More about Ahau

Let’s talk more about Ahau! If you haven’t done so, make sure to read our recent post on it where I tried to convey how it plays (and potentially failed thanks to its complexity). 😅

☝️ The first thing you need to decide each round is where you are going and with what military strength by playing 2 cards with the corresponding numbers. 🃏 This heavily limits your future turns, as you wont get them back until you used them up all.

Your chosen region is where you pick a pyramid tile from, then make your second big decision: 🕵️ in which city do you place a worker?
You will only be able to summon the God 🧞 of the chosen city - and this too has even more nuances. You might need a specific god power, but it might be worth it to summon another god, so you can place a marker on it’s temple to score it later.

That’s not all! 😮 Building scales with the number of meeples in the chosen city, while production scales with the meeples in 2 cities adjacent to a production tile. And that tile needs to be adjacent to your chosen city! 🤯 It can be worth it to stack some workers in cities… But ❗ there is also a majority scoring for meeples in cities during interim scoring so you want to spread out too. Being first to completely surround a region nets you a free building as well!

You see, there are a lot of mechanics that blur what the ideal play is. 😵‍ Every decision has consequences and you really have to evaluate the current board state and what others are doing. Losing a conflict can be devastating too, as it limits which cities you can put workers in.

If that’s not enough, there are also role cards you can get during the game. You use them like normal cards, but they have additional abilities. 🧐 The buildings you build are also super strong, so they can heavily boost certain strategies. And the way you build up your pyramid and get bonus point for matching icons and colors is a sweet cherry on top. 🍒

💭 Our impressions of Ahau weren’t stellar at first. I do think the iconography is sub-par and makes you reach for the rulebook one too many times, but as we explore the game more, we realize it has great qualities, and it stands out with its unique ideas. 🙃