Takahe’s Solo Den: Founders of Teotihuacan

1 - 4 Players 45 - 60 Min Age: 14+
Designer: Filip Głowacz
Artist: Chuy de Leon, Odysseas Stamoglou, Aleksander Zawada
Publisher: Board & Dice

Cautious beginnings…

When I first heard about a new polyomino game thematically wrapped around the Mesoamerican city of Teotihuacan, and published by the same company that released a fantastic heavy euro of the same name, I was a bit sour and skeptical about it. It just looked to me like a plain old milking of the franchise, someone simply had an idea to reuse some of the concepts and many of the assets of the original Teo and slapped it on a polyomino-puzzle style game.  Hence, I stopped following the story, the release, the reviews… simply, ignored the game all together.

But, going through a recently discovered solo-only channel called No Fluff Gaming with John LaRuffa, I came across John’s review of this game… and decided to watch it – to my surprise, Founders got 2 thumbs up and a solid recommendation for solo players. Next stop – Not Bored Gaming – another positive review of this title. Surely that can’t be a coincidence? There has to be something good about this one… maybe I just made some wrong assumptions and wasn’t fair to this game. So, as you are reading these words, you know what happened next… 😊

Puzzled… but in a good way.

My relationship with polyomino games can be classified as ambivalent – I am not a big fan, nor hate them. I do like some, but I don’t need to have many of them. I love Feast for Odin and really enjoy the hybrid versions such as Honey Buzz and Ark Nova, but can’t really play Isle of Cats solo as the solo mode in that game is a total overkill for what the game is (in terms of complexity). Having said that, Founders of Teotihuacan is probably the best of the best polyomino games for solo players out there.

Maybe I am jumping to conclusions prematurely, but there is something incredibly satisfying about the puzzle aspect of this game and I just had to spill my guts right away. Yup, Founders of Teotihuacan grabbed my attention from the first gaming session and thanks to the crunchiness  and addictiveness of the game, I am constantly trying to find a way to play this one as often as I can. I guess you want to know why? Okie, lemme share some thoughts with you…

Simple, elegant… and brain-hurting!

Founders of Teotihuacan is at its core a tile placement game with a worker placement element providing some juicy strategic/tactical goodness.  You also produce resources and use them to pay for building stuff – you simply place a production building on your city board and it automatically produces stone/wood/gold around it – so logically, you want to build these buildings with enough space around them because you really want to produce as many resources as possible. Once you produce enough goods, you can then spend them to build other structures – either temples or pyramid tiles… both of which are critical for your end-game scoring.

The thing is – although the gameplay looks easy and quite straightforward, the VP scoring (especially the end-game one) itself really does make you think twice where you put what and how you chain your actions. The player board itself has spots with mask symbols, granting you a VP scoring mask if you cover the whole set – although masks do not score you that much, they can make a difference between winning and losing and should definitely be chased whenever possible. More importantly however, the foundations of the pyramid (3x3 grid) on your player board offer several rewards that if used in the perfect time, can trigger a bonus action after another bonus action, essentially extending your gameplay beyond what you initially thought was possible. The same can be done by building temples – each allows you to chose one of two available worship tiles, which are kind off like quests you can fulfil and once you’ve done so, these tiles will grant you VPs along with some other bonuses (such as free actions).

Sacrifices will be necessary….

Another crunchy component of Founders of Teotihuacan is its action selection mechanism. You start the game with 6 action/worker discs, but with each new round, you lose one – eventually ending with only 4 in your last round (the solo game lasts 3 rounds). So that gives you potentially up to 15 basic actions in total. Why did I use the “up to” phrase? Because each action space can be used multiple times and the more tokens are placed on it the more powerful that particular action is (for example allowing you to build bigger production buildings or pay less for pyramid tiles and/or temples).

And you can definitely use more than one disc to execute any action, all the way up to 3 (the bottom one is a bonus disc granting you another potential free action should you place your one on it first). What this means is that you will have to eventually make a sacrifice – give up one action to place additional action disc in order to secure a building / temple / pyramid tile that you might potentially miss out on. Why would it matter? Because for example not getting a desired gold production building early enough can eventually result in you running out of resources and not being able to afford what you need to in order to ramp up your end-game scoring.

End-game scoring itself is quite an interesting affair – you score every district of your board based on the number of same-coloured temples AND same-coloured pyramid tiles in that particular area. Having multi-tier pyramid will boost your VP multiplier, however since you only have so many actions to take throughout the game, you won’t be able to give equal attention to all 3 colours. The best strategy seems to be going for one or two colours and perhaps 2-3 districts, however this strategy doesn’t work all the time, mainly due to how your architect is positioned (he moves to the next district after every turn), how you placed your initial set of pyramid tiles and what your objectives are.

Brilliant solo in a brilliant game

These objectives are unique for solo play and are pretty much a key reason why this game is such an awesome solo experience. At the beginning of your session, you roll an 8-sided die to select 3 different challenges from 3 different columns. These challenges give you a variety of penalties or requirements you must follow/fulfil in order to even be considered for final end-game scoring, some of them also deduct additional VPs from your final score (base solo victory condition, subtract a whole 80 VPs!), so even getting to positive values is a challenge on it’s own. My first couple of games of Founders were without these challenges, just to see how to make it past the 80 VP threshold, however once I’ve started using them, the game became A LOT MORE interesting and enjoyable. You can’t just follow the same formula every game, many of these challenges prevent you from doing XYZ or limit you in some other way, forcing you to adapt your strategy, inducing some beautifully crunchy AP moments.

The other thing worth mentioning regarding the solo play is how 2 solo bots work. Labelled as First Founders, both bots follow a simple formula – you set up their priority tracks, chuck their action discs into a cup (or bag) and every turn just draw two blindly. Based on the position of their architects, you then place their discs on a corresponding action space, remove the associated building/tile from the board and move their architect to the next empty space. Absolutely brilliant, simple solo bots that are perfectly fitting for this game – David Turczi yet again did an amazing job making sure the solo mode is a good fit and not overkill. Bravo sir, bravo!

Got an itchy feeling…

As I am writing this review, I am constantly thinking of playing Founders the moment I am done. Polyomino puzzles are not my usual thing but Founders of Teotihuacan somehow managed to capture my attention – perhaps because it’s not just a “plain cash-grab” tile placement game wrapped in a  known theme, but actually a solid and crunchy puzzle? Or perhaps because I love the original Teotihuacan a LOT and wanted just more of that? Either or, the game is just a massive joy to play and with the variety of challenges included, will provide a ton of playtime before it even starts feeling stale. For a solo player, Founders of Teotihuacan has quite a lot to offer and I am super happy I have given this one a chance. Oh, and if you’re looking for some negatives, I can’t give you any – which just proves that this is a well thought out design that deserves your full attention!