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Board game review & gameplay of: Ahau: Rulers of Yucathan

Game design: Oláh Tamás

Illustrations: Lázár Aurél, Szabó Dávid

  • 8/10
  • 14+
  • 1-5 players
  • 90-120 minutes

Gameplay

This game is based upon the ancient world of the mayans. Each player is an Ahau, a ruler trying to impress subjects and neighbouring citystates. They need to demonstrate their military powers, secure vital supplies and establish temples devoted to the gods.

The game consists of 3 rounds (K’atuns). Each turn players simultaneously play 2 cards, one to the left indicates what region they want to go and one to the right indicating how badly they want to go there. After resolving conflicts and determining final placement of the Ahau’s, players take turns placing a worker, summoning gods and producing resources/building on their temple.

Every action players make has concequenses later in the game. In between rounds the temples are scored if you have summoned that particular god that round.

After the 3 rounds players tally up scores and the player with the most points wins the game.

Thoughts

Overall I really love building tiles, closing in regions and summoning the gods. This game is a very nice cocktail of mechanisms and with the beautiful artwork and body of historical facts, feels very unique.

👍 The game looks absolutely stunning and as this is a prototype I’m very excited about the final production quality. The illustrations and artwork is very well done by an art team consisting of 6 people!

👍 There’s a lot of historical background integrated in this game, which I find awesome and I wish more board game creators would spend some effort on this!

👍 I like how there are so many ways to gain points and there are multiple ways to victory. A lot of actions feel rewarding, I always appreciate this in games. I think it’s quite interesting that everyone who has summoned a particular god gains points for the most scoring player in between rounds.

➖ It’s very important to place markers with the gods, for the in between rounds scoring. This is not per se a bad thing, but something you should know when playing the game.

This game is live on kickstarter now, check it out here!

Solomode

The solomode consists of a set of rules containing some decision trees. It’s very well thought through, but there is also quite the learning curve in my opinion. If you value this game and think about playing it solo more than once, I’d say it’s definitely worth digging into, as it’s solid!

8/10

A copy of this game was provided to me by Apeiron Games for the purpose of writing this review. My opinion however remains my own.

Boardgamegeek BGG

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