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Review of Zapotec
Blurb from the publisher: 'The Zapotec were a pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the Valley of Oaxaca in Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence reveal their culture going back at least 2,500 years. Remnants of the ancient city of Monte Albán in the form of buildings, ball courts, magnificent tombs, and finely worked gold jewelry testify of this once great civilization. Monte Albán was one of the first major cities in Mesoamerica and the center of the Zapotec state that dominated much of the territory that today belongs to the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
In a game of Zapotec you build temples, cornfields, and villages in the three valleys surrounding the capital to generate resources needed for building pyramids, making sacrifices to the gods and performing rituals.
Zapotec is a quick-playing strategy game of managing resources, developing powerful action combinations, and constructing buildings, temples, and magnificent pyramids.'
What you get: Your EUR 45 or equivalent will buy you Zapotec, a puzzly resource management boardgame with set collection and area control elements for one to four players. The game lasts a maximum of one our and a half.
In addition to the 24-page English rulebook which can also be downloaded from the publisher's website free of charge, the game includes the following: one main board, 4 Player boards, 27 Action cards, 10 Ritual cards, 4 Reference cards, 45 Building tiles, 36 Trade tiles, 9 Scoring tiles, 4 Palace tiles, 36 wooden houses (9 per player), 20 wooden discs (5 per player), 24 plastic Pyramid pieces (6 per player: one large, 2 medium, 3 small), 15 Wood tokens, 15 Brick tokens, 15 Stone tokens, 15 Corn tokens, 15 Gold tokens, 15 Priest tokens, and 27 Solo Mode cards.
Gameplay: The main board is divided into three regions, each of which is divided in three types of terrain, namely plains, hills and forests. Each terrain has locations to build from three to five buildings, depending on the number of players. The buildings are cornfields, villages and temples. At the beginning of the game random tiles are attributed to these locations. All locations produce a basic (wood, brick, stone) and an advanced resource (corn, gold, priest), yet each tile is not identical. As an example, cornfields always produce corn as an advanced resource, the basic resource of a particular cornfield however can be any of brick, stone, or wood.
Each player board depicts, amongst others, a 3 x 3 grid, with each line and column showing the initial basic resource that that line or column will produce. Each player starts with his 9 Houses, one Palace, 6 Pyramid pieces, one of each basic resource (a brick, a stone, a wood), as well as 6 random Action cards. Each card depicts three things. The first is the two rows or columns in the player's board that it may activate when played (i.e. it shows brick, stone, or wood). Out of these two, the player has to choose one. Second, the area that the player will be allowed to build. This can be either a region (i.e. build something anywhere in that region only), or a terrain (build something in any region, but only on that terrain), or a particular building (e.g. build that building only, but anywhere on the board you like). Finally, it states a number, which will ultimately determines player order.
The game lasts five turns only. In a turn, players first simultaneously select and reveal one of their Action cards. Turn order is thus established for that round. Then, in turn order, they collect their income. They choose either the row or the column of the basic resource that the card contained, and produce whatever that line or column shows. At the beginning it only shows one good, yet the more villages a player claims from the main board, the more resources he will produce.
Then, again in turn order, each player completes the second leg of his turn. This is broken down in four parts.
First come the capital actions: trades, pyramids, rituals, and sacrifices. A player can perform those in any order he wishes, and as many times as he wishes.
A player can trade with the board in trades costing one, two or three gold. Trades are semi-random. There are always three available for everyone to see, yet once one is purchased, it becomes unavailable and gets substituted by another random trade. Trade always includes gold, and can provide either one-offs (e.g. pay one gold to get two other specific resources), new permanent options used once per round (e.g. pay two gold to have the option to change, once per round, a brick to two corns), and more lucrative options (e.g. pay three gold in order to build one cornfield per round at a cost of only one stone). A player can do up to three trades in a round, but only one trade of a particular value.
