Teotihuacan: City of Gods is a Rondel based Euro game.

Title:  Teotihuacan: City of Gods

Year Published: 2018

Designer: Daniele Tascini

Publisher: NSKN Games

Players: 1-4

Game Time: ~120 mins

Set-up Time: ~10 mins

Ages: 12+

Theme: Ancient Mesoamerica

Mechanisms: Point to Point Movement, Rondel, Set Collection, Tile Placement

How to win: Score the most points over 3 Eclipses

Game Description

In Teotihuacan: City of Gods, Travel back in time to the greatest city in Mesoamerica. Witness the glory and the twilight of the powerful pre-Columbian civilization. Strategize, accrue wealth, gain the favour of the gods, and become the builder of the magnificent Pyramid of the Sun.

Set Up, Game Play & Game End

Teotihuacan: City of Gods Round-Up

Theme

I don’t know much about ancient Mesoamerica, I wasn’t there, but I’m guessing this is all good?

Stone, Wood, Building, Worship… All the things I’d expect to see in a game from this era and location. I’d love to hear from someone who knows about this about how much in the game reflects “real life”.

Setup & Rule Book

Setup is actually quite easy. The hard part is unfolding that massive board without putting it in a position to tear along a joint.

The only other problem is adding tokens to all the spaces but the symbols on the board match the back of the tile so it’s just a case of matching them up. Those in stacks have setup printed on the board so you know how many to stack for the player count which is always so helpful!

It’s a heavy game so the rulebook will be judged. With so much information to pass on it has to very good. It kinda is…

It’s a bit all over the place and subheadings don’t seem to make sense which makes browsing the rulebook awkward. But it often OVER explains things which means some information is lost while reading. One rule uses 2 almost identical paragraphs to explain it where 2 lines would have done.

Components & Artwork

Nice, nothing special. The Pyramid tiles are clearly very nice. These could have been thick cardboard but they went with chunky wood and they’re great.

The tokens and everything else is fine. I would have liked some more stylish dice than the regular old D6s you get in the game. But as you don’t roll the dice maybe something else could have been used? I’m being picky 🙂

The artwork is really nice and on theme for what I want to see in this kind of game. The iconography is clear in most cases. Some of the rarer icons on some tiles made us reach for the rulebook.

But it does have a nice, clean look.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

Ha, well, yes…

So, it is EASY to teach. There is just a lot of it. 99% of the rules are printed on the board so there isn’t too much to remember.

Accessible? No. Although it’s all open information so you could guide someone through it?

Teotihuacan: City of Gods Summary

It’s a good fun game.

One thing I really like is that I constantly had a goal. I was always moving dice into position and gaining resources to do something. Even when I didn’t know what to do immediately I found a goal to achieve and went and did it.

The movement of the dice around the board for actions is good as is ascending them.

The variability is good too. In my setup, I started with 2 technology tiles which gave me a good head start. Next time I probably won’t have this. Even if I did, the two technologies I would start with will probably be different.

Overall the game is very good. I put Teotihuacan: City of Gods up alongside games like Mombasa and Bora Bora as fun heavy games. All 3 have very different mechanisms so they all belong on my shelf.

Rating I give it 7/10

Jesta ThaRogue