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Balam box art
2006 Ranked #14,309

Balam

A civilization game has competing Maya kings build cities, divide goods between taxes and sacrifices, and gain prestige. Katun events can aid or devastate development, making power and growth a delicate balance.

Ancient Civilization Tile Placement

Players

2-4

Play time

Not listed

Age

12+

Complexity

3.63/5

Rating

6.73

Harder to teach Highly interactive Deep strategy

Overview

At a glance

Is this game right for my group?

ABG editorial scores on a 1–5 scale.

Teachability 2.7/5

Harder to teach

Replay value 4.1/5

High replayability

Interaction 3.8/5

Highly interactive

Player scaling 4.4/5

Scales well

Strategic depth 4.7/5

Deep strategy

See all 5 specifications

How it plays

How does it play?

The boards represents various sites of a thick forest of Yucatan, in 8th century, on which the players, who play as competing kings, are building cities.

Core mechanisms

Key systems that shape the decisions players make.

Read the full game description

The boards represents various sites of a thick forest of Yucatan, in 8th century, on which the players, who play as competing kings, are building cities. The goods produced in these cities by Maya people must permanently be distributed between taxes - which allow growth - and sacrifices - which allows to increase power. At the end of the game, the most prestigious king becomes the first emperor of Yucatan. Game components : 33 Site tiles (the tiles, once juxtaposed, constitute the game board) 1 board score track tile 72 Katun cards (Katun is a 20 years-long period. While players are drawing the cards, Katuns will follow one another, sometimes positive, and sometimes catastrophic.) 4 individual King cards (They allow to store the pyramids and the goods of the king and they remind rules) 52 large pyramids in 4 colors (indicating which player owns the site) 64 small pyramids matching the large pyramids (indicating which player has the commercial control of the site) 99 building tiles double sided, of 4 types (8 different buildings : villages/garrisons, palace/temples, market/storage, grounds of pelote/observatories) 82 good tokens of 6 types (30 yellow corn, 10 brown cocoa, 8 blue shell, 8 green jade, 16 black obsidian, 10 red prisoner) ("village" buildings produce goods and wars bring back prisoners) 4 6-sided dice (used to solve conflicts).

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Editions

Language and publisher variants currently recorded in the catalog.

Edition Year Language Publisher / Region
No editions imported yet.

Player resources

Rulebooks, player aids, FAQs, and solo resources.

No files imported yet.

Game and edition data

All specifications (5)

Play and group

Players
2–4
Best with
2–4
Play time
90 min
Age
12+
Complexity
3.6/5
Credits and catalog connections

Credits

Designers

1
Patrice Vernet

Publishers

2
(Web published) Neuroludic

Linked items

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