Pueblo - the ultimate building challenge! Work with the other players to create a mighty home for the Chieftain, stone by stone. You are a craftsman, but you cannot let the Chieftain see your trademark stones, or you will be penalized. The longer you play, the more difficult this task becomes! Take on your opponents and become the Chieftain's Master Builder.
The theme setting is the Native American Pueblos of the Southwest tribes of the Zuni and Hopi. The board is a fairly small square. Each player gets a number of building blocks in their own color, and also some neutral colored blocks (1 fewer than the colored). Starting with the odd colored block, the player places it on the board, and then gets to move the "Chieftain" around the outer track surrounding the board. If the Chieftain can look straight across and see any colored blocks, those players gain points -- but points are bad. And when the Chieftain lands on the corners of the track, he looks down on the Pueblo from above, and all visible player's blocks gain them more points. Now, on each subsequent pair of turns, you have a choice of a colored block and a neutral block. Once all players' blocks are played, the Chieftain makes one last trip around the board, players gaining points all along the way. The player who has gained the fewest number of points is the Master Builder and the winner of the game.
There are also some extra components for making the game more challenging by adding an element of bidding for turn order, and from 1 to 4 sacred sites that cannot be built upon.
Original description from box.
- Classic two-player feel with deeply tactile components
- Accessible yet tight decisions/strategy
- Potentially high variability in scoring balance; could be streamlined
- Hidden color balance and color concealment in tower-building
- Desert/island-like environments with stacked blocks
- Euros-style puzzle with healthily competitive edge
- Duel/abstracts with strong color-based scoring
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- color concealment and scoring visibility — Points awarded based on what each block arrangement reveals from a bird's-eye view
- stacking/placement — Building a structure with wooden blocks; players place pieces to score
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Evergreen is actually I suppose a spiritual successor to the famous photosynthesis board game.
- this one has more focus on the light points and the way you actually take your actions is different as well because it does use this drafting system
- this game was like gold dust for a long long time
- the production of these games is absolutely stellar
- these Magi 7 dice are absolutely gorgeous
References (from this video)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- El Grande is my favorite game of all time; it is the original area control game and the cream of the crop.
- Only your best round will count in Coliseum, which is a cool twist on scoring.
- El Grande and the King, with simultaneous selection and Castillo, harmonize to create a rich gameplay experience.
References (from this video)
- Interesting 3D puzzle mechanic
- Tactical back and forth gameplay
- Recently got a new beautiful version
- Unique mechanic of negative scoring
- Building and hiding structures from the chieftain
- Village/pueblo setting with grid-based board
- Abstraction based on village mechanics
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- 3D puzzle placement — Building up structures in 3D space where higher visibility means more penalty points
- Area visibility/line of sight — Chieftain moves around board edge and can see pieces along a straight line; players want to hide their pieces
- Negative scoring — Players do not want to score points; points are awarded when chieftain sees your pieces
- Worker placement alternative — Taking colored blocks or neutral blocks and placing them strategically on the pueblo
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- this doesn't feel like any other game... that's kind of what made us think about this
- this is a really interesting 3D puzzle where you are trying to build up stuff so that you can place it out but not score points
- you can strategically kind of change reality, which is just really, really kind of cool and unique
- I fundamentally do not understand how a brain thinks of a game like this. It's just so cool.
- I fundamentally don't understand how it works, but it works really, really well
- what if battleship was real time with a bunch of people and everyone had different roles
- it's fun to kind of cosplay as a collectible card game player, uh, but while keeping it still a board game at the end of the day
- For our money, the most unique game out there is Millennium Blades
- they provide an experience that... there's no other game that does it quite like those games do it