Is Quetzal worth the slog through the jungle?

REVIEW

 In Quetzal, each player leads a group of meeples adventurers and archaeologists on a journey through the ruins of an ancient civilization. Each meeples is black on one side and white on the other, and its color affects what actions you can perform with it. At the start of a round, players roll their meeples (just like they roll dice) to determine their party composition for the round, then take turns placing their meeples in various action locations to earn money, collect artifact cards, and deliver those artifacts for victory points. After 5 rounds, the game ends and the player with the most points wins.

PREPARATION

 Each player chooses a color and receives all the wooden components of that color and the Character tablet, as well as some money. One of their wooden markers is placed on the 0 scoring track and the other on the 0 research track.

 Next, the artifact decks are shuffled, 14 of them are drawn and placed in each artifact location, the circular marker is placed in the first position of the circular track, and the enhancement tiles are shuffled, with 3 of them placed in the corresponding locations on the playing field. Some locations will have tokens that close them with fewer players.

 Once that's all set up, the first player is chosen and given the first player token, and you're ready to start playing Quetzal.

THROWING MEEPLES

 In Phase 1 of a round, players collect all of their meeples (their workers as well as character meeples), shake them in their hands, and then roll them onto the playing field as dice. All that land on a side are treated as any color. If one lands on a side, it is considered wild and can replace any color when placed. Ditto for all who get on their feet, but they also bring their owners a coin. The meeple character has always been considered a joker.

LOCATIONS, LOCATIONS, LOCATIONS

 Phase 2, the placement phase, is where most of the game action takes place. During this phase, players will take turns assigning their workers to different locations on the field. In general, there are 3 types of locations: unique, betting and free locations.

 The unique locations—the Stele of Knowledge, the Temple, the Black Market, and the Village—only accept meeples of certain colors.

 The pond locations — Temple Precincts, Black Market, and Ships — can accept meeples of any color. However, once a color has been used in that location, it is locked and other meeples sent to that location must be of the same color. Any jokers sent to these spots become any color that is already there, or the player chooses the color that joker will become if there are no other colors. Also, if meeples are already present in that location, the player sending meeples there must send more than are currently in that location. Meeples that were already there are banished and returned to the owner's supply (their colors do not change). Of these locations, only the Black Market crosses the line between unique locations and trading locations.

 Free locations - Camp Captain's Office and Harbor - can accept meeples of any color, regardless of what may already be there.

 Here's a quick rundown of the locations and what they do (in the same order they play during the third stage):

• Stele of Knowledge - The player receives the first player token and movement on the research track.
• Temple – Players pay coins to get artifact cards. Some locations reward face-up cards, other locations reward cards drawn from the deck, while others reward a mix of both.
• Surroundings of the temple . Each of these locations rewards the highest bidder with two cards shown and a coin, research track movement, or victory points.
• Black Market - This place allows the highest bidder to discard an artifact card from their hand for 7 coins.
• Settlement - Players pay coins to take 1 of the open upgrade tokens. Tile A player's character can only have 2 face-up tiles at a time. If they already have 2 upgrades, they must replace one of them. This tile is stored face down to the left of the Character tile and will be worth a certain amount of victory points at the end of the game.
• Harbor Master's Office - Player can spend 2 coins to send meeples here. This will allow them to deliver 3 artifact cards during the third phase.
• Ships - In these locations, the highest bidder will have the opportunity to deliver 6 artifact cards.
• Camp - The player takes a coin from the pool and can re-roll one of their meeples. If a newly rolled meeples gets back on its feet, its owner gets another coin. This location is a special case and is activated immediately when a meeple is sent there.

WORKERS HAVE TO WORK

 In the third phase, each location is played in order of numbers (from top to bottom in the case of Temple and Village locations). When a player plays an action, their worker is removed from it. After players have played the Village location and taken their upgrade tiles, it's time to start delivering the artifacts.

 Each artifact card has a specific type, and the more cards of the same type a player can deliver at once (maximum 3), the more victory points he will receive for delivering them. Players can mix and match artifact cards during delivery, but this is less efficient and earns fewer victory points. Some artifact cards also have bonus icons in the upper right corner and award these bonuses when the cards are delivered.

