Andrew Walters
United States
Hercules
California
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Teluva is ostensibly a game of peoples settling volcanic islands from Marcel-Andre Merkle, designer of Attika, published by Rio Grande Games. It's a fun, quick-playing tile laying game with neat buildings, a relevant third dimension, and a tendency to surprise you.
Each player begins the game with a supply of buildings in their color: twenty huts, three temples, and two towers. Each turn you must draw one of the forty eight terrain tiles, add it to the map, then build.
Each terrain tile consists of a triangle of three hexes, one of which is a volcano, the other two are grassland, jungle, desert, rock, or lake. The first two terrain types are much more common than the latter three. There are some doubles, as in Volcano-Lake-Lake. You can place a tile anywhere on the table contacting the existing map on one or more hexsides, even creating holes if you like. You can also place tiles over existing tiles in a volcanic eruption, which is subject to the following additional rules: the volcano hex of the tile you place must sit on top of an existing volcano hex, the newly placed tile must be supported under all three of its hexes (no caves), and the newly placed tile must cover parts of at least two previous tiles (you can't stack straight up). You can crush huts (your own or others), which are removed from the game. You may not destroy temples or towers.
There are four ways to build. A single hut can be placed in any non-volcano hex at elevation one, forming a new settlement (you cannot place in this fashion next to any of your existing buildings). You can expand a settlement by putting new huts into all the hexes of a chosen terrain type adjacent to one of your existing settlements. If you expand into a level two hex you must place two huts in that hex, and you must place three huts in a hex of elevation level three. A temple can be added to a hex adjacent to any of your settlements that occupies at least three hexes, but you cannot place a second temple in any settlement. Finally, a tower can be added to one of your settlements on any hex of elevation three. You can't build on volcano hexes (you saw that coming). If you cannot build, you lose and drop out of the game.
There are two ways to win. If one of the players builds all of his buildings of two of the three types, they win immediately. You might suspect this would typically be all the towers and all the temples, but I've seen it end with someone placing all their temples and all their huts nearly as often. Should players successfully prevent each other from reaching this goal and the last tile is placed, the player who's played the most temples wins, with towers breaking ties, and huts breaking any further ties.
Typical tactics include trying to place several of the same type of hex next to one of your settlements to allow efficient expansion, causing volcanic eruptions that trim down the size of an opponent's settlement so he can't build a temple, crushing your own huts to divide a settlement and create a temple-building opportunity, or, most fun of all, creating level three terrain adjacent to one of your settlements and then putting a tower on it.
It's entertaining that the destruction of one's huts is not necessarily disastrous. You've already built them, that's often what counts. Sometimes, in fact, you may destroy your own huts to separate one large settlement with a temple into two, to make building a second temple possible. The two times losing huts can hurt you is when you were about to build a temple but the reduced size of the settlement no longer allows it, or when loss of the huts denies you access to part of the board that's about to become advantageous, say with level three terrain.
There is very little luck, only in the draw of the tiles, and they are similar enough that a "good" draw isn't overwhelming, and a "bad" draw isn't disastrous. The landscape shifts quickly enough that long-range planning doesn't pay off, but looking ahead a turn or two can net you an unblockable tower.
Player interaction is pretty good: you can do some damage to others by crushing their huts with a volcanic eruption or blocking their expansion, but this usually comes at the expense of your own expansion. Placing a third level tile creates two opportunities for building, of which you can only take one; thus, building your tower often gives someone else a chance to build theirs. An ideal spot for two players often results in a game of "high altitude chicken" as each waits for the other to place the tile that will give them each a tower, using their own placement phase to extend their other projects.
This is almost a gateway game: its quick, its easy, its fun, and when you see a game in progress across the room you do get the "I want to play *that*!" feeling. The building placement rules have, at first, a little of the "except on Tuesday" feel, which might make a non-gamer's first go a bit rough. In practice, though, the tile and building placement rules are second nature after ten minute, and its all hut-crushing and tower building fun after that.
Physically the game is well done. The buildings are wood pieces of reasonable size, and visually interesting, not cubes or generic houses. I found the huts a little difficult to pick up, but I don't have the nimblest fingers. The tiles are quite thick, making the hut-covered "slopes" intriguing even from the next table over. The box insert holds the tiles nicely, though there is just one bin for all four colors of buildings.
This game is reasonably priced at $30, looks great on the table, plays quickly, and is very enjoyable. Its the kind of game that can be played several times at a sitting, and it won't end the same way twice.
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Noah Sager
United States
Sebastopol
California
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andreww wrote:
This game is reasonably priced at $30, looks great on the table, plays quickly, and is very enjoyable. Its the kind of game that can be played several times at a sitting, and it won't end the same way twice.
Unfortunately, it's OOP and usually goes for $65-85. Been looking for a copy myself for quite a few months.
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Andy Andersen
United States
Newark
Delaware
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RequiemX wrote: andreww wrote:
This game is reasonably priced at $30, looks great on the table, plays quickly, and is very enjoyable. Its the kind of game that can be played several times at a sitting, and it won't end the same way twice.
Unfortunately, it's OOP and usually goes for $65-85. Been looking for a copy myself for quite a few months.
I paid $50 from a Canadian retailer - but it is worth it. Great game. But if i was reviewing, I would check availability before announcing it as a $30 game.
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Andrew Walters
United States
Hercules
California
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Argh, I apologize, I had no idea. I found the review on my hard drive. I wrote it years ago and forgot to submit it. I saw that and was going to remove it, but forgot. I'll go edit it now. Dumb mistake.
Best of luck finding a copy!
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Steve Undy
United States
Fort Collins
Colorado
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Too bad it's so hard to find because it's such a good game.
If anything, I think the review understates the amount of player interaction. It can be quite brutal (and I mean that in the most fun sense of that word!). It plays fast and scales from 2 to 4 players extremely well.
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Posted Fri Aug 12, 2011 12:59 am
