How to play Terracotta Army & Review

Terracotta Army is a worker placement, area majority game.

Title: Terracotta Army

Year Published: 2022

Designer: Przemysław Fornal, Adam Kwapiński

Publisher: Board&Dice

Players: 2-4

Game Time: ~120 mins

Set-up Time: ~10

Ages: 14+

Theme: Early Imperial China

Mechanisms: Worker Placement, Area Majority

How to win: Score the most points by building and arranging statues in the mausoleum

Game Description

Emperor Qin Shi Huang has passed away. To protect him in the afterlife, a great army in the form of statues of faithful warriors must be assembled to stand guard in the Emperor’s tomb. You will be among those tasked with building this magnificent army.

How to play Terracotta Army

A quick how-to-play video for Terracotta Army. Learn all the rules in a short time. (Coming 16th Jan 2023)

Main mechanisms

There is worker placement with the placement of the meeples in the wheel. The meeples have names like artisan etc and they are placed into spaces to perform a task. But it still feels like worker placement due to the rotation of the wheel. I wonder if this represents the lack of technology available. Not sure.

There is also an area majority game with the statue placement within the mausoleum.

USP

Using the minis that are this nice purely to use as an area majority piece rather than cardboard tokens which would work just as well.

Theme

I don’t know much about the real place the theme is based on, I’ve only seen pictures. But the end game looks like those pictures which is why I guess they had to go with minis over cardboard tokens.

Terracotta Army Setup & Rulebook

The setup is OK. You can place things out pretty easily if you put things away correctly.

The rulebook is really good.

Components & Artwork

The minis are ok but you have to put them head first into a box, 32 of them. Some have weapons that are a bit droopy so you have to take care putting them in or you’ll bend them back.

The little art there is fits the theme well.

Ease of Teaching

So the game is quite easy to teach. You need to teach the actions on the wheel, most of which are duplicated. You then need to teach scoring, once you’ve done that you’re golden.

But, there are quite a few little bits that are not intuitive or shown anywhere on the board which is a shame as the board has lots of iconography to remind you of this and that in certain places.

Similar Games

I’m not aware of any worker placement games that score via area majority. Deck-building, yes with Tyrants of the Underdark. Action selection, yes with El Grande. Worker placement? Not that I know of.

I’m sure there is so let me know.

Terracotta Army Summary

This game is pretty good.

You can usually never get the perfect wedge on the wheel that will give you 3 perfect actions. Mostly because you want to do all of them each turn but you’re restricted to 3.

The statues themselves, the placement and the scoring is good fun. Early game it’s quite tough to figure out where is best, end game you’re running out of space. So, you better make the most of that mid-game.

One of the scoring issues is that it’s not easy to remember which of the many, many scoring options re at the end of the round and which are not. You start to remember eventually but this should be on the board.

Terracotta Army Round-Up

All in all, this is a fun game with a lot of good restrictions to actions making each of the 3 actions you take each turn super important.

Terracotta Army Rating

I give it 6/10

Note: The copy I played was a review copy generously provided by Board & Dice, big thanks to them for this game.