Our review

Archeologists at Work

Paititi

Exhibitions, adventurers and artifacts

In Paititi you assume the roles of archeologists who are questing for the legendary treasures of the long lost Incan city of Paititi. Paititi is probably to be found in the Eastern Part of Peru and was founded in the 16^th century by the last Indian resistance fighters, after Francisco Pizzaro did conquer the Incan Empire and the last Incan Leader Túpac Amaru was killed. When the last remaining Incan Fortress, Vilcamba, had been conquered, the last residents fled into the rainforest with their treasures and founded Paititi there.

According to other legends the city could also be situated in a Peruvian mountain range of impressive volcanos, the Cordillera Volcánia. The city is supposed to have been destroyed and buried in the eruption of one of those volcanos. Your task is to find the treasures and present them in a profitable way in exhibitions.

Paititi is a pure card game using three different types of cards. There are 64 Excavation cards which you can use in two ways to excavate a site. If you put them on the table, you use their blue side showing the pickaxes. If you play them from your hand, you use their orange side featuring shovels. Then there are 40 Artifact cards showing various kinds of artifacts – vases, statues, llamas, tiles, discs and discs – of different values as well as cards that show shards. Finally, there are three different exhibition cards for Exhibition Opening, Travelling Exhibitions and Permanent Exhibitions.

At the start of the game you choose a player who shuffles the excavation cards and deals six cards to each player, who takes them up in hand. The remaining excavation cards are placed as a face-down stack in the middle. Now you shuffle the Artifact cards and display three of them, face down, on the table, the remaining artifact cards are set aside as a face-down draw pile.

Then you display the five cards for Exhibition Openings face-up. The Exhibition cards for Phase C including the Stop card are shuffled and stacked face down, then you place the cards for Phase B, again shuffled and face down, on top of those for Phase C. You also will need paper and pencil to note the victory points which are collected in exhibitions in the course of the game.

When the starting player is chosen, the game can begin. He has now the choice of four action options:

Draw two excavation cards

Place one excavation card as a pickaxe on the table

Excavate an artifact

Arrange an exhibition

You play in clockwise direction and each player has always the choice of one of those action options.

When you choose the action „Draw two excavation cards“ you draw two cards from the stack to your hand and after this your turn ends instantly. You need to adhere to the limit of maximum eight excavation cards in your hand. Should you hold more than eight excavation cards, you need to reduce the number to eight cards.

Another action option is the action of „Put down one excavation card for a pickaxe. If this action is chosen, you put exactly one card, blue side up, down on the table. This card indicates how many pickaxes you can use with this card, there are values one to three. If this action is chosen a second time, the card is put on top of the first one, so that you can always only use the top card.

The third action option is „Excavate an artifact“. When his action is chosen, the player selects one of the artifacts on display or the top card from the draw pile and pays the indicated costs. The back sides of the cards indicate the costs, you must always pay with pickaxes and shovels. The necessary pickaxes are taken from the row on the table, you must start with top card and can use as many as you need, but cannot pick cards from within the staggered row to avoid overpaying. Shovels are taken from your hand cards. You can always overpay both the number of pickaxes or shovels, if necessary.

When the costs are paid, you turn over the artifact cards for all players to see. If you found  shards, you put them on the discard pile and immediately draw two excavation cards. All other artifact cards can be set aside face-down immediately.

The last of the four action options to be chosen is „Arrange an exhibition“. To be able to choose this action you must have at least two artifact cards.

For choosing this action you score one victory points in any case. After you have chosen one of the available exhibitions, all other players also choose artifacts from their hand which they want to use for participation in this exhibition. But take card! Each exhibition only specializes in two types of artifacts. As soon as all players have chosen their arifacts, they simultaneously reveal those cards and note their victory points.

Depending on which exhibition was chosen, there are certain procedures and points distributions that need to be adhered to. Each exhibition card always shows two exhibitions for which each player can provide artifacts.

There are cards featuring two Opening Exhibitions; for those exhibitions each player only lends his artifacts to the exhibition and gets them back afterwards. You score one victory point per artifact.

Besides the Exhibition openings there are exhibition cards featuring one permanent exhibition or one travelling exhibition. In case of a travelling exhibition it pays to own many artifacts of one kind, because the more artifacts you have the more victory points you score. As the exhibition is a travelling one, you immediately discard all cards that you chose to contribute to the exhibition after scoring.

For a permanent exhibition you score three points for each artifact that you exhibit. When the exhibition is scored you get your cards back, but there are some losses due to breakings. Each player who participated in the exhibition must discard one card that was part of the exhibition, he chooses the card. Furthermore, the player who scored most points in the exhibition, must discard an additional card. All other artifact cards can be used again in later exhibitions.

When both exhibitions on the card have been dealt with, the card is discarded and a new exhibition card is revealed.

The game continues in this way until the Stop card „Temporarily closed“ is revealed. This card is placed next to the exhibition cards and from now on no new exhibition cards are drawn after an exhibition cards. The game continues in the usual way until two of the remaining exhibitions have been dealt with. After this, the game ends immediately.

All players add their victory points and all artifacts that players currently hold are added to the score  with one point per artifact. Whoever has most victory points, wins the game. In case of a tie in points the winner is the player who has most artifact cards left; if this still results in a tie, all players in the tie win the game together.

Paititi by Walter Schranz is a pure card game the graphics of which very painstakingly and very harmoniously done by Klemens Franz, dedicated to the Games Charity „Spielend helfen”. The graphic design and the mechanism of the game  immediately immerse players in the topic of the game, the atmosphere and topic of digging for treasures, excavating and archeologists has been implemented very well. In my opinion, the game is very will suited for families, where fun in playing and topic take precedence. Experienced players and frequent players will probably not take huge pleasure in the game, because the card availability is too much chance-dependent, in my opinion. But if you are looking for a filler after a long evening of games, you cannot go wrong with Paititi.

Kati Knoll

Players: 2-4

Age: 7+

Time: 60+

Designer: Walter Schranz

Artist: Klemens Franz

Price: 7 Euro

Publisher: Österreichisches Spiele Museum 2014

Web: www.spielemuseum.at

Genre: Cards, collecting, discarding

Users: For families

Version: de

Rules: de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Topic well interpreted

Nice and functional design

Limited charity edition

Compares to:

Set collecting games, games on excavations

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 5

Kati Knoll:

Aa nice family game or a filler for more experienced players, with a very well interpreted topic and fantastic graphic design.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0