Pyramids are about either starting a new pyramid on one of the designated spaces, or continuing an existing one. A pyramid can have up to three parts, each of which may be built from different players. Each part requires all three basic resources plus a priest to build. A player can build more than one pieces of a pyramid in the same turn, but in different pyramids. Each pyramid is linked to a particular location when it starts being build, i.e. a region, a terrain, or a type of building. At the end of the game it provides points for the buildings it is linked to.
Three rituals are chosen randomly at the beginning of the game. A player can participate in each of them once. They cost one priest plus one gold for each player that has previously performed the ritual. At the end of the game rituals provide points for set collections of buildings, the remaining resources at a player's hand etc.
Sacrifices allow a player to advance on the 12-step sacrifice track. Each step can provide anything from points to one resource to cheaper trade or cheaper rituals. One priest is always needed, yet a player can spend from 2 to 5 corn, depending on how many tracks he wishes to advance.
Once the player's capital actions are over, he can build. A player can only build in the areas that his Action card for that turn allows him to. Villages, temples and fields cost two basic resources each (different for each building), while the palace costs three (one of each). The three former however allow you to claim the tile of the land where they were built, and place it on your player board so that you will have increased production in the future. The palace doesn't do that, it counts however for two buildings when it comes to scoring purposes.
After building, a player scores bonus points depending on how many buildings he has on the location depicted on the property icon, a semi-random value that changes turn after turn.
Finally, he draws one of the available Action cards, effectively replenishing his hand to six cards.
After a cleanup, a new round begins. Cleanup involves a new bonus property card and a new set of revealed Actions cards (a sum of the cards played during the last turn plus one randomly drawn card).
After the fifth round the players score their existing points (the ones accumulated during the game through the property bonus or through the sacrifice track), the points from completed pyramids, the points from completed or uncompleted pyramids that match their buildings/the terrains their buildings are at/the locations their buildings are at, and the points they gained from rituals. The player with the most points is the winner.
The game also offers a solo mode playing against Cocijobot, the Rain God of the Zapotec people (and a bot to boot). The rules are similar with some minor exceptions. The solo mode also has two minor tweaks, to make the game either easier or harder.
The rulebook ends with an appendix that exhaustively explains all the Trade tiles and the Ritual cards.
The strong points: Zapotec tries to distill what most would call a typical euro experience and present it in a tight, concise time frame. To a large extent it succeeds. Conceptually one can see immediate and less immediate influences of previous games, like Catan, Agricola, and Lost Ruins of Arnak, it'd be however unfair to say that Zapotec tries to mimic these, or any other game in particular. In one sentence Zapotec is a full-throttle optimization game, played within a very limited time-frame, in which the players also score by speculating on the aspects they feel they will ultimately do well.
The building aspect is lovely. Where in Catan you take a chance based on the statistical prevalence of the dice roll, in Zapotec you know exactly what you will get in the future when you decide to build. The little grid is an ingenious piece of design. Initially I dismissed it as a gaming gimmick, yet I was wrong. It's as if you organize your locations in production clusters, trying to optimize their output. I am certain we will see this mechanic elsewhere in the future. Each round is different to one another. The first round is almost scripted, preparing you for the next one. Just because it is scripted however does not mean that there aren't enough scripts to choose from. Zapotec is about tactics, not strategies, even though you can have a vague framework in mind. It is about building in the areas that provide a point bonus every single round if possible, about sacrificing as much corn as possible in order to claim small cheats (a free good here, a price reduction to trade there) at the appropriate time, about trading with the least cost to gain additional cheats, about having enough priests for them to be used wherever expedient. And if your opponent does something before you and denies you the opportunity for a crunchy combo, adapt, adapt, and adapt.
