The game looks nuts. Adam almost turned around and went home but we quickly opened his beer and he sat down. But underneath the dressing is the classic mechanic of resource-gathering and exploitation. The board is effectively a giant rondel, and dice are your workers (you begin with three) that move around it. The nub is get stone/wood/gold to contribute to the building of the pyramid: a nice part of the game in that the thing actually gets constructed in the middle of the board. But, this coming from the designer of Tzolk'in, there's some intricate aspects in both how that happens, and some smaller wheels spinning around the outside of it.
For a start, your workers begin as lowly ones and twos, and only by using them to complete actions can you improve their knowledge (ie make them into threes/fours/fives) and improve their functionality. Secondly workers in a group - as Adam realised before Andrew and I did - work far more effectively than nomadic labourers. Thirdly, if you arrive at a crowded action space, you need to pay (in cocoa) for the privilege of using it, creating a vital chocolate-based economy on a board where empty spaces prove to be rare. Instead of taking an action, you can collect cocoa instead, but this has the feeling of watching your workers on an extended tea break, whilst your fellow barons of pyramidy industry are getting on with the business of moving massive bricks and making names for themselves.
As well as the basic premise of construction, there are some Temple tracks to shuffle yourself along, not to mention the Avenue of the Dead: this latter cul-de-sac can score you as many points as your contributions to the pyramid itself. Some actions ping you along the track as a kind of holy by-product, and dotted all over Mesopotamia are discovery tiles that act as a kind of Mayan can of Red Bull to your jaded workers.
When a worker die upgrades to a six, it 'ascends' - into heaven, I guess, as you've given it so much experience it's now dead - and not only does this reward you with another step along the Avenue of the Dead and a bonus of points/cocoa/other, it also moves the Eclipse marker.
...so the Eclipse marker is nothing to do with spaceships and all about time; which is always running out. After everyone has taken a turn, the sun moves toward the eclipse and when the twain meet, crazy shit happens like feeding workers and scoring points. This happens three times before the game finishes entirely, so ascending a worker (and pushing the sun along faster) is loaded with potential drama, as it can trigger the end of the round or indeed, the end of the game.
Aztec delicacy
This was exactly what happened to me, as I sat poised with my stone and wood to move two massive rocks onto the pyramid and score a shedload of points - not enough to catch Adam, but a shedload. Adam ascended a worker, and the sun met its eclipse, and my final turn went up in a puff of Euro-scheming. Andrew as last player could at least complete the round, and he made sure he was good for second...
Adam 171
Andrew 116
Sam 106
An absolute pasting at the hands of Hillmann! Is his secret the tiny index finger?
Despite the chaotic look and, at times, feel of the game, we were done in under two hours. There was still time to play Railroad Ink!
Adam 55
Sam 46
Andrew 42
Then we sent Adam home.
Teotihuacan was interesting, with a kind of Village-y mechanic of having your workers become obsolete after a while. Adam's tactic of having his worker dice orbit the board as a group seemed to work. The sight of his yellow cuboid gang strutting about like they own the place will always be with me.
ReplyDeleteWe played again tonight and they are still strutting!
ReplyDelete