Help Develop an Ancient City in Founders of Teotihuacan
Frances & Anthony
How it Plays
Anthony and Frances have been producing playthrough and review videos since 2016, and bring to the Nexus a fun-first approach. Primarily mid-heavy eurogamers, they provide insight into the 2 player experience for many popular board games. Join them as they show you how your next game plays.
Summary
Teotihuacan is Nahuatl for “City of the Gods”, and while there has been some mystery surrounding the genesis of this ancient Mesoamerican city, Filip Głowacz Founders of Teotihuacan lets gamers participate in the competition to bring the city to life. Players construct a step pyramid on their own player board, while building temples and buildings around it and worshiping throughout the game for victory points. When the eclipse arrives, the competition ends and the player whose vision resulted in the most victory points will be the winner.
How it Plays
This tile-laying game is played over 4 rounds for 2 and 4 players, or 3 rounds for 1 and 3 players. Player boards have been divided into four quadrants, two of which are accessible for building each player turn.
On their turn, players can choose either a build or an influence action in one of three locations. Players place a number of action discs on a location to determine their action strength. A greater action strength allows for more powerful building actions, but once a stack has 4 discs (including the bonus disk), no more can be placed that round.
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At the first location, players can build standard buildings within the bounds of the two quadrants where their architect is located. The action strength must be equal to or exceed the size of the tile. The influence action allows them to produce resources on their player boards around all buildings.
At the second location, players can build temples, using depicted resources. Like buildings, players’ action strength must equal or exceed the tile size, or else pay the difference in additional resources. Players also get to choose a worship tile corresponding with the tile they built. The influence action allows them to activate one of their worship tiles.
At the third location, players can build onto their pyramid. Building the pyramid awards victory points and additional bonuses. Influence at this location allows players to gain points and swap worship tiles.
The 2 and 4 player game ends after just 4 rounds, while the 3 player game ends after 3 rounds. Points are awarded for mask tiles, and tile placement, and players will want to try and maximize scoring by building temples in the same quadrant as matching pyramid tiles.
If you love playing Teotihuacan, but don’t have the time or the game group for a full game, this small-footprint tile laying game might be just what you need to compliment your collection. But don’t take our word for it. Find out now, as we show you how it plays.
Our Thoughts
I always go into games based on larger, more complex games with a degree of apprehension. Its easy to water-down a great game and pitch it as a light version of the same thing. That is not what we have here. We were pleasantly surprised how much strategy was packed into this short game play time. You get the feel of playing Teotihuacan without the large footprint and complex rondel. It definitely hit the approachability mark for us, as its something we feel will get more play time with our current gaming group and schedule.
I think I would rather play this than Teotihuacan. I was really impressed.
Anthony – How it Plays
What we liked
- A complex tile-laying system that required more strategy than just filling the board
- Multiple ways to score points, which means multiple paths to victory
- Accessible art and design. We feel like we could play this with heavy gamers as well as newer gamers.
Who Its For
- Anyone looking for a quick-playing, unique take on tile placement
- Anyone who likes limited interaction. This game has very little interaction, and opportunities to do what you want without getting blocked out completely.
Our Reservations
The architect movement was hard to keep track of. You have to be REALLY diligent about moving your architect at the end of each round. Our experience was that we were so tied up in maximizing every turn, and the game plays so quickly, this was easy to forget (and extremely critical).
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