 After all the workers are removed, the round marker moves forward, any empty artifact card slots are filled with cards drawn from the deck, and the village slots are refilled with new upgrade tiles. If it's the end of the 5th round, it's game over and you move on to the final scoring.

THIS IS THE END

 The owner of the First Player marker gets 2 points. Each player gets 1 point for every 3 coins they have left, and however many points are printed on all the upgrade tokens they have collected. These are added to any points scored by players throughout the game, and whoever has the highest total wins.

CONCLUSIONS

 Reading about the game, everything about it sounds like something that would be right up my alley – worker placement, bidding, kit collecting, and even the intriguing meeple rolling mechanic – but the actual experience comes with so much baggage that it ends up being the one that I am in no hurry to repeat never.

 The problem starts before you even open the box. The game's subtitle says City of the Sacred Birds, and you'd be right to think that birds might play a part in the game. But you would also be completely wrong. Aside from an icon that looks like it could be a bird, Quetzal has nothing to do with any birds; a minor annoyance, but an annoyance nonetheless.

 First, there is the unpleasant aspect of the "looting ancient ruins for personal gain" narrative. This is not much different from the problem of colonialism, which Thomas Wells talks about in his "What are we playing at?". Researching and understanding the inner workings of an ancient civilization (a la The Lost Ruins of Arnak) is not problematic. However, upload found loot and ship it for victory points or money. The rulebook simply silences this aspect of the narrative, ignoring it or even acknowledging its existence. It seems like the designers were so overly focused on the game and its mechanics that they lost sight of what the game was really about, and that's not okay. Nowadays, we have to do better. We have to BE better.

 And speaking of mechanics, what's the deal with throwing meeples? It was this mechanic that got me the most excited when I first heard about Quetzal, and I really hoped that something interesting would come out of it. A few years ago I tried to develop a game with the meeple rolling mechanic, but I just couldn't figure out how to make it work in a way that would make anyone actually want to play the game, so I put it on the back burner. I was in awe of how Quetzal was going to do it.

 It looks really bad. The problem I have isn't so much with the meeples themselves. The fact is that there is no point in throwing them. When you roll your meeples, you get one of three possible outcomes: a black meeple, a white meeple, or a joker. However, at the end of the day, these meeples do the same thing, so there's nothing special about them. What is the difference between an "adventurer" who goes to a temple to collect cards and an "archaeologist" who goes to a temple to collect some cards? There is nothing that sets these titles apart thematically. As a result, I feel the same way and it really bothers me. It feels like the mechanic was added to the game just to give the game something unique to point to.

 I wish there were more spots on the field where only adventurers could enter and others where only archaeologists could enter, so that the decision between the two would be agonizing. Of course, the Black Market action can only be used by a black worker, and the stele of knowledge can only be activated by a white worker, but this is not enough. It never feels like your decisions really matter. And this is probably my biggest problem: the lack of interesting options.

 At the end of the day, Quetzal comes down to two things: collecting cards and selling cards. The cards you can collect mostly come down to sheer luck. You drop your meeples and hope for the best. The only mitigation is the Camp, which costs you a worker to recast another. There is no way to give up something now for a better outcome at another time (as in Castles of Burgundy). There's also no built-in conversion factor (à la Catan) so you can manipulate your choice of workers. You never add additional workers to your pool. No, you're just stuck with what you came in with, and the choice of what to do with these workers is always pretty obvious.

 For example, if you have a large collection of cards on hand, you send exactly one, of whatever color you have the most, to the location that will allow you to deliver the most cards, and then return from there. If you over bid, you come back with even more workers, and if you don't have enough to win back a spot, you send workers to the camp until you have enough money to send a worker to the port captain's office, since only delivering 3 cards is better. than to deliver none. This sequence of events never changes. It all looks very formulaic.

 Don't get me wrong. I don't hate Quetzal. I just don't like that. It's a decent game. There are simply so many better games with a similar theme that I love, such as the  aforementioned Lost Ruins of Arnak or Rainer Knizius' The Quest For El Dorado, that it's hard to justify releasing this game with so many minor issues and not highlighting one of them. However, your mileage may vary. Quetzal may just be the entry-level job posting game you've always wanted. Fortunately, this isn't one of those games you have to buy and hope for the best. It's free to play on Board Game Arena right now, so you can try it before you buy. As for me, I don't think I will join you.

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