Welcome to the city of Copan…
A shining jewel of the Mayan civilization. The city is flourishing, and as one of its ruling families, the golden age holds many opportunities for you to increase your influence and wealth.
But dark times lie ahead for Copan! As you work to secure your legacy, you’ll have to face the city’s slow decline. Your progress will be hindered by dwindling resources, crumbling political structure, natural disasters and war!
Will your family become a part of the history of Copan, forever carved in stone of the Acropolis? Or will your story be forgotten>?
Let’s explore Holy Grail Games latest title and experience a unique worker placement game…
In the beginning…
A game of Copan: Dying City is played over a number of rounds. Exactly how many rounds you’ll play can vary greatly, depending on the difficulty level of the Event card you’ve chosen!
You begin with a hand of 4 Court tiles. Each of these Court tiles shows one of the four resources: Food, Power, Zeal, and Fame.
At the start of your turn, you’ll place one of your tiles onto the Pyramid area of the central board. This tile placement will allow you to gain resources of the type of the tile you just placed. All orthogonally adjacent tiles will also generate resources of their type.
Once you’ve gained your resources, you’ll be able to spend them to perform an action by placing your Player Totem on one of the 5 Sites of Copan…
Take in the Sites…
Each of these Sites allows you to gain various bonuses, including Victory points, resources, and even extra actions!
The Embassies
Power isn’t just to be found within Copan itself. Other Maya cities, even distant ones, can become precious allies.
You can spend your Food to create alliances with other Maya cities, gaining a variety of advantages. The more Embassies you create in different cities, the more points you score at the end of the game!
The River
The Copan river is overflowing with riches, and every family, even the most noble, must make the trip to its shores when their supplies begin to run low.
At the River, players can replenish their reserves of Court tiles, and increase their storage capacity.
The Ball Court
The Ball Court is a sacred place, where showing your players’ skill will bring great prestige to your family!Particularly good games will attract influential allies, whose skills could prove precious in your quest for glory.
On the Ball Court, players can recruit Characters with useful skills to join their faction.
The Altars
As the spiritual heart of Copan, the Altars are where the priesthood sets the city’s religious calendar. A show of piety, along with generous offerings, will gain their favour, and all of the benefits that come with it.
At the Altars, players can gain access to different bonuses including resources, extra actions, and ascending the stairs of the great Pyramid
The Stairway
This impressive monument tells the dynastic history of Copan. To have your legacy engraved on the steps of the hieroglyphic stairway is an incomparable honor, but you will have to use all your influence to achieve it…
At the Hieroglyphic Stairway, players can collect Glyphcards, which can then be exchanged for pieces of jade for their family’s mask, as well as extra actions.
A City in decline
At the beginning of the game all of this will be easy. Copan is in its prime, resources are plentiful, and its government is stable, making most actions quite simple to accomplish.
However the city’s bounty isn’t limitless.
Each resource has a decline track, and when you place a court tile to generate it, you cause the resource of that tile’s type to tick down. When a resource reaches a critical level it becomes scarce. When a decline track reaches its final tier, that resource has been exhausted and can no longer be obtained!
A City in Ruin
Once all Court tile spaces have been used, or two resources have been completely exhausted, the game ends. The people of Copan have fled. Now, all that’s left is to discover which family will be forever remembered, and which will be lost to history…
