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Tikal II
Authors: Wolfgang Kramer & Michael Kiesling
Publisher: Gameworks
Year: 2010


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In Tikal II the explorers of Tikal continue where they eleven years earlier have left off. Rumours of a lost temple make professor Kramer, Kiesling and their new companions Braff and Pauchon decide to return to the valley of the temples. The journey to it is an adventure on itself, contained in a mood enhancing comics of nine pages that precede the rules.

On the gameboard the playing tokens dive into the temple to explore all its rooms and collect amulets in the surroundings, excavate and sell treasures, and in general acquire knowledge of this ancient civilization and already collect the points for the fame that awaits them home. There are two rounds of sailing and exploring the temple, after which the player whose explorer was the most succesful has won.

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The explorers all start at the same location in a pirogue and each turn attend a location where they have to pick a tile and execute it. In each of the locations initially and dependent on the number of players a maximum of four tiles can be found. The tiles vary from placing a temple tile, scoring temple rooms that have a specific colour or taking an amulet, a secret passage or treasure. Players are relatively free to sail as far as they can, but never more than five locations. This comes down to the restriction that a player never can return on the location where he left off in the same turn.

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The second half of a players turn takes place in and around the temple. Outside we find the explorers; they may enter, provided they have the right amulets that function as keys. Each of the temple rooms has one or more coloured entry doors that can be opened with the right amulet; the amulet is not used but a player may keep it for a subsequent door. Each temple room scores one or more bonuses when an explorer decides to place his flag there, and he may do this only once a turn. Besides this each flag scores the amount of doors a room has, plus points for each same coloured door elsewhere in the temple in which room the explorer already placed a flag.
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This way each of the explorers develop a preference for specific temple rooms, and in the course of the game gradually some rooms are neglected or ignored by some of them because they do not score very well, or because the explorer doesn’t have the right amulet for it.
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The voyage by pirogue has one obstacle: once per cyclus the pirogue has to be transported over land and this costs, very plausible if one has read the introductory comics, one amulet. Players who want to travel fast and want to do this too often to reach that wanted tile, encounter their natural limit at this location.

Collected treasures are kept face down, and can be sold for points at two air strips in the jungle against the actual market price. Each air strip only takes one type of treasure at the time. A price wheel is rotated after the transaction so players with other kinds of treasures can try to maximize their score.

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The grey altar rooms lack doors; they will have to be placed in such a way that entry is possible from an adjacent room with doors, or a player will have to a secret doorway chit. The points in an altar room are much higher than in the regular rooms and apart from this a player can make a choice from several extras such as taking a special card or treasure.

The special cards provide an extra exploration, a secret passage, an amulet of the player’s choice, free transport over land, special bonuses when delivering treasures, and special bonuses at game’s end.

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Instead of putting an amulet in his backpack, a player may decide to place it in his base camp, his player board. The amulet cannot be used for opening doors, but scores in an intermediate scoring at the end of the first and second round. All altar rooms are checked and compared with players amulets. A player who has a flag in the altar room and has the most or equal amulkets scores three points. Besides this they score as a collection: one scores one point, two different amulets score three points, three different amulets score six points, and so on. The amulets from the first round stay in the base camp of the player and this way score a second time in the intermediate scoring at the end of the second round.
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Each round a player has the opportunity to make an extra exploration or take an amulet. The corresponding tent is turned to its back side so it is clear to everyone that a player has made this additional action. At the start of the second round the tent is turned face up again but placed on the right side of the base camp to indicate the changed now counter clock wise turn order.
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When there is only one free space in the temple, the treasure room is placed. As with the altar rooms, this treasure room has no doors, so a player has to use one of the adjacent room doors with matching amulets, or use a secret passage chit, if he still has one. Players who manage to enter this room are awarded with sixteen to ten points, depending on the order of arrival. Outside the temple there is a location with six smaller treasure rooms that require a secret passage; the ten to five points that can be collected here are usually collected towards the end of the first and second round when no high scores are available inside the temple itself.

After the second round and accompanying intermediate scoring the special cards are scored, as well as undelivered treasures that score one point per treasure; the player with the highest score wins.
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On all sides it shows that the game is produced with a lot of care and devotion. This already starts with the very extensive and extremely thorough rules that comes in three booklets of twenty four (!) pages for the three languages German, English and French. However from these the nine pages comics must be deducted, a big extra the publisher must have enjoyed to add for it surely cost him extra money. And the pleasure and dedication shine from the game. Where another publisher has stopped his long tradition of supplying his games with a matching tray, this publisher feels that it just belongs to it. When asked about this, Sébastien Pauchon replied:

'Well, we are game lovers, we like nice things well thought out and well packaged, we like nice illustrations, and therefore produce our games the way we'd like to receive them as customers. As you obviously have noticed, all our games have a custom made vacuum tray (Water Lily is a bit special as the tray is used in the game itself).  It does indeed cost money for the tool (between 1500 and 3000 Euro depending on size and complexity), after which the tray itself doesn't cost much. Of course, if you only print 2000 copies of a game, that price is very heavy on your production. But we're fortunate enough to have bigger prints, we looove those custom made trays, and we think they do enhance the pleasure of opening your box and discovering your new game. I am especially fond of Jaipur's pink tray, for instance... :-)
So, that's how we like it... Art vs business, maybe ;-) Plus, they are a real challenge to imagine, lots of fun (see Sobek, my favourite shape)!'

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As a gamer, one feels good when seeing this. The game is over, there is the casual talk and meanwhile the components piece by piece are put back in the box. And each time it is a delight when one can put the various bits and pieces in their intended cutouts. This simply feels good! It means someone has had to think about the thickness of the card board, the size of the tokens, the shape of the parts.
It would be a good thing if some publishers would emply less managers who only look at finance, and appoint more aficionados who do what Gameworks does here. Buying and playing a game is an emotional thing, so the more feel good the product has, the greater the chance it ends up on a gamer’s desk via the check out of a store.

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The game offers the same constant quality we are used to from Herr Kramer and Herr Kiesling. This maybe not sufficient for the diligently searching for innovation gamer, for the broad audience however this is exactly the 1-2-3 dish they are searching for. A nice theme, not overly complex, and doing your thing whilst not being harrassed too much by other players -as especial feminine players don’t like this kind of bother.

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A player does a little of this, and a little of that; he chooses his momentum but has to react immediately on new situations. This may hamper tactics once in a while, but this affects all players so what’s the big deal here. Sailing, take a tile, open doors, collect treasures and sell ‘em; a player meanwhile has nice considerations to make. Tikal II is a worthy follow up, almost an ode to its firstling that already was preceded by Java and Mexica, and all of them equally fresh and playable. With Tikal II the game landscape becomes yet more cheerful.
© 2011 Richard van Vugt

Tikal II, Wolfgang Kramer & Michael Kiesling, Gameworks, 2010 - 2 to 4 players, 13 years and up, 60-120 minutes


A full point extra for the execution
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