Tekhenu: Time of Seth Expansion

Tekhenu is a complex dice drafting game. There are 6 different areas from which you can draft dice to take the corresponding god actions, all the while trying to have enough resources and ensure your dice keep the balance between ‘pure’ and ‘tainted’. Tekhenu: Time of Seth adds a 7th god action on a side board – is it time to expand your games of Tekhenu?

Time of Choice.

The Seth action is the main focus of this expansion. It allows you to spend soldiers (monitored on a new track) to place buildings out on one of 6 spaces on the sideboard (corresponding to the number on the drafter die), representing you battling neighbouring lands. This gives you another option of where to place your buildings (in addition to round the temple complex or as workshops) and provides bonus resources as a result. You then get to place a conquest tile in the temple complex, providing yet further bonuses to the player who builds a pillar on top of it, or, depending on the tile, bonuses when placing a building in the corresponding row/column. The downside is that you take a blood droplet every time, which lives as permanent taint on you player board. Building statues for the people on the Seth board gives the players access to the card row as an alternative to taking the Thoth action. Building a statue to Seth will give you a bonus anytime someone takes the Seth action, similar to building a statue to any of the gods. There are new setup cards, artefacts that can be gained when choosing an ankh card by spending priests, new dice that are either permanently pure, or which provide more soldiers or priests… Yes, there is a lot going on with this expansion, whilst changing nothing fundamental about the game. It provides additional choices that factor in to player decisions each turn.

Time of Tactics.

Tekhenu: Time of Seth does add to the decision space, but does not turn the game into a case of invest-in-the-Seth-board-or-you-will-lose. You could easily ignore the Seth action for the entire game and still do well. Tekhenu has never been about doing every action that’s available to you; it’s about specialising in some of the 6 (now 7) available options and dabbling in the rest if they give you a particular benefit you need. Yes, you can ignore the Seth action altogether, but most players will wish to use it at least once or twice during a game because of the bonuses available. The only resources you need to expend are your soldiers and you can get victory points and resources in return. Given how tight and crucial the resources are in this game (you really do not want to spend too many of your 16 actions purely on resource gathering), this should not be overlooked. I mentioned the Seth action provides more opportunities to put out your buildings. It further leans into this style of play by the fact that it also results in a conquest tile being placed in the temple. This covers up one of the temple spaces and replaces the printed reward, normally gained through building a pillar in the temple or a building outside. Thus to take advantage of the conquest tiles, players are encouraged to invest actions in and around the temple complex, probably resulting in them placing more buildings. Anecdotally, I’d never cleared my player build of buildings prior to using the time of Seth expansion. The first time I focused more on the Seth action, I comfortably placed all of my buildings. This was a stated design goal of the expansion and I’m pleased it works. A real strength of Techenu: Time of Seth is that it provides another option, without invalidating anything that already exists in the game.

Time of Reflection

I enjoy Tekhenu: Time of Seth a great deal. Now I own it, I include it in all my games of Tekhenu. It is an expansion I would recommend, though with some caveats. Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun is already a complex euro game. It may well already be complex enough for your tastes, in which case Time of Seth may not represent good value. It is not needed to ‘fix’ anything in the base game; Tekhenu is excellent anyway and the added time and complexity of the expansion could be, for some, unnecessary bloat. It is something of a table hog too. The Tekhenu board and player boards, whilst beautiful, are rather large and a large table is needed for a 4 player game especially. Tekhenu: Time of Seth adds another sideboard as mentioned, thus requiring even more table real estate. If you play Tekhenu solo, Time of Seth is almost worth getting for the player reference sheet alone! The back of the rulebook is dedicated to a detailed summary of all the solo rules and it prevents needing to flick through 2 rulebooks to check on the bot’s actions during the game. Anyone enjoying Tekhenu at 2 players will also appreciate this expansion, as it introduces a slight variation specifically designed for 2. It’s certainly a nice inclusion. Time of Seth is unapologetically ‘more Tekhenu’ and does an excellent job of catering to fans of the base game. However, If Tekhenu is a game you play occasionally, or find the decision space is already complicated enough for your tastes, it may be time to think carefully before deciding if it is time to add this to your collection.