Tekhenu vs Teotihuacan

before me i have two games from board and dice both designed by daniel tashini both taking place in the old end times and both beginning with the letter t so it's time to answer the age-old question which of these butts is best [Music] that's right anytime in board games that we have two games that are seemingly similar and from the look they do look kind of similar we get into the question of which is best which one reigns supreme which one should belong in my collection which one is straight up trash maybe any and none of those things are true so i'm going to compare similarities find some differences between taken obelisk of the sun and teotihuacan city of gods but before we get into them let me give you an overview of each game so that you can see what we're dealing with in teotihuacan players will be moving workers represented by dice clockwise around the board making use of the action and worship spaces players have the ability to gain these resources through the forest stone quarry and the gold deposit spaces and they will use these resources to build pyramids and add decorations to appease the gods and move up temple tracks granting bonuses along the way players can use wood of the noble's action space to construct a building and move up the avenue of the dead and can spend gold to gain powerful technologies that will affect the rest of that player's game and of course you can build the great pyramid as players use workers they will power up representing the skills that worker has gained during their life the more powerful workers will gain more resources and if a player has multiple workers in the same action space they often gain greater benefits of the action eventually a worker will have power up to level 5 and if they power up again they ascend to be reborn as a new worker in the palace this moves players up the avenue of the dead and grants them bonuses every time a worker ascends but speeds up the game at the end of each round an eclipse is triggered which will lead to players scoring points for how much they worked on the pyramid how far they moved up the avenue of the dead along with any masks that may have been collected the game will then reset and two more rounds will be played as players continue to power up their workers and out build their opponents and at the end of the game the player with the most points wins in tikenu players will be drafting dice to make use of the six god actions and producing resources to build up their civilization the dice available will be determined by the obelisk in the shadow at cast causing certain dice to be considered pure tainted or forbidden based on what is in the light dark or in the shade every round will consist of players in turn taking exactly one dye and carrying out an action the dye can be used to produce resources and based on its color will produce papyrus bread limestone or granite gray dice do not provide resources instead players may use their drafted die to carry out the action associated with the area from which they drafted the horus action allows players to use granite to build a statue in honor of the gods giving them bonuses throughout the game or a statue for the people which will provide additional scoring opportunities the raw action allows players to construct pillars in the temple district which will factor into scoring and will gain points at the time the pillar is constructed as well with resources being gained based on what the players cover up the hathor action uses bread to construct buildings around the temple district awarding players points if they possess pillars in the same row or column as the building placed the value of the die drafted also allows players to grow their population the bastet action allows players to increase their population's happiness which will give them the ability to draft more cards and gain more points during scoring the thoth action allows players to draft one-time use blessing cards technology cards that get persistent effects or decree cards which provide end game scoring finally the osiris action allows players to sacrifice a little happiness to construct buildings in workshops or quarries to increase their production potential every two rounds the obelisk will rotate casting its light and shadows differently altering which dice are pure and tainted every two rotations equals a mop phase where players check the balance of their tainted in paradise to redetermine turn order every two mod phases result in a scoring where players will gain points for presence in the workshops and quarries happiness of their population and for having built buildings and statues around the temple district and for pillars within the district that line up with those buildings at the end of the second scoring players may play up to three decree cards so long as they have different icons at the top and after the second scoring the player with the most points wins so there you have it that's teotihuacan city of gods and taken obelisk of the sun in a nutshell both of these games are are on the heavier side of medium anyway and so i didn't quite get into every single look little nook and cranny there but i wanted to give a feel for these types of games so to start let's talk about similarities between these two games because there are definitely some of them here they are the same designer this designer daniel zuccini also helped make zulkin so they clearly have a vibe and a type of game they like to make they like to deal with these ancient civilizations and building things but all these games have kind of done different things as well so i think there are some similarities some differences so let's start with what things in these games are the same [Music] so like i said if you're going to judge a book by its cover these look pretty similar they both clearly do not take place in 2020 and they both kind of lead to ancient civilization feelings and building feelings then if you get into the game a little bit you'll notice that both games are driven through dice now they use these dice differently which i'll get into a little bit but you kind of have dice that are workers or help fuel work actions in both of these games so they again looks similar from uh from the outset it kind of looks like a similar type game uh the other thing that you'll see is in teotihuacan you start off with action tiles you'll get four tiles that you might draft depending on what way you're playing and then you're gonna get to keep two of those and those are gonna give you a starting uh temple advancements uh resources you might get some discovery tiles there's a whole bunch of things and it sort of jumpstarts your game to kenu starts off with starting cards as well that will give you some resources they might give you some