This two-player game has been a staple of The Game Preserve's Head-to-Head department for almost ten years. Perhaps its popularity is attributable to the substantial feel and charm of the wooden pieces, perhaps the spatial challenge inherent in the play.

The board is a grid, representing the layout of a medieval city. Each player has a set of differently shaped wooden buildings; one set is stained brown, the other left blond. A grey building--the cathedral--is placed on the board to begin the game. Players try to enclose areas of the city with their own color buildings; once an area is enclosed, only that player may place his buildings within that area. Play ends when the board is filled, or when the buildings left over cannot be fit into any of the space left open on the board. The player with the fewest buildings left over is the winner. Cathedral takes 15-30 minutes to play, and is especially popular with fans of spatial-relation puzzles! If you put Cathedral out on the coffee table, it WILL be played.

Originally produced in Australia, this game has gone through several versions in the last decade--it was first a very classy-looking wood board game, then appeared briefly in a plastic version, and is now back to its original look. Though we sometimes get requests for plastic Cathedral, it is no longer available this way.