Saint Malo

About this board game

Saint Malo is a light dice-rolling strategy game for 2–5 players, with games lasting around 45 minutes. Players roll five dice to gain resources and use the results to develop their own hand-drawn cities.

Each player builds a town on an erasable board featuring a grid. Players draw symbols for their buildings, walls, and people, creating an individual city that grows throughout the game. Combining dice results can produce useful enhancements, including characters and buildings that provide victory points, money, or special actions.

• Storehouses can be built on particular squares.
• Merchants placed nearby can help generate money each turn.
• Soldiers defend cities against pirate attacks.
• Some enhancements let players alter the outcome of a die roll.

Planning your city matters as you decide where to place its features and how to make the most of your available resources. Buildings and characters can improve your economy, increase your victory points, or give you more control over the dice.

Pirate attacks are an important threat: without enough soldiers, they can decimate your town. This gives Saint Malo a clear defensive challenge alongside its city-building and resource-management decisions.

Released in 2012, Saint Malo is rated 2 out of 10 on alea’s difficulty scale. Its erasable boards support repeated city creation as players roll, draw, expand, and defend their towns.