different types of cards or different boosts to kind of jump start your game and that's something that daniel tuccini also does in zulkin so this is kind of a common theme but one that i actually really enjoy one that kind of gives me maybe a direction to go if i start off with a whole bunch of gold in teotihuacan it's like okay well maybe i'll do some decorations on the pyramid because i have those resources to start that might give me a direction to go and then maybe craft my game around that to can who does the same thing if i start off with a bunch of these if i start with a ton of granite i'm like well i'm gonna get some statues out for sure because i can afford to do it when the statues are the most expensive i can kind of uh go that direction early and that might inform later moves both of these games also feature technology as a piece of uh the game so these are ancient civilizations both known for having uh technologically advanced uh stuff for their time especially so you can get technologies to kind of boost your game play and uh tot wakanda does it through one of the action spaces there's a technology you can pay gold to get up to six different technologies that will make certain actions more valuable certain actions easier a whole bunch of stuff taken who does the same thing but it's through cards that you can ultimately draft in the game by going to certain spaces and you can get tech cards that will give you permanent boosts to certain actions they can give you discounts they can give you a lot of similar things that you might see in a teotihuacan to help you kind of build up your civilization but it kind of does through cards and then these tiles and in teotihuacan everyone is going to have the same six tiles they all have access to the same technologies and they may or may not get them versus to kenu i'm the only one with this particular technology card uh in front of me it's not a guarantee that it's a spot on the board and everyone's gonna have the same tech if that makes sense so it's a little bit different into keno it feels a little more dynamic for that reason because i can have certain cards uh that no one else has access to potentially so like i said both these games take place in sort of ancient times these ancient civilizations that were very uh advanced for their time they were able to do great things great building and these boards are both big these boards both have a lot going on on them it looks kind of imposing from the start it's a little bit intimidating to get into but then ultimately once you kind of get going a lot of things become a little more simple which is nice because these are not small simple games but once you start getting into it you realize that no one piece of it is overwhelming it just kind of makes a really big picture once you put them all together and stand back a little bit so i've talked about a couple of the similarities in this game and there are more certainly but i also want to talk about some differences because i was going into canoe definitely thinking this might be very very similar and then i found out through my gameplay that it felt quite different so let's talk about that now one thing with both of these games i will say is that their themes are a little thin it's a thin veneer over some really great mechanical stuff going on in games and i don't fault the games for that uh they are both kind of mechanical you're moving dice around your dice your workers the value does this and this and this uh and it's all mechanisms and stuff and they put them into pretty cool packaging i feel like i like this kind of theme i think it's interesting i love seeing different cultures from different countries different places around the world being represented in a board game i think that's really cool so with these games it's definitely a mechanical experience in terms of what you're doing you can kind of see how everything works you can kind of see the machinery but to canoe feels to me a little more immersed in its theme it feels a little more thematic to me because you're dealing with growing a population you're dealing with the happiness of that population to build in the quarries and the workshops you have to decrease your happiness because you're putting your people to work that that that made me feel a little bit more immersed in what's actually going on with these people you're building up this temple district you're building these statues to either honor the gods or honor the people um and it's it's not actually that much more thematic but for whatever reason as i was playing i got swept up into it a little bit more as i was playing versus teotihuacan which for me i'm never really thinking of an ancient civilization i'm just trying to build a pyramid and get stuff that matches things so i can get some points i don't mind that i love teotihuacan i love both these games but you know what i mean like i this one feels a little bit more um like a story uh if ever so slightly more so really the main area where these two games split and go off in their own directions is how they use the dice that they have again both games have dice but in tequino what you're going to be doing is you're going to be bringing out more and more dice throughout the game rolling those dice that will give them a randomized value and high and low can be good and then the different colors also have meaning and then with that obelisk that's shifting those dice will move from being pure to tainted or forbidden at different times and you're drafting those dice versus teotihuacan is a game where you have dice but your dice are your workers your dice are your own they are never going to be taken away by somebody they're never going to be used by somebody else they you're in full control over your uh your workforce as it were uh you're in full control over your options uh much more in teotihuacan which is something that i think i prefer um simply because into kenya can feel a little tighter and i will talk more about this game is definitely tight resource wise everything wise and it can become problematic when you're really hoping to get a certain colored dice from a certain area so you can make use of a certain action and that dice gets taken away before it gets around to your turn i don't have to worry about that in teotihuacan my my dice workers are going to be where they are wherever i leave them when i leave them and then the fact that you take these workers and you slowly power them up and it kind of uh represents a worker's life and then gaining more skill and eventually dying off and ascending and then a new worker is born uh again i don't really ever think about that they're just mechanical to me but uh i have full control over how do i move my dice around do i leave one die in a