A short and smart euro adventure

If you see the cover of Zapotec and notice the Board&Dice logo on it you might think this another one of the mezo-american-themed heavy euro games. However this one is quite light-weight and quick-playing. 🙃

I remember I was a bit disappointed when I first watched a video of the game, because I wanted the next dose of a heavy euro. But as time went by I realized I very much liked what I saw. So when buying the game I knew exactly what to expect.
We will need to put some more plays in before making a deeper review, for now here are some of our first impressions.

The game is all about resource management, finding how to best spend your resources and making compromises.

Playing your action card each round is also an essential decision - it will decide your turn order, your income and also where you can build on the game board.

We were a bit greedy in our play and kept constructing buildings to improve our income and to net more points in the end of round scoring - that meant however that we didn't really do much for end game scoring opportunities. I guess our score won´t be hard to beat the next time we play 🤣

I feel it's also hard to see or know when to switch to "end game mode", it's a nice puzzle to figure out. 🤔
The game can be easily played under 1 hour (there are only 5 rounds), however that doesn´t mean the decision space isn't big. Every turn could be played in a lot of different ways and it is up to you to figure out the best one.

We played 2p which works well; some of the spaces where you can build are restricted so it can get pretty tight. A 3 or 4 player game should be interesting too, but you might get royally screwed if you go last as everyone uses up the places you wanted to go. 😅

The components are okay - the buildings and pyramid pieces are nice, but you only get simple cardboard tokens for your resources - that keeps the price of the game down though so it is alright. I like the overall look of the game and how colorful it is. It has an impressive table presence. 😊