Set in ancient Mesopotamia, a cradle of civilization, at a time when the location of Ur was a coastal region, players work to build the Great City of Ur, expand its districts, and establish themselves as powerful builders.
Tabannusi: Builders of Ur features a stunning board showing the city of Ur divided into 5 regions, each tied to a specific color die. There are 3 building districts, 1 temple district, and 1 port district.
Each turn, your worker will activate one of these districts. When activating a district, you must first take a die from the district. This die matches the color of the district and serves two functions:
1) The die itself becomes a resource of its color.
2) The value of the die determines which district your worker will activate on the following turn.
Through various actions you will be able to expand your influence in the various districts, expanding construction sites and turning them into buildings to score valuable victory points. But you will also exert your influence in the temple district in order to earn the king's favor. In the port district you can obtain ships with important abilities and for scoring victory points.
You must spend your actions wisely and always make sure that you keep an eye on the general timing of the game. The moment a district is emptied of dice, a scoring will occur.
—description from publisher
- accessible action-dialing via dice
- interesting market/barge mechanic
- family-friendly pacing
- setup can be heavy
- not as deep as heavier euro games
- city-building and district development using dice
- fantasy Er; ancient/medieval-inspired city-building
- competitive euro feel with thematic flavor
- Viticulture
- Seven Wonders
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — the chosen die value determines which action space the player can use
- dice drafting — players draft dice from a central barge to determine actions
- end game bonuses — scoring occurs as districts and wonders are completed; end conditions can end the game
- End-game scoring — scoring occurs as districts and wonders are completed; end conditions can end the game
- tile/board progression — construct buildings across districts and manage scoring effects
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it's a deck-building game
- pull the levers
- banter on the show
- best part of this whole thing is they got stickers