Preceded and accompanied by a hype worthy of a latest generation smartphone!
Designed and created by an Italian author whose name is combined with some of the most 'beautiful games of all time!
Ready to climb the charts of the best boardgames ever and to entertain thousands of hardened gamers!
Awarded 4 Golden Geek 2018 nominations including best solitaire game and best strategy game.
Set in one of the most fascinating and renowned archaeological sites in the world
Ladies and Gentlemen
Directly from the NSKN stand in Essen for your tables
Here you go - Teotihuacan la Citta' degli Dei: Daniele Tascini's last effort
A general look at the game
The setting is inspired by the pre-Columbian civilization that built the famous pyramid of the sun located in the homonymous site in Mexico. In the game the main purpose will be to build the famous pyramid placed in the middle of the board. But that's not enough: in addition to this we will have to adorn and embellish it, build the Avenue of the Dead and worship the pre-Columbian ravenous.
All this will happen through 3 dice (but during the game they can soon become 4) that we will never throw but that simply represent workers who, depending on the action they do, will grow (in number and age) until 6 in which they will rise to the heavenly kingdom.
The game lasts three eras progressively shorter for a duration of just under 2 hours.
It is a game for 1-4 players from 14 years old and up with main mechanics of placing workers. placing tiles, collection set.
A look at the rules
The manual dedicates 17 of its 24 pages to the rules of the game, 4 and a half dedicated to the rules in solitaire and the rest serves to explain the many icons on the board and the hundreds of cards and badges that are used.
The main concept, however, is that there are 8 large action spaces arranged in a circle around the central pyramid: 2 are fixed while the others can be replaced with other tiles that cover the existing ones: in this way 6 of the 8 actions (the actions are always those) can be carried out in different places of the board making the initial setup always different and avoiding, or however limiting as much as possible the possibility that they are created and spread over time of the winning strategic paths that eventually degrade a little the content of the game.
But let's not digress: 8 action spaces we said on which they move only and always clockwise, from one to three spaces maximum, our dice / workers (one at a time)
Once you get to a box, you can:
(a) to carry out the main action of the box in which it is located:
- 3 are dedicated to the collection of resources (wood, gold and stone are the resources of the game): you take a number of resources depending on the face of the die(s) as described in the space itself
- 1 is dedicated to alchemy: in this space there are 6 technology tiles that give powers for the rest of the game once a player has placed on it a marker. The powers, for example are the most 'disparate and in some cases very useful: pay one less material to build the pyramid, always take an extra resource', make victory points at the completion of a certain action etc.. In my opinion an essential space to make a good game
- 1 is dedicated to the nobles: you pay 2 woods, you place a building on the card (the space of placement is chosen based on the number of dice present) you collect victory points and take a step on the path of the dead
-1 is dedicated to decorations: by paying 3 golds (less if there are more dice) you choose a decoration marker and place it on a step of the pyramid: you make 3 points plus one (or two) depending on whether the icon that positions overlaps an identical (or two) below. Then leftovers of a space on the path pyramid construction
-1 is dedicated to the construction of the pyramid: there are three pyramid tiles available and, depending on the number of my dice on the action space, I can build from 1 to three tiles overlapping the others in a predefined way to form the classic stepped pyramid. To do this you pay the resources required (increasing depending on the floor to be placed) and you make the relevant points (these also increasing depending on the number of icons that we can overlap the existing ones. You then advance on the path pyramid construction.
-1 and dedicated to the palace: transit space in which there are no actions but only "key spaces".
After performing the main action one or two dice (depending on how much they participated) evolve by growing a number.
b) Harvesting cocoa
Cocoa is the currency of the game: before carrying out any of the actions seen before we will have to pay the reserve a number of cocoa equal to the number of colors of the dice present (for example, if there were 5 dice, 2 red and 3 green, we should pay 2 cocoa: what arrives does not count). If we can't pay, we don't do the action.
Arriving in an action space you can renounce to the main action and collect as many cocoa as the colors of the dice present plus 1 (in the example just done I would collect 3). In this case, however, the die does not evolve
(c) devote oneself to worship
is a residual action that can be useful especially towards the end of the game: there are some boxes including three in the building (they are "the key spaces"), which give instant powers or allow you to pray to the gods. If a player wants to use them, he enters that space, carries out the action or the prayer and his die remains immobilized until he pays 3 cocoa to free him.
Other particularities of the rules
- If a player does not want to pay for cocoa to free his workers from key spaces, he can skip the turn and free all the imprisoned dice for free.
- When a die reaches 6 it rises: in this case it starts from 1 and the player immediately benefits from a bonus of his choice (including releasing the 4 die). Advance of a space on the counter time counter
- During the game, by performing actions or dedicating ourselves to worship, we may have the opportunity to pray to one of the three Gods. In this case, just as in Tzolkin we will advance in its path dedicated to worship by collecting certain bonuses (materials, victory points or cocoa). At the penultimate step of this staircase we can make a good dose of points. The same is true for the last step, but only the first one that gets there can access it.
- During the game we will have the opportunity to take several cards scattered here and there on the board. These give us, sometimes for free sometimes paying cocoa or gold, one shot powers (even nice like moving two dice simultaneously) or masks to be used in the classic form of collection set
- At the end of each era you have to feed your workers' dice: 1 cocoa for the one or two and two for the four and five: for every worker who is hungry you lose 3 victory points.
to be continued in the next part