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Quetzal, the city of sacred birds has just been discovered. You have five days to explore the city of Quetzal and collect the most beautiful objects buried there. You will have to manage your team to optimise your time and excavation requirements. By using your team effectively can you beat the competition to gain the most objects and emerge from Quetzal unscathed.
Quetzal is a two to five player set collection, worker placement game designed by Alexandre Garcia and published by Gigamic with a playtime of around 45 - 75 minutes.
Gameplay
In Quetzal each turn you will roll your collection of meeples, yep you read that right, you roll your meeples. Depending on how your meeples land will determine what worker placement spots you can activate. Certain worker placement spots require meeples to be on their front or their back, any meeples standing will give you an additional coin. In turn, order players will place a worker or group of workers on a worker placement spot.
Some locations are unique and are first come first served whereas some have a bidding mechanic. After all, the meeples have been placed the worker placement spots are resolved in numerical order. Action spots include things like gaining discovery points, gaining artefact cards, gaining coins, gaining upgrade tiles and delivering artefacts. Artifacts cards come in "suits" and depending on the number of cards you deliver and the suit will determine the amount of money victory points you gain.
After the fifth round (or day) the player with the most points is the winner.
There are some special rules and a dummy player for a two-player. Some locations are closed off to tighten up the board and the dummy player is resolved by revealing a card and the dummy player taking some of the worker placement spots.
Final Thoughts
Quetzal is a very unique game. I have never played, or even know of any other game where you roll your meeples. The rolling of the meeples determines which worker placement spots you may be able to do. It is a very interesting concept and one that works surprisingly well.
Throw The Meeples
The unique mechanism and the main draw of the game are, like I mentioned above, the rolling of the meeples. However, the worker placement spots are interesting in their nature.
Some spots work on a bidding mechanism, some are unique, some are open to anyone and some require a certain orientation of meeple to be able to use. Combining these two aspects makes for a compelling and intriguing game that I have been really enjoying.
There is, of course, randomness in what you get when you roll your meeples but there are spots to mitigate that. I never found that I was totally stuck with not being able to do something. There are spaces on the board that allow you to reroll your meeples to help mitigate your luck, but I found I very rarely used them.
Digging Up Artifacts
There is a set collection aspect and the suit or type of the artifacts dictate the cost when traded-in. Some of them are more valuable but also rarer. Some are more common but give you a lower reward or require more to trade-in. This adds to the interaction in the game as you can try and compete for the more valuable artifacts but run the risk of not getting many, or do you cut your ties and go for the cheaper, more common and easier to acquire artifacts and go for quantity over quality. This competition wouldn't normally work in a two-player game, but the dummy player may take some of these artifacts in a certain predetermined manner.
Quetzal is also a tight game, there is competition over the worker placement spots with all player counts. Your opponent always seems to know where to go or which spots to take that you desperately need that turn. You can bump your opponent’s workers out of some spots but they get the workers back to be used again this round. At which point they may take another spot from you.
Playing A Dummy
Moving on to the dummy AI used in a two-player game. This AI is very simple and easy to implement. At the start of the round, you flip a card and this determines placement spots and the number of workers at various locations on the board.
You place the meeples out and that is pretty much it. If they are acquiring artifacts they take them in a predetermined manner starting with the highest value. Overall, I am not usually a big fan of dummy players, but I like the simplicity and ease of implementation for this one and it doesn't result in a lot of downtime or overhead.
Overall, Quetzal is a fun and interesting take on the worker placement genre. It has a unique (as far as I am aware anyway) take on the worker placement with the meeple rolling. The artwork on the board is gorgeous and I have been really enjoying this game a lot.
