Tikal

From:Ravensburger Cost: $35 Players: 2-4 Playing Time: 90-150 minutes Type of game: Family Strategy Skill level: 9 Complexity: 5 Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 6.2 (22), January 2000

Exploration games in which the topography of the game is unknown at the outset are innately appealing to me. I like venturing into virgin territory, unsure about what I’ll find there. I like the thrill of discovery. I like watching and influencing the development of the map. I don’t consider myself an “experience” gamer- I don’t look for games to simulate or create the flavor of real-life situations. The story of the game is secondary to the quality of the gameplay itself. But I’ll admit that exploration games tug at something within me. In Tikal, the milieu for discovery is a jungle full of Mayan ruins.

The production values are typical Ravensburger. The components are sturdy and attractive, with lots of wooden and cardboard pieces. Everything has its own place in the custom storage tray right down to the rule booklet, making setup and storage a breeze. Best of all are the reference cards, language-free and well-enough designed that the game can be taught by just starting at the top of the card and moving down.

Each round begins by dealing up a set of hexagonal tiles. Some tiles are empty clearings. Others are treasure or temple sites, and a very few are volcanoes which trigger a scoring round. Players bid victory points, the high bidder earning the right to choose and place a tile first. After adding his tile to the board, that player gets ten action points to spend as he wishes.

Each player has a bunch of workers at his disposal. Bringing one onto the board at a base camp costs an action point. Moving from the camp to other tiles costs more points, and this is the game’s most clever system. All hexes but the volcanoes have stepping stones on their edges- anywhere from zero to three on each edge. Crossing from one hex to another costs as many action points as there are stepping stones on the two edges being crossed. A junction with no stones isn’t free- it’s impassible. Part of the game’s strategy lies in creating a topography that provides cheap access to areas you want to reach while making it expensive for opponents to get where they want to go. Or you can make a good tile expensive to reach and thus unattractive, hoping that you can therefore hold onto it with a single worker of your own. I hope we see this stepping-stone system again.

If players could only bring workers onto the board at the communal base camp, the topography would pretty much affect everyone the same way. So for five action points a player can establish a new base camp on any empty hex. The strategic impact of these camps can’t be underemphasized. Players will bid a premium to grab and place a clearing in a prime location for a camp. The sudden appearance of an opponent’s camp can wreak havoc with your plans.

So what exactly is it that these workers are swooping down on? Temples, usually. Each temple has a value from 1-10. Anyone with a worker at a temple can spend two action points to excavate another level, increasing its value. Supplies of each level value are limited, however, with only a few eights and nines and just one ten. Excavation is therefore something of a race to get the most valuable levels before they disappear. Players have to guard their excavations carefully lest their work get stolen by poachers. During a scoring round, a player scores a temple’s value only if he has more workers at the temple than any other player. The sudden appearance of an opponent’s base camp near a site you’ve been excavating is therefore a perennial threat. Even more so if opponents haven’t yet brought their boss onto the board. Each player has one boss which moves like any other worker but counts as three workers when determining temple ownership. Throughout the game you want to move more workers than you have actions, creating a constant temptation to deploy your boss. Bringing him onto the board may mean he’s unavailable later, and while he’s off the board opponents might spend extra resources guarding against the possibility of his sudden appearance. This simple addition of one special worker has a dramatic impact on strategy, yet never blows the game’s balance- a wonderfully subtle piece of design.

If you’ve got the majority at a temple, you can guard against encroachment by posting a guard at the temple site, permanently placing that site under your control. An expensive option, this not only costs five action points but removes all your workers at that site from the game and freezes the site at its current point value. Deciding whether and when to post a guard can be a bit like a game of chicken. Each player is allowed only two guards per game, so they have to be used judiciously.

Some hexes hold treasures which can be dug up for three action points. There are three identical copies of eight kinds of treasures, each worth a point. Pairs of the same treasure are worth three points, however, with triplets scoring six for the set. You can forcibly trade unmatched treasures with an opponent for an additional three action points, but pairs or triplets are immune. The big advantage to treasures is that once you’ve got ‘em, you never need to spend more resources to protect them. Unguarded temples, on the other hand, are always in danger of being captured.

Scoring is handled in an unusual way. A scoring round is triggered when a player places a volcano. That player spends ten bonus action points and then scores his temples and treasures. Then the next player does the same, and so forth until everyone has scored. Since scoring is player-specific, the same temple can score for multiple players as it changes ownership. When scoring is complete, the player placing the volcano spends his normal ten action points. Since the scoring round occurs after the volcano tile is placed but before that player spends his normal action points, the placer of a volcano winds up ten actions behind his opponents when he scores- a rather large disadvantage. Bids therefore tend to escalate when a volcano is part of a set as players try to make sure they don’t get screwed. This has a nice balancing effect. The volcano placer lags ten actions behind, but his opponents spent victory points to get their ten actions in.

The tiles are divided into seven groups. Tiles are shuffled within each group, but the groups themselves are stacked in a prescribed order. The result is that, as with the cards in Lowenherz, individual tiles come up randomly but the game as a whole has a predictable and balanced flow. Starting temple values rise towards the middle of the deck and drop again toward the end. Early groups are heavier in treasure sites than later ones, guaranteeing enough time for the treasures to be gathered. And the volcanoes are spaced out at roughly a quarter, half, and three quarters of the way through the deck. Again, a nice bit of design. When the deck runs out there’s a final scoring round before the high scorer is determined.

Tikal seems to represent something of a paradox. The Spiel des Jahres jury’s selection of this game as 1999’s game of the year met with widespread approval, yet a surprising proportion of gamers already seem to have had their fill of Tikal. Rarely has a game so universally acclaimed met with such an early retirement. Don’t get me wrong- I’m not saying that nobody plays Tikal anymore. But it seems that fewer people are playing it than you’d expect under the circumstances.

There’s a very good and understandable reason for the drop-off, and one which has been discussed in these pages before (as recently as in last issue’s review of El Caballero). This isn’t a short game. The box rates it at an optimistic ninety minutes, but it’s not unreasonable to expect another hour or more beyond that. Mind you, with concerted effort among all players the game could conceivably clock in at ninety minutes, but it requires a group of quick decision-makers who won’t dawdle to minimax each move. That’s a tall order, as Tikal is open to that type of optimization. Players with freewheeling play styles can quickly become frustrated as more analytical players bog the game down while they mull over the possibilities. We’ve had success stating up front that everyone needs to make an effort to play quickly. That way, if someone starts taking a long time to play, the door’s open for other players to prod them gently without insult. You can also play the basic game which eliminates the auction, shaving away time at the cost of a bit of strategic depth.

I haven’t tried Tikal as a two player game, but it works well with three or four. That said, be careful in three player games- if two players get into conflict with each other, the third can run away with the game if he’s left alone.

I can’t explain why this was released under the family-friendly Ravensburger label rather than gamer-oriented Alea. This isn’t a game I’d try out on casual players, but there’s some good meat here for gamers.