The Games
Balam
Designer: Somebody
Publisher: Neuroludic
Type: Board
Languages: English, French, German
Status: Commercial/Free (see below)
BGG entry:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/game/24475
Available from:
http://www.neuroludic.com/balam/balam.html (Rules)
http://www.neuroludic.com/lapins/lapins.html (files for 18 Lapins along with a patch to convert the game to Balam)
The boards represents various sites of a thick forest of Yucatan, in 8th century, on which the players, who incarnates competitor 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 (such as Icehouse pyramids) in 4 colors (indicating which player owns the site)
- 64 small pyramids (such as Icehouse 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).
This game is an improvement on the Neuroludic game 18 Lapins. Balam was released commercially, but the publisher still has the files for 18 Lapins available on the website, along with a patch to use the 18 Lapins files to play Balam.