In Quetzal, you are an archaeologist with only five days to explore the great city — and you’ve got competition! Here’s how it works:
First, everyone rolls their meeples. No, I’m not kidding – this will determine your team for the round. Any meeples that land dark side up will be adventurers, light side up will be archaeologists, and on their side or standing means they can be either; for each meeple that’s standing, you also get one coin. Your character meeple (as opposed to your team meeples) will always be usable as either color, but you roll it anyways in case it lands upright.
Which type you roll matters because of step two: placing the meeples. You see, while there are several locations on the board, which pieces you can place there are limited by their type. While some places have no such restrictions, some, like the Black Market, will only take one of the two, and others like the Temple Surroundings will take either, but all pieces there have to be the same type. The Temple Surroundings are an example of a bidding location (orange), meaning you can one-up each other’s meeple placements, with the caveat that they all have to be the same type as the pieces first placed there. The other player gets their displaced meeples back to put somewhere else, too, so don’t push the bid too high! Non-bidding locations are either one meeple per space (yellow) or places where multiple players can coexist (green), and vary whether there’s a price in coins to explore there.
So what do these locations do? Coincidentally, that’s step three, activating the locations. The only location that gets activated before this step is the Camp, which activates as soon as you place a meeple there, allowing you to immediately gain 1 coin and reroll one of your unplaced meeples; if it lands standing, you get an additional coin. The rest of the locations activate once all meeples are placed, in the following order: The Stela of Knowledge, The Temple, The Temple Surroundings (a, b, and c), The Black Market, The Village, The Harbor Master’s Office, and finally, The Ships. Each of these has a different effect. For instance, the Temple and its Surroundings allow you to collect the Artifact cards associated with them, which you can later deliver to the Harbor Master’s Office or The Ships for victory points — a complete set is three of the same kind, but there are smaller rewards for two or one.
The other major collectors’ item is Upgrades, which are acquired in The Village. A couple of these activate immediately as one-time bonuses; the rest are equipped as continual benefits. You can see one of each in the photo above — the red X on the left Upgrade indicates that it’s a one-time use (gain 5 coins), and the one on the right allows you to exchange 3 coins for one Discovery point whenever you so choose. As you can see, each player has slots to equip up to two Upgrades at a time, plus a personal Upgrade discard – this is important because Upgrades grant you victory points at the end of the game, regardless of whether they’re equipped.
I mentioned Discovery points – these are signified by the bird symbol, and tracked along the top of the board. When you reach certain points on that path, you get additional bonuses, such as coins (the cross in a circle), victory points (the rising sun symbol), and Upgrades (the crate). Discovery points, victory points, and coins are also bonuses on some of the Artifact cards, redeemed when those cards are delivered.
There are a couple modifications made for a two player game. The most significant of these is the Automaton deck, which simulates a third player by dictating the placement of a third set of meeples. These can be kicked off of bidding spaces the same as any other piece (and won’t be re-placed, because there’s no player to choose its revised placement) but if it’s in a unique (yellow) location that you hoped to visit this round, tough luck. This is especially hampering if it takes one of the higher Temple spaces, because then it has first pick of the Artifacts there… and, of course, it takes the highest value ones first. If its choice is between multiple cards of the same type, it also has a hierarchy of bonuses, which I thought was quite thorough of the creators. Unfortunately, these cards go straight to the discard.
At the end of the round, all empty Artifact and Upgrade spots are refilled, the Plane token is moved one space on the turn track, and if you’re playing with the Automaton, you draw its next placement. If the Plane token is already on the 5th space, the game ends immediately, and scoring happens. Conveniently, most of the scoring has already been tracked over the course of the game, so there are only a few additional points to be doled out. First off, whoever has the First Player marker gains two victory points — this isn’t necessarily whoever went first, mind you, because The Stela of Knowledge location lets you steal the marker, as well as gain a Discovery point. Not bad, right? Especially if you go there on round five, so the other player has no chance to steal it back. Anyways, the other two additional point factors are remaining coins (one victory point per three) and, of course, Upgrades. Whoever has the most victory points wins, or in case of a tie, the most Discovery points!
This game is a lot of fun, and it does a great job of balancing its many mechanics in a way that’s not overwhelming. In the two-player version there are some spaces that don’t get used, and I love that they use covers to make those blend perfectly into the image. Which is just icing on the cake, really, because this board is gorgeous!