spot just camp them out to power up actions and try to level up everyone else or do i try to level up everyone evenly and then try to do like a double ascension on a turn or something like that there's a lot of um a lot of room to explore how to use your workers and and how to get them to the levels you want and need and maybe not ascend them for a turn or two and to send something else or power up other things there's lots of stuff you can do and so i really enjoyed that puzzle but again the cool thing about it that i really enjoy is i'm in full control of that puzzle there's no one else that's going to change what i can do with those workers specifically so like i said in terms of resources and things both games are fairly tight it's tough to get a lot of stuff done because resources are scarce uh in taiyo to a con you're hoping to get stone wood and gold to help build up the pyramid you can work on the avenue the dead the noble space decorations and things like that um but everything's kind of tight you know if you want to get a lot of wood you have to get a bunch of powerful workers all on that one space at once and that's tough to pull off it is a tough little timing puzzle uh and then there's also in this one that you don't have in to kenu is you have a kind of constant cocoa uh resource management game going on because i'm going to a space that has workers present i have to pay coco to make use of that main action space if i don't have cocoa then i have to spend a turn collecting cocoa and i lose time i have to spend time so there's definitely some tightness in teotihuacan with all of that however i feel like in teotihuacan there are more ways to [Music] make sure that you have the resources you need or at least some of the resources you need it's a little easier to kind of keep moving and keep doing uh things i have more problems than teotihuacan where i have too many resources at the end of the game that means i haven't played very efficiently um then i then i have a game where i can't get anything going at all it's not easy but it's doable to kenu is incredibly tight tekenu is tight in every sense of the word uh resources are hard to come by you're never gonna have a billion of them at least i don't and granted i'm not the best board gamer on earth and i certainly have played more teotihuacan than i have of to kenu so maybe that's something that will come in time but it feels like you're under the gun from the beginning um and it's really going to be beneficial for you to focus on a couple of areas rather than trying to do all six actions equally you probably won't get very far in any one of those areas and it's probably better to maximize focus on two areas and really go for it and again uh your starting cards blessing cards you get uh that are kind of like discovery tiles in teotihuacan like one-time use cards they might help you go in one direction or the other the main thing that comes down to with these two games in terms of feeling tight and feeling under the gun not only are resources scarce time is scarce in toyota you don't have a ton of time you're playing three rounds with an eclipse at the end of each round and time will be slightly shorter with each subsequent round um but you have this kind of variable time to the game based on people ascending if you send your workers you move your light disk to your dark a little bit faster so it can speed up the game but it's not necessarily going to happen or certainly in each game it might not happen the same so you don't quite know and i feel like when i'm playing this i'm not as worried about time versus to kenu you have 16 turns in the game you will only ever have 16 turns that's it every two turns every two dice you draft you're gonna rotate the obelisk you're gonna change some dice every two times you rotate the obelisk you're gonna have a matte phase you're gonna check your balance of dice and stuff get some new dice out onto the obelisk every two map phases you're gonna have a scoring every two scorings you have one game so you're only going to take 16 turns so if i'm wait like dayo2 kind of wasting a turn to get coco it feels a lot scarier into kenu when i'm like i just wasted for sure a 16th of my game to get some bread that doesn't feel like a good use of time and i think it can be valuable to do it but it just every single turn every single decision you feel the weight of that turn because you in theory could be burning a lot of valuable time doing something that might not pay off for you especially if you get some limestone and then don't ever use that limestone that hurts so that's something to keep in mind with zikano i enjoy that i actually really like the feeling of that but this game feels crunchier to me it feels more like oh god from the very start of the game versus teotihuacan i feel like i have a little bit of time to kind of ease into what i'm trying to get done um in the game whether or not i should ease into it i feel like i have the ability to versus the canoe first turn i'm like i i hope i built a statue first turn or else i'm way behind i'm way behind you know you're kind of white rabbiting always trying to catch up uh i feel like the other main difference is between teotihuacan and to kenu and kind of the difference that is maybe um rubbed some people the wrong way in regards to kenu are the decree cards so in teotihuacan there's not really much endgame scoring you'll have a third eclipse and then for certain people that got to the penultimate step on any of the temples there is an additional bonus scoring opportunity for everyone that reached that um i find that that score those scoring from the temples um don't come up as often as they will into kenu for sure because you could have a game where not no one gets that high on any one temple because maybe they're working on all three temples equally or something like that so it's a may come into play may not it can certainly be a big um point grab for a player at the end of the game if they they do really well on one of those bonuses um but you just don't know and the other difference is you know what the bonuses are going to be for the end of the game at the start of the game you know exactly what three are going to be available you can then make decisions to try to get to one of those or ignore those at your leisure it's all open information and is all something that everybody is going for the same thing versus to kenu where you have those decree cards you can play up to three decree cards that are secret i'm hanging on to them so i'm secretly going for a bunch of happiness because having happiness makes me a lot more points than everybody else well but no one's really going to know that and i can do up to three different types of decree cards so what i've heard and i don't