Realm of Sand

This is a classic gateway game with a neat twist on polynomial placing. I find it is much more fun and crunchy than Splendor, but not at all intimidating to non-gamers. It doesn't hurt that the art is gorgeous (Maisherly Chan is wonderful). Of course it is "fiddly" given that you need to switch between the pieces you choose and those that you place, but I have not found that this distracts from the gameplay. The solo mode is quite tough.

I played the solo mode, it is fine. I need to give it more plays but so far I enjoyed it more than Patchwork.

Big challenge for me, don't like usually this kind of game but very clever, working well and you need to survey what are doing the other players

I only played it once with a group of 4 players. After setting it up it looks a lot like a mix of Patchwork and Splendor. There are also some mechanics of both games well mixed together. Our group liked the game very much and it will be on the table again.

We don't like polyonimo games but man this played just right. It took all of the things we hate about patchwork and made it better. Great game.