Monumental ziggurats! – review of the board game “Tabannusi. Builders of Ur “

Daniele Tascini creates large, demanding euros starting with the letter “t”. One of them is Tabannusi . Will it be another gem of a brilliant Teotihuacan ?

 

How to build Tabannusi?

Tabannusi is another great and complex board game by Daniel Tascini, the author of the great Teotihuacana of the City of Gods. If I wanted to explain the rules of the game, I would have to give up my opinion and focus only on presenting the mechanisms. So I will only briefly tell you what more or less can be done here. Namely, in your turn you choose which district, and these are five, you will go in the next turn. This is determined by the value on the dice taken from the boat. In three districts, we can put houses in three different colors, as well as irrigate the fields and cultivate gardens on them. To build a homestead, however, you must first reserve a space using the construction plan, which allows you to get a bonus printed on the board. Interestingly, another player can build a house cheaper using the previously placed plan! Fortunately, we will receive a favorable bonus as a compensation. In addition, we control ships in the port that offer permanent abilities,

The game ends after the fifth round, and this is settled when there are no dice in a given district, and then only points are scored here. In fact, this is only a general outline of the game, because there are still a lot of interesting details here. In any case, the premise is simple – for resources, you perform two actions in the district. There are many ways to earn resources and points, but you need to work a bit to get them!

 

Fight for ships and ziggurats

Tabannusi is a very demanding game with a high entry threshold. For the first time after reading the manual, I had the feeling that I wouldn’t be able to explain the rules well. Moreover, I did not fully understand how these mechanisms are to interlock. In part, this confusion was caused by the layout of the text. There is a longer section about key terms in the setup guide after the setup for the game. I was not convinced by paying attention first to important elements, the purpose of which we have not yet learned.

Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to play the game in this “monster” with a larger team, but in a duo it is perfect. It was – admittedly – some time before I liked Tabannusi (I also played a few solos), but my companion still has mixed feelings about this position. It cannot be denied that the game is not too intuitive. In addition, a large selection of scoring options, as well as at first glance troublesome and sometimes not obvious methods of obtaining resources or points can overwhelm.

 

The charms of math

I really like that there are many ways to get points. The most interesting thing is taking over the plans of another player in order to build your structure cheaper. I like the negative interaction, although it can be severe at times despite decent compensation. All the mechanisms work well together, and thanks to this, you can take amazing actions. You just need to deduce and predict. And you have to bear in mind that the actions of our fellow players may thwart our plans. Even the randomness in the bones is not annoying, as there are several ways to deal with unfavorable ankle results. I like to watch how all the mechanisms in Tabannusi work well together.

 

Vicissitudes

I also appreciate the replayability of the title. Each time we draw a different set of sails offering various skills, as well as ziggurats. We also draw another city card, which significantly affects our actions (it defines the districts in which we must have buildings in order to score ten victory points at the end). There are also goals for all players and the pool of them is quite large. In general, there are many variables in Tabannusi , and dice also play an important role during the game. Each party will, therefore, offer a different challenge. The only thing I didn’t like was the idea of ​​changing the game’s color of the dice in different districts. The author used a similar idea as in Teotihuacan , but in this case it is not necessary in my opinion.

 

The most beautiful gardens

After the game, the board makes a phenomenal impression – we place buildings on it, set up gardens, placing them on a water tile. All this makes it a great pleasure to watch the end result in the first three locations. The ziggurat or port district is no longer so spectacular. Nevertheless, I admit that Tabannusi is a refined and very solid product.

A certain slip-up, which the publisher has already mentioned, is that the manual contains information about the bag used for solo play, which supposedly should be in the box. Meanwhile, even the original publisher had no plans to add this item to the game! In terms of performance, I also appreciate that we managed to find a place on the main board or on the player boards for almost all of the elements. Thanks to this, everything is much easier to unfold and fold. The game may take over two hours, but the preparation of the game itself went very smoothly for me. Of course, the publisher did not add string bags (it’s worth having them!).

 

Duel with Gilgabot!

I thought that after the clash with Teotibot nothing more difficult would happen to me, but it turned out that it could be worse. While driving a car in Tabannusi is not annoying and does not take away the fun of the game, it is not too intuitive. Before I played the first game, I read the paragraph about this mode twice, and I still felt that I was missing something. I will say more, despite my doubts, I did not look at the instructions every time, because I would have run out of patience for it. This solution made the game even pleasant for me. Unfortunately, the bot by random selection of actions is sometimes not consistent and effective, but it skilfully reflects the possibilities that a live player would have. Sometimes automa can also give you a hard time!

There are four types of bots to choose from, but their unique actions come in randomly, so as a last resort you may not even feel much difference when playing with Gilgabot or Sarbot. In addition, I did not find information about resolving the automata city card in the manual. I will probably be tempted to play solo, but not to win with the slot machine, but to have fun playing.

 

Is it worth being interested in another game by Daniel Tascini?

Tabannusi is a piece of solid, juicy euros that requires a lot of patience. It will also be difficult to find companions to deal with this monster, and it can be even more difficult to explain the rules of the game to them. Nevertheless, the gameplay itself makes up for any difficulties, because it offers a lot of possibilities, and thus provides a lot of fun. I had a lot of fun with this game, but if I had to choose from two Daniel Tascini games that I have, I would definitely bet on Teotihuacan . It does not change the fact that Tabannusi Builders of Ur has a place in my collection.