virginio Gigli (Coimbra, Egizia, Grand Austria Hotel, Leonardo da Vinci), Stefano Luperto (Egizia, King Me!, Leonardo da Vinci), Antonio Tinto (Egizia, Leonardo da Vinci, Monsters’ Tower)

Artist: William Bricker (Baseball Highlights: 2045, Dark Moon, Diamonds, Tiny Epic Galaxies)

Publisher: Stronghold Games (Among the Stars, AuZtralia, Core Worlds, Cottage Garden, CO2, Dark Moon, Diamonds, Fields of Green, Flamme Rouge, The Golden Ages, La Granja, Great Western Trail, Kanban: Driver’s Edition, Kitchen Rush, Kraftwagen, Medina 2nd Edition, Nations: The Dice Game, Not Alone, Panamax, Pictomania, Porta Nigra, The Pursuit of Happiness, Stronghold 2nd Edition, Survive: Escape from Atlantis!, Terraforming Mars, That’s Pretty Clever, Village)

Genre/Mechanisms: card drafting, time track, worker placement

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Egizia: Shifting Sands is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total more than 6x the initial funding goal.

Player Count: 2-4

Solo Mode: no

Complexity: medium-heavy

Risk: low

What It’s About: An update & redesign of 2009’s Egizia, a worker placement game about traveling down the Nile and constructing some of Egypt’s most famous monuments.

How It Works: Over the course of 5 rounds, players place boats along the Nile to increase the strength of their construction crews, add new fields or quarries, obtain Nile and Sphinx cards, and build sections of the colonnade, obelisk, pyramids, and statues. Rounds consist of 6 phases each: River Set-up Phase, Placement Phase, Mining Phase, Feeding Phase, Building Phase, and Clean-up Phase. Players score points during the game for building monuments, and at the end of the game for Sphinx cards and statue bonuses.

Comparisons: Even with the redesign, Egizia feels like a great, “classic” Euro versus one of the newer, shinier hybrid Euros. The next highest-rated game from the conglomerate of designers know as Acchittocca is Leonardo da Vinci, but separately they’ve also worked on Coimbra and Grand Austria Hotel.

What Should I Pledge?:
$39 Shifting Sands: includes the new Egizia: Shifting Sands, with the classic version on the back of the board and the components from the classic version included as well.

Add-Ons:
None.

KS Exclusives:
The inclusion of the components from the classic version of Egizia; 8 new River cards; 3 new Sphinx cards; a new Colonnade goal; thicker player boards; die cut worker tokens; the wooden irrigation ring; wooden score markers; and the spot UV coating on the board. None of these will be available at retail.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S., you’re looking at $39 for the lone Shifting Sands pledge level plus $7 in shipping for a total of $46.

Egizia: Shifting Sands completes its Kickstarter on Sunday, June 9th and tentatively ships in November 2019.