BUCANEIROSNSKN NSK024 Teotihuacan: City of Gods, Mixed Colours

A great game for up to 4 players. Beautiful artwork on gameboard, nice pieces, interesting game mechanics with enough complexity to make it interesting but works well. Recommend to all boardgamers.

Complex rules at first, and with lots of randomisation in the setup it slows down setup. But it has very interesting gameplay and strategic planning in order to win

A little bit about me: I play designer board games two to three times a week. I tend to play a lot of heavy "euros" with games like Food Chain Magnate, Through the Ages, Arkwright and Trickerion being some of my favourite titles.("Euros", if you don't know, refers to a class of games that tend to, largley, shun direct conflict and player elimination and often obscures the score until the end of the game.)Teotihuacan was probably the most hyped of the mid to heavy euro last year. I was only mildly excited to play it as often the most hyped games each year are overrated but I've now had the opportunity to play it twice and I love it.The game sees each player in control of 'worker' dice that they place on the track around the edge of the board. On each turn you can move a die upon to three spaces around the track and then perform the action of the space it lands on. These spaces afford actions such as adding bricks to the pyramid, decorating previously placed pyramid tiles with patterned tiles, building houses or collecting resources. The power of the action you take is based upon the pip value (higher being better) of the dice you place there and many actions boost the die up a pip as a bonus as a result of performing the action. So whilst your initial actions are pretty weak, with time your dice become more powerful.If you boost a die up to ⚅ then it ascends. This gives you a bonus and also advances the game's 'clock'.The game is made more thinky by the fact that moving into occupied spaces costs cocoa, based upon the number of different players already present in that space. (Cocoa can be collected by forgoing the action when moving into a space.)So the game is pretty simple—move your dice workers around the board, collecting points in various ways, boosting your dice and picking up bonus tiles and 'locking' dice in place to give you further bonuses. It's however a lot of fun and there are several different paths you can take based upon what the other players are doing and your whim.I've only played this at three and four players so I cannot attest to its enjoyment at two players. I imagine, as the contention for worker spots is central to the game, that it will be poorer at two players (but there could be a mechanism I've forgotten to address this; I can't remember).Component wise the game is pretty good: you get a large board, extra boards to allow the order of the worker spots to be changed for variety, some really quality nice pyramid tiles (white faux-Bakerlite like Bananagrams or Hive) and a bunch of dice and chits.There are not really any ways to directly affect your opponents in this game. Other than seizing scoring spots and increasing the cost of spaces by leaving your workers present this is very much a multi-player solitaire type game. If you like that type of game then you'll enjoy this but if you're someone who prefers games with conflict and atmospheric armies fighting for territory then this is definitely not the game for you (unless you like your armies to be spotty cube guys who are completely passive). It's also very much a 'point salad' with points available through a multitude of different mechanisms and spots around the board.The game is also relatively affordable in these days of £60 games. It seems to be available readily at under £40 and I think that's pretty good value for what you get. Especially considering it has those lovely pyramid tiles.

This is an amazing game that has rapidly become a favourite. When I initially saw the game I was underwhelmed by its look. The washed out colours and emphasis on cardboard pieces was not appealling. Once I played the game I was hooked. This is a worker placement game. I liked the mechanism of upgrading the dice after an action to secure extra bonuses, how different player counts are managed, and the many different ways that you can earn points. I liked the game so much I recently bought the expansion. Highly recommended.