Teotihuacan: Late Preclassic Period

I sat down for a four-player game of Teotihuacan with the expansion, in a group containing both new and veteran players. To avoid making it a total mess, we used only modules 1 and 3. Probably a good call for the group; just not enough to make me thrilled by the result.

In the game’s basic rhythm, everyone advances their own plan around the shared table, while having experienced and new players together made a difference in how comfortably the available choices could be read. With four players, the session already had plenty to keep track of and enough length for its weight to be felt.

The two modules add even more on top of that rhythm, mainly through the gods and their effects. That is where the game starts to stretch out for me: several gods, in the right circumstances, feel either very powerful or capable of crippling someone’s gameplay. I did not feel that the interaction became more interesting; it felt more like extra things had been added for you to calculate and endure.

On the other hand, if you already love Teotihuacan, the expansion definitely gives it fresh life and plenty more plays. I am simply not in that audience: a Chernobyl rating from me, not great, not terrible. It is not among the games I especially love, though that does not mean I refuse to play it.

And because we were killing time, we also put a silly trivia game on the table. It turned out to be more entertaining than I expected, even though I would not recommend it to anyone: my opinion of Trivial Pursuit-style games remains firmly at “I’d rather watch paint dry.” At least it was short and had an interesting structure to its questions.