Those who came before us
As fans of tile-laying games, Teotihuacan and Board&Dice games in general we just had to pre-order Founders of Teotihuacan. It finally arrived today! 🥳
As the box also states, this is a tile-laying game; supported by worker placement and resource management elements. A unique twist is your architect meeple – it moves around your board each turn, and you will only be able to build on the half of your player board where he stands. Also another thing is that – unlike most tile-laying games – you don’t necessarily need to build tightly and neatly, as it brings you no bonus points. I found this a bit unusual. 🤔
There is another twist with the worker placement – the more discs you take an action with, the stronger it will be (your opponents discs also count if you place onto those). However there are also bonus tiles on the worker spots, so it could be worth it to start a new disc-stack and claim the bonus that way. 🧐
You will be placing buildings that generate resources, temples that give you worship tiles and pyramid tiles that are a big source of your points and bonus actions. Generated resources are placed adjacent to the buildings – that is also where you spend them from to build the temples and the pyramid. At first you are swimming in resources but as your board gets more crowded with things you won’t generate so much anymore.
You main goal is plan your city in a way so that your four districts harmonize with your pyramid. For example if you have a bunch of green temples in the north-west corner, you should also have multiple green pyramid tiles there. This will bring a bunch of points at the end of the game. Activating your worship tiles nets you some points too and different effects depending on the tile. You are also racing to cover up clusters of mask icons on your board to claim valuable mask tiles.
I think Founders of Teotihuacan manages to set itself apart from other tile-laying games with some clever ideas and mixing up the usual formula. We will be testing it further with some more plays. 👍
