Teotihuacan - Board Game Review | The Tabletop Crier

TEOTIHUACAN

a review of the board game Designed by Daniele Tascini

Players: 1-4, Time Investment: 90-120 mins

Rating:

I'm Blubbering!

Game Aesthetic 

Components:

I love the bird's eye view of the temple and the buildings, it gives you the feel of flying or being one of the gods that are worshipped in the game. I even took a little time to check out the little people during their busy days.

Artwork by Odysseas Stamoglou:

The artwork on the player board itself is nice but the tiles that are used to help build the temple are a little lackluster. I do like the continued authentic feel of the art throughout, most especially the masks set collection portion of the game.

The First Turn

Options:

This is only 2/3 of the board. There are 8 spots to run around on.
This main area is to track the rounds and the progress on the temple.

Oh my god this game has a ton of things to think about and the player interaction is intense and punishing. There's quite a bit of traffic control to think about because areas to do actions are more expensive (i.e. cost more cocoa) to activate if you're not the first one there. You'll need to do a majority of these actions throughout the game so unless you have some level of foresight you'll need to make sure you have currency to spend. The issue here is, in order to keep your workers after the first eclipse, you need to also have that same currency type to feed the workers. Workers that have "been around the block" are more experienced or... bigger? Buff? Hulking out? Regardless they need more resources to keep alive, otherwise you suffer point penalties. But based on the value of your workers, the power of the actions you take is augmented. So... now you have a circular dependency puzzle you need to solve, especially because there's no easy, consistent, surefire way to get cocoa.

What's funny about this game is that the spaces themselves are easy to understand. You can lock a worker in place to worship in the temple for a bit, and that is "free" ish (i.e. doesn't care about how many different people are there) and just costs some resource -- or if also calling out to deities, costs cocoa. Problem: this can't unlock and move around the block again until you pass. So not really a great thing to do right away despite there being immediate rewards for making gods happy.

Your dice are separated at the beginning but work best when together. However that means you make tiny steps with everything else for the one awesome action. Turn order doesn't change in this game so you're just hosed if everyone else wants to do what you want to do until they move. And you can't force them to move. They could just sit there, block you for a while and force you to do something else (i.e. CHANGE YOUR PLANS CUZ I SAY SO). Of course, like all things in life you can buy out the action. It's not like the door is really shut, you're just needing to buy your way into the VIP circle first.

Cocoa: the Currency of Pain.

Rewards and Objectives:

You could just run the one guy around, push it to ascension (i.e. 6 pips) -- which gives you immediate resources -- but you've denied yourself a partner in crime as it goes out on its own and then floats back down as a 1 pip. So there's that.

God Tracks, which provide tiny boosts during the game and
guidance for an end game scoring condition.
There are various ways to go up on these.

Ability to Pivot:

I would say that it's reasonable to change what you're doing since what you do affects what others do and so on, so it's not one of those games that says, "Oh, your engine failed on turn one or two, time to give up".

Game End

It's somewhat easy to tell, since it's based on number of turns taken but it does accelerate when players take specific actions. Then you just look at any relevant end game scoring from the deity tracks. Most of your score accumulates in game. I ended up victorious the first time I played because I checked the top of the deity tracks for fun things to work towards.

Altiplano - Board Game Review | The Tabletop Crier

ALTIPLANO

a review of the board game Designed by Reiner Stockhausen

2-5 Players, 60-120 minutes

Rating:

I'm Weeping!

Game Aesthetic

Each location has resources and actions available 
that correspond to the player mat.

Components: 

I would be up for throwing money at this game to get wood chips instead of cardboard for the resources -- I'm being taken back to a special copy of Orleans I saw at a game night once -- but it seems difficult considering the location sizes, box size, and size of the personal crate. Also since we're using wooden cubes, I'm assuming we feed an animal to drag around a wooden crate with no wheels... sounds legit. Though the misshapen locations for funsies is a nice touch.

Artwork: 

Pretty typical for a eurogame, the colors are 2D standard, familiar colors. I really enjoy the rustic and Andean rural feel of the way the resources are drawn, with of course the welcome exception of the cartoon alpaca (NOT LLAMA), which has that Dramatic Chipmunk vibe. Note that you are using the alpaca fur in this game to make blankets and since alpaca clothing is much more expensive than cashmere, you'll need to keep that in mind if the life of Altiplano is your Plan B.

The First Turn

Player has a personal warehouse,
standard player mat,
starting asymmetrical side board,
and ability to purchase additional buildings for more options.

There is a distinction between your personal bag (to draw)
and crate (to hold new purchases and used resources)

Options:

As far as the game mechanics go, this is part worker placement, part bag builder, and action selection. So, in addition to the standard player board which provides movement, you have a individual starting side board with asymmetrical resources that can run it.There are also opportunities to buy things with cold hard cash but you really shouldn't since you don't have resources for shit that can power anything you're going to buy. Arguably, the unique sideboard is "your jam" and allows you, worst case scenario, a fall back action to avoid analysis paralysis. 

