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After the death of King Yax Pasah, the once great city of Copan falls into decay. As heads of the city’s largest families, it’s up to you and your opponents to make your mark and deal with poor conditions and disasters!
1-4 players, ages 14+
Playing time: 60-180 minutes
Designers: Eric Dubus & Olivier Melison
Artwork: Ronan Toulhoat
Publisher: Holy Grail Games
https://holygrail.games/
Check out Copan: Dying City on Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/holygrailgames/copan-dying-city
💬 Each of your game turns in Copan consists of 2 phases:
🔹 First, you place a court tile in the pyramid to gain resources. Doing so lowers the corresponding decline track, which represents the dwindling of the resource. It may also trigger certain events, closing off spaces on the board that are no longer available for the rest of the game.
🔹 Next, you perform an action with your player totem. You can go to a new site, or proceed at the same location you were occupying, which will earn you a bonus.
The various sites at the board allow you to take new court tiles, build embassies in other Mayan cities, go to the ball court to recruit characters with helpful skills, visit altars to gain their bonuses, or collect glyph cards which will be useful to build your Jade Mask.
🔺 Over the course of the game, your 4 priests will be able to ascend the stairs of the pyramid, which will be crucial for your score at the game’s end.
🔻 Once the pyramid is completely filled with tiles or 2 resources are depleted, the game is over, players get additional points for their embassies, majorities in the ball court, the stairways and their Jade Mask, and the player with the most points wins!
💬 Copan is a heavy eurogame that guarantees a few hours of brain burning. It has a so-called “reverse difficulty curve”: over the course of the game, resources become increasingly scarce, making it harder to get things done as the game progresses. This and the events make the theme of the decaying city well implemented!
⭐️ The artwork of this prototype is already great, and the dice tower and token chest complete it.
💭 The solid mix of mechanisms and moving parts that blend seamlessly, along with the huge variety of possible strategies that make Copan one of my favorite games of the year!
👉 Copan: Dying City is launching on Kickstarter this Thursday! Make sure to check out the campaign here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/holygrailgames/copan-dying-city
I can’t tell if the game looks fantastic or it’s just your usually great photography (or both!).
It does look fantastic!