Zapotec is easy to learn and teach, at least when it comes to the rules. Its difficulty relates to the optimization exercise itself. Other games are more transparent about their initial phases, mid-game phases, and their endgame. Zapotec needs a bit of practice on balancing the building aspects with the later game bidding aspects related to the pyramids and the rituals. This isn't about improving every aspect of your little village kingdom nor about spamming resources, taking the game's limited duration into account. You are most likely playing the game right if you carry over a minimal inventory of goods from one round to the next (or even no inventory). One does not need to fully fill his grid in order to win, he does need however to pay attention to everything. If you are the only one missing on trades, or the pyramids, or anything else really, you are doing something wrong. You need to grab points from everywhere, especially the opportunistic ones.
The game is replayable, even though I am not convinced about its lasting appeal. You will only use three Rituals out of ten per game, the locations that pyramids relate to are semi-random, idem for the trade tiles or the locations that the production tiles are placed. Each game will have its own additional challenge.
The solo game provides added value. It might not be the first game that comes to mind if you have dedicated solos in your collection, and I wouldn't recommend buying it for the solo option alone, yet it is enjoyable. Needless to say, you can also use the solo rules to flatten the learning curve before playing with others.
The production values are high. The pictographs are ok, even though the text on the Ritual cards is extremely small and it does not reprise all the necessary information that can be found in the rulebook. The blend of wooden and plastic elements is nice. The little pyramids are pretty, while their height is crystal-clear.
The weak points: Limiting a game's duration is a good thing, seeing how many can no longer afford extravaganzas of games lasting for three and four hours. Yet Zapotec's failing isn't that it is short; it's that it feels short. In other games one gets an understanding of the machinery he is building, enjoys the process and the results that are produced. In Zapotec it all happens very fast. One will hardly build a satisfying engine, and he will be already bidding on what he feels might give him the most points. Those who want more grandiose experiences where they create a thriving civilization that runs like clockwork will be left wanting. Those too heavily into euros on the other hand might find the game bland since it doesn't present that much of a novelty. Most aspects have been seen elsewhere, and the process, while attractive, does not inspire or obsess as much as other euros do. It's the difference of 'Cool! Let's play again!' and 'Cool! Let's change to something else now'.
Player interaction is minimal, and in many ways the experience feels like a multiplayer solo. The only way you interfere with others is when you take your turn, whether you build first on a production location that they needed, whether you sacrifice first (and thus gain a few bonus points more), and whether you increase their Rituals cost. One is unlikely to pay too much attention to what others doing, even though a partial understanding is necessary in order to know what they might be aiming for in the future, so that you get it first and deny them the opportunity.
The game plays differently with different numbers of players. In a four player game there is a lot of time churn and the game can fall victim to analysis/paralysis. Even though I enjoy full tables, I am undecided as to whether Zapotec plays better with three than with four. With two players it is rather straightforward; your moves need only respond to those of one opponent.
The UI is not as player friendly as it should have been. The game has nine types of areas (three regions, three terrains, three locations), and some of them use conspicuously close colours to denote themselves. Forests are green, Villages are light green, Mitla is also green, Ocotlan is yellow while Cornfields are light yellow, while temples are red with hills being a reddish hue of brown. This makes the game substantially more confusing and player communication harder than it needs to be. All the game needed were nine different, totally different colours like a purple, an orange and a pink region, an unambiguous brown for the hills, and white (or black) villages. In my statistically insignificant playtests, even players that have played the game a few times kept being confused by the colour scheme and the shapes that were chosen to accompany the colours.
Like most games of this kind, Zapotec is effectively themeless. It its about an ancient civilization, yet it could have as easily been about mixing cocktails, running an accounting firm, or fighting a war. That's hardly a negative, if however you are into thematic games it will raise a few eyebrows.
Maybe I am getting spoiled by other publishers, yet not finding ziplock bags inside was a minor letdown. The game definitely needs them.
Conclusion: Zapotec is a solid, crunchy optimization puzzle that can keep euro enthusiasts happy. It might not be groundbreaking, it has however numerous good moments. The reduced duration is appealing, as is the solo aspect.
To find out more about Zapotec and Board & Dice take a look at https://boardanddice.com.
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