Terramara, Preview 1

Welcome to the first preview for Terramara, our second upcoming Spiel 2019 release! In this preview, we will show you a small part of the game board and discuss the mechanics behind what is shown.

In Terramara you will play as the chief of a clan living in one of the villages founded around 1500 B.C., mid- to late Bronze Age, in Northern Italy. Your goal is to develop your clan, exploring lands farther away to trade with other villages, and reach sacred places. You improve your battle strength and discover new technologies to create useful artefacts. All this is driven by an enhanced worker-placement mechanic, on which we will elaborate in an upcoming preview.

What we discuss today, is tied to the creation of these artefacts in the sense that players further along the river, can pick newly revealed artefacts before players behind. But before continuing the explanation, let us first show you the river we are talking about!

Each players’ disc will start on the space depicting four boats, meaning that each player starts the game with access to the two leftmost artefact cards in the row. Advancing along the track broadens your scope in artefacts to be created. Since at the end of each of your turns, you are allowed to create one artefact. As soon as a card is taken, the other cards slide to the left to fill the gap and a new card is revealed and added to the row as the rightmost one.

Along the river, several bonusses are at your disposal. From the moment you reach the 4th space, you are allowed to design (reserve) an artefact at the end of your turn, instead of creating it. The 6th space offers you the bonus depicted on the available level 1 bonus tile. Each bonus tile is at game start randomly selected and revealed, but will remain available for each player that reaches or passes it. An extra worker will be available on space 8 (not yet depicted, work in progress). Space 10 offers you a stronger bonus, depicted on a level 2 bonus tile and from space 12 onwards you receive a discount of 1 resource on building a previously designed artifact. Space 14 bears both a level 2 and a level 3 bonus and space 15 concludes the track. You will receive a victory point upon reaching this space, and for each step you would gain in addition.

But how do I advance along that river!? You can do so by choosing several action spots on the game board! We hereby reveal one of the action spots that is always available (its precise numbers depending on player count). You may either gain 1 military + 1 advancement along the river OR a total of 2 steps with your carts along the roads. Which roads? We won’t spoil the roads and underlying mechanic yet ;), but they end in the camp on the left bottom side of the game board, shown in the picture at the top of this page.

That concludes the Terramara preview for today. We hope that you read this post with interest. For the next preview, keep an eye on our website :D.