First Impressions: Tahuantinsuyu

Mustafa and Jonathan came by for some gaming this Sunday, and it was official Marc Day, where your gentle host got to select all of the games for the day. We played one of my unplayed acquisitions, Tahuantinsuyu, and a beloved classic that neither of the two guys had played, Java.

"Tahuantinsuyu" means "Land of the Four Regions" in Inca. The game is a loose abstraction of the expansion of the Incan empire. Thus, the board is a map of the Peruvian region of South America, a skinny corridor flanked by the rainforest and Pacific. The map is dotted with features important for gameplay, such as City Sites, Significant City Sites (places like Macchu Pichu), Garrisons, and Huaca (villages), that are connected by a network of dotted lines that represent roads. The map is subdivided into small regions that are bordered by a faint color. Every region receives a small, face-down chip that indicates what the level of resistance is in that region, and what one would receive in points or manpower if one were to conquer that region.

The game turn is made up of 4 possible phases: the Inca phase, representing the efforts of all to expand the empire; the Sun phase, which emphasizes the importance of religion and the weather; the people phase, where work actually gets done; and the Sapa Inca phase, in which scoring takes place. The game consists of 7 rounds with a varying number of phases. For example, in the first round, only the Inca phase and two people phases occur. In round two, it goes Inca, Sun, People, Sun, People, Sapa Inca.

In the Inca phase, players receive a set number of Labor tokens, which indicate available manpower. If you had previously conquered a region that provides labor, you receive that here. The Labor tokens are used to build and upgrade sites, or to conquer regions during the People phase. You may also build up to two roads by drawing on the dotted lines with the crayon of your color during the People phase. In the Sun phase, the cards come out. Every player has a hand of Sun cards, which can change the game state slightly for the better or worse. Sun cards are placed between two players. In turn order, each player places one card face down between the players of his choice, so that all players have a card to their right and left. The cards are revealed, and the players adjacent to a card are affected by it. Some rounds have 3 Sun phases, so every player is affected by 6 cards in the final People phase of that round.

I think the card placement mechanism is pretty cool, and it makes turn order important. Many of the cards are helpful, so you don't want to place it near the leader, but if you're late in the turn order, you won't necessarily have an option of where to place your card. Some of the cards are too powerful, however. The Great Pilgimage cards (3 different ones) refer to different Significant City sites. If there is a temple built at the site(s) listed on a card, and the card is played next to a player has a road built to that site, that player may skip his road-building to go on a pilgrimage for 5, 6, or 8 points, depending on the site. In the later rounds, when there are 3 People phases, this is a HUGE jump in points, since a player may then use this card 3 times for 15, 18, or 24 points! This can be unbalancing if one person controls the two cards that refer to the northern temples. This is what happened in our game.

It may be that the designer intended these cards to be a large points boon late in the game to engender more competition for access to Significant City sites, but control of the card means that person can decide when, where, and for whom the advantage will emerge.

My other complaints: 1) There's little competition in the early rounds of the 3p game, since there's so much room to maneuver. 2) The board. It is cardstock, and is meant to be drawn upon with crayon. However the board never fully unfolds, so scoring markers go sliding away, and the crayon lines are rather hard to see. Road markers a la Age of Steam would probably work better. Also, it is often unclear whether a road is in one region or another, which is important. Next time, we'll try plexiglass and dry erase markers.

The first time you play any game, especially if it's new to everyone playing, it's difficult to see what to value highly. I would like to try this again, preferably with 3 opponents, to see how this experience changes my perspective. My biggest fear with Tahuantinsuyu is that you have to suffer through a boring few opening rounds before you start having fun. Otherwise, I think that it's a decent idea that could use better production and perhaps a dash more development. Ideally, that dash would include some thematic spice that creates a bit more conflict. I'm thinking something like an ambush marker that you could place on specific roads or regions -- something directly confrontational to reflect that you're basically attempting to conquer a huge amount of territory, and that always leads to bloodshed and destruction. I would also like to see an improvement of the 3p game to increase competition in the early going.