mind it personally because again i like that the decree cards might give me some focus early in the game say okay don't worry about everything try to make these decree cards really work for you but uh you could in theory be like i'm killing it this game i'm crushing i'm doing so good and then someone comes at three decree cards at the very end of the game they get revealed and they score a ton of points and in both of these games you're sort of just doing your own thing not playing defense very much but um if i knew that someone's trying to go for something maybe i would draft my dice a little differently or something like that so i don't have much ability to kind of mitigate what other players are doing and again it doesn't bother me but being that those decree cards can result in so many points it could really be make or break it could be you know catching the golden snitch in a game of quidditch it's like yeah you might scored a bunch of points with a quaffle but does it really matter if you don't get the snitch it's hard to say so that's one area that uh these really feel different is the way that the end game will play out also there's three scorings in teotihuacan there's only two into kenu so again the scoring moments in tequeno feel big you only have two shots to kind of get a massive points and there's ways to get points throughout the game a little bit but like that's where you're going to do a lot of your damage so uh it just feels crunchy and tight intense teotihuacan feels a little a little smoother getting into it and going through it [Music] but let's talk about the big question which of these do i think is maybe best which is uh maybe has a higher ceiling things like that so it's tough it's really tough uh which is a good problem to have i probably at this moment teotihuacan has an edge but one thing i want to do is acknowledge the fact that teotihuacan has expansions it has things going on that tequenu has not had the time to have yet so i'm going to try to do my best to be objective about that if i'm thinking base game only these games are very close in terms of of quality they're both very good games um to kenu maybe at first glance uh is slightly cooler than teotihuacan because maybe it does give a little bit more of a thematic feel than teotihuacan will um the way that the dice are laid out where it kind of points to the action that you're doing uh is nice and makes it a little easy because teotihuacan has an intimidating board from the look um they both do but tequila might edge it out slightly but i run into one little problem and this is just off of feel to kenu is more static it's more what it is on the board there are a couple little things you can do to add some variety of of play but it's like the board and the actions are where they are different tiles might come out in different orders but like the workshops and quarries are going to be the same from game to game they will never change what bonuses they give you and stuff so as a player i might start gravitating toward the same strategy a little more because i know it works uh and there's lots of cards and stuff that might pull me in different directions but i might always try to go to the osiris action because i want to get those those uh workers in the workshops and quarries and get bonuses and things like that or i always want to get statues everything in this game is juicy it makes me want to try it but i could see that being a little bit of a problem down the line teotihuacan is a game that has a board where all these action spaces are but they have a ton of built-in variety just in the base game for instance uh almost all of the action spaces there's tiles in here so you can randomize where those action spaces are because you're always going clockwise around the board and again it can become kind of static if you just know that this is in relation to this action i'm always going to go here they're always going to go construct or whatever now you can randomize most of those locations and it might change things because all of a sudden the stone isn't anywhere near the construction space so that's not very easy to do so do i ignore the pyramid or the gold right next to the decoration space do i camp out at work or at gold so i can get bonuses and things like that and then do a bunch of decoration that's now a new opportunity you can swap out different tech tiles you can give different palace abilities in the palace space almost everything in this game has a random varietyo meter to it so that you can swap out just about everything and have the same game but now in different puzzles because of where things are in relation to others you can have different bonuses in the temples there's a lot of variety built into the base game and so i think that gives teotihuacan the edge just objectively from base games alone and then you also have the fact that there are expansions the lake pre-classic period is a fantastic expansion the shadows of zittle adds awesome new technology so this game has been supported really well i expect that will happen with tequila it just hasn't happened yet so for today my pick is teotihuacan city of gods now it's a top five game it might be my number one i don't know i love this game i've been playing it a ton i love it so much it doesn't take anything away from tekenu but teotihuacan just hits for me so i want to know from you who played both of these games which do you prefer do you like them the same do you not like either of them do you like one way better than the other let me know in the comments below what you think of these games and why one might be ranked higher than the other for me today it's teotihuacan we'll see what the future holds for it to kenu but both games are great i have both my collection both aren't going anywhere because i think they're really fun i also have zulkin over there i should have added that to this list this video will be way too long it's too long already anyway folks that's going to be it for me thank you so much for joining me i really appreciate it again hit me in the comments with what you think of these two games and i'll see in the next one thanks so much for comparing and contrasting these two games if you want to see comparison and contrast watch these two videos and tell me which one is better they won't they're not gonna have anything to do with each other but you know we can always make lists out of stuff also don't forget to subscribe give this video a thumbs up and turn the bell icon on so you get notifications when we have new videos

Channel: The Brothers Murph

Views: 6,321

Rating: 4.9267397 out of 5

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Id: bU7gRRvdRzU

Length: 25min 12sec (1512 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 09 2020