Ahau Rulers of Yucatán: Rapid Review
Information:
Mechanics: Worker Placement, Tile Placement, Area Control, Pyramid
Player Age: 14+Player Count: 1 - 5 PlayersTime to Play: 90 - 120 Minutes
Game Designer: Oláh TamásGame Artist: Lázár Aurél, Szabó DávidPublisher: Grand Gamers GuildYear Published: 2023
Player Age: 14+
Game Designer: Oláh Tamás
Rundown:
Ahau Rulers of Yucatán is a worker placement, area control and engine building game. Players aim to gain board supremacy while constructing new buildings with ongoing abilities, adding Gods to your pyramid to amplify abilities, and racing against other players.
Movement:
Select Region:
Simultaneously, each player selects two region cards, one for the region they want to go to and one for the strength value. Keep in mind when playing the strength card that are discarded at the end of the round. For this reason be careful not to play the card matching the region you want to go to next round. When gaining the region place your ruler.
Later on in the game players will be able to gain an additional district card that contains a special ability to be activated in the round you play it.
Resolve Conflict:
If you had the same plan as another player and tried to contend in the same region, there is a conflict instead. Whichever player has the stronger value (second district card played earlier and the value of their weapons) gains access to that region and increases one space on their might track. The loser must now move to another district but gains one weapon.
The might track has numerous bonuses for drawing resources, tiles, and points as players progress along the track.
Take a Pyramid Tile:
Take one of the two pyramid tiles from the region in which you placed your standee.
Action Phase:
Place Worker:
Place one worker in one of the cities that border the region your ruler is. It doesn't matter if other workers are here (friend or foe), the more workers you have in a city, the better.
Summon God (optional):
If you choose to you can summon the god that matches the city in which your worker was placed. Each god has different abilities and all of these are based off your strength value. Your strength is determined by the amount of matching gods in your pyramid, plus what can be discarded from your hand at the time of summoning. Out of the tiles you use to summon the god, often one of their corresponding colours must be chosen in relation to the gods effect.
When summoning a god for the first time (using one token from your pyramid), you will also place one of your player markers on the temple to open that scoring condition in the k'atun phase. These scoring possibilities can score for all manner of reasons such as different resource types in your reserve, different types of gods built in your pyramid, and for every second space you are up on the might track.
Produce or Build (optional):
You can either choose to produce or build based on your worker’s city.
Produce:
Producing allows you to gain resources from one of the production sites connected to the city your worker is on. The value of resources you will drain is equal to the amount of workers on cities connected to this production site.
The production site will then be removed from the map and added to the K'atun calendar, now working as a countdown timer to scoring.
Build:
The amount of buildings you can construct with this action is based on the amount of workers in the city. Building your pyramid is done by spending multiple different types of resources as based on the level of the pyramid. There are two caveats to building a pyramid token, firstly you must have solid ground beneath the tile you are placing. This means that a second floor tile will need two first floor tiles underneath it. The other caveat is out of the resources you spend you will need one of these to be the same colour as the tile being built. You will have to spend different coloured resources and resources equal to the level of the floor it is being built on.
Players can also build using the three building tiles at the bottom of the board. The cost is displayed at the top of the tile and the building will give you a special ability for the rest of the game. These can range from always winning conflicts, gaining an extra build when you use this action, and taking both pyramid tiles in the movement phase. These tiles have to be built in the leftmost space and players will gain bonuses based on what they cover.
Discard/Redraw:
The cards played in the movement phase will now be discarded. If there are less than two cards left, re-draw all your district cards.
End of Round:
The buildings at the bottom of the board will be refreshed by discarding the left building, sliding all buildings over and drawing new buildings. Any empty pyramid tiles will also be refreshed randomly from the draw bag. A new round will now commence unless a k'atun begins.
K'atun:
If the k'atun calander is full up to the correct player count then k'atun scoring will begin. Players will score for every temple they have a marker. In the standard rules, everyone gets the same score based on the highest achiever there. However, there is a personal scoring variant that has everyone score individually. Additionally, for each city the player with the most workers there gains two points, or one point for each player in the case of a tie.
End of Game:
The game will end under three conditions; the third k'atun just occured, all 12 workers of one player have been placed, or one players pyramid is full. Following the second and third reason, one last k'atun will occur after the current round before resolving the game.
Almighty (gods):
There are five mighty gods you will call upon to fully achieve optimal turns. Chief God, Rain God, Trade God, Sun God, and Jaguar God. Remember that strength is equal to the amount of gods of that type built on your pyramid and discarded from your personal reserve. Also a lot of gods use a certain colour in their activation that relates to one of the chosen pyramid tile colours used in the summoning. For example, two blue jaguars and one black jaguar are used. That means you can select either black or blue to be the colour and have a strength of three.
Chief God:
Choose a colour then take pyramid tokens off the board matching your colour. This will be done equal to your strength. Players can also take a wild token (instead) or a random token out of the bag instead of a token matching the chosen colour.
Rain God:
Choose a production site matching your chosen colour. The site is placed on the k'atun calendar and you gain resources if that type equal to your strength.
God of Trade:
You may move workers one space each, this can be done as many times as your strength. You can move workers multiple time as long as they don't visit the same city more than once this turn. Whenever you move a worker you can also trade a resource of your chosen colour for another coloured resource.
Sun God:
The sun god has two components to the action; firstly, you can lay down a worker adjacent to a production site matching your chosen colour to upgrade that worker for the rest of the game. A laid down worker is equal to two workers. Secondly, you can re-draw region cards equal to your strength.
Jaguar God:
The jaguar god has a cost of one worker (adjacent to a production site of your chosen colour) being returned to your supply. Then move up one space on the might track and gain points equal to your strength.
Pyramid:
Besides the worker placement on the main board, the pivotal part of the game is the engine building that players establish on their pyramid board. The buildings at the bottom of the board have their own ongoing effects but players also receive a bonus for each spot on the track they cover.
This includes moving on the might track, gaining a role card, and gaining points.
These bonuses are spread throughout the pyramid itself. However, the pyramid has much more potential for a player than simply the points and might track advancement. Whenever you summon a god, all the tokens built on the pyramid that match that god are going to add to your strength value. The pyramid also works as a good way to score pattern building points. When building a tile the player will score one point for every tile connected to it showing the same god, as well as the same occurrence with matching colours.
Interaction:
There is a lot of interactions between players placing their workers. Worker placement helps with numerous elements rather than simply aiding your current turn. It helps to create better building and resource actions on future turns, scores points if you have higher quantity of workers, and they have the ability to surround regions. Even this occurs, the player will gain and build the building tile on the region at a cost of zero resources.
Determination:
- Colour of tile or resource means much in this game which keeps you constantly planning.
- The God system was great and added multiple layers to the puzzle.
- Challenging to teach.
- Temples were fiddly and fragile to set up.
- Issues with production quality and some misaligned tokens.
Ignoring the negatives with the production and the challenge that is learning the games rules. Ahau Rulers of Yucatán is a very interesting and engaging euro game about building two engines; your gods engine and your shared worker board. There is an abundance of scoring options in this game so at first players are simply trying to build their board presence to improve their engine. Initially this is through worker placement, improving their resource or building abilities, and constructing their pyramid to improve the god abilities. Later, players are trying to optimise their point gain per turn while setting up k'atun scoring. This is a longer game so seasoned game-players are recommended but it has very fast playing turns and a lot of optimised decision making with a great core system that really made the game shine. This is one that will be staying in my collection.
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