So, hooray, 3 options right off the bat. Since you can start anywhere with your worker, and have 3-4 resource chips in your bag, it translates to 1-2 actions depending on your first turn plans. 

You are restricted in movement and you're attempting to try and maximize on that limited movement but are you maximizing the right things?! YOU DON'T KNOW, AND YOU'RE WEEPING. You cannot possibly do everything, because restriction is based on draw capabilities as well -- of which you have fail amounts of in the beginning.

I was a fish person, so I could make a fish right away but had no idea whether I was using fish to turn into more food to turn into more fish or... waaaaaaaaaa?!

Rewards and Objectives:

Contracts and Warehouse Storage can both thin out the collective supply and your personal resources BUT, if planned well, lead to points at the end of the game. So you can at least reverse engineer that into your first turn since you can poke through the deck to get an idea of what the point expectations are.

Note that since you need at least two levels of resource acquisitions before you can get to more luxury goods that are higher value when trading in for money, and you're only able to do that if you're at the specific location AND if you're lucky -- er, have planned -- enough to have drawn that...

Food is involved in most actions on the standard player mat, but taking the time to generate food restricts the locations where you end up and consequently your future positions unless you spend money on carts (which are pointless without food). 

You get the picture. You feel short on everything at first, and then feel intimidated by the abundance of resources.

This happened to me. I leaned in too much to my fish powers and was like WHAT DO FISH, I CAN HAS POINTS NAO? Oh wait, there's nothing except the warehouse that will take massive amounts of fish. Damn.

Ability to Pivot:

Thinning your bag aggressively is irreversible as you need resources to make resources. GASP, a resource-tight eurogame? WUT.

Not progressing your base resources -- basically your building blocks -- into resources that can be traded for money limits and restricts actions available in order to accelerate. The buildings that come out in the market really provide the flexibility you need to generate points, but again that's quarternary level planning that you can't double back to achieve if you're mid-game.

Just because there is a strong chance you'll end up with an abundance of resources you risk falling into the fallacy of needing to thin, but without thinking clearly you can thin too much and decelerate quickly without ability to recover by the end game trigger. Which brings us to...

Game End

End Game Scoring consists of:
values of resources in possession (bag and warehouse),
personal goals,
and warehouse progress.

This is the part that can catch you by surprise if you're not paying attention. Game ends when a location is depleted of its resources (cards, carts aka sad wooden blocks, resource chips).This will happen if you're producing too much of your "jam" or if other people are producing like mad. 

It seems attractive to make that sweet sweet peanut butter and jelly but if you haven't figured out a way to turn this into points, your resource engine was all in vain. You can only murder -- er, store -- so much stuff in your warehouse on your turn. While you are able to claim points on just having things, the ROI is better in the warehouse or in the contracts. Again, assuming you've had the grace and foresight to balance murder from your bag and breathing life into it. 

I, on the other hand, became an Andean fisherwoman with a mostly empty warehouse because I'm an amazing planner.

A Glimpse into What's to Come

tl;dr About Me is the place to start for a feel of what the heck you're in for.

Style

Conversational, with a good chance of run-on sentences, improper grammar, poor use of the American English language, haphazard use of (but not limited to) em dash, semicolons, colons, italics, bold, underline, capitalization, and quite possibly profanities used properly or improperly,  BUT still understandable! Will almost always come with a headliner if you're too lazy to read on any given day.

Content

New (within the past year) and Old (more than a year prior) releases of eurogames/German-style games, with focus on game mechanics rather than theme. 

Rating System

Silent Tears

Weeping

Sobbing

Blubbering

I'm basing everything off the first turn, and the number of figurative -- or quite possibly literal -- tears shed when making your first decision (but I'll never admit it specifically one way or the other).

Silent Tears: Intimidating. However, actions really only fall within 2-3 options, all of which are rewarded immediately in some fashion that will help you reach a secondary-level objective for your next turn. You have time to pivot throughout the game, if need be.

Weeping: Actions fall within 4-5 options, all of which are rewarded immediately in some fashion that will help you reach a secondary-level objective for your next turn. If you learn something new in your next two turns, victory can still be obtained.

Sobbing: Actions fall within 2-3 options. However, there are clear repercussions at a secondary- or tertiary-level objective in 3+ turns that you can identify. You may have the ability to pivot if you have obtained more information in your next turn (but it's unclear).

Blubbering: Overwhelming. You have a world of options, all of which lead to what is a clear, immediate reward but unclear impact on tertiary or quarternary objectives and/or your second turn. You cannot pivot from here if you missed anything.