Coatl, published in 2020, by Synapses Games, was designed by Pascale Brassard and Etienne Dubois-Roy, with art by SillyJellie.
This is a family level abstract strategy game with a fun toy factor in the plastic serpent pieces.
While I played this on BGA, you don’t get the same table presence and toy element as the physical version would.
In Coatl, players will take turns taking actions, accumulating prophecy cards and Coatl pieces in order to work towards building up to carve intricate Coatl sculputre (a Coatl is a feathered snake) to please the gods and attempting to score the most points and win the game. In this game, players take turns, taking one of three actions each time. The three actions are to take prophecy cards from the display, taking an available serpent pieces (head piece, tail piece, or pair of body segments), or assembling part of a Coatl.
Prophecy cards provide scoring objectives for the Coatl, based on specific color patterns and potentially how many times that pattern shows up in the serpent. Additionally, there are temple cards with similar goals. Each player had their own ‘private’ temple card for scoring, but can also claim one of two face up temple cards that are publicly available if they meet the conditions, when they complete one of their Coatl.
Each player is limited to eight pieces of the Coatl (head, tail, and body segments) before they must start assembling a serpent in order to open up more space for additional pieces. The Coatl can be placed during multiple assembly actions. Each will have one head, one tail, and any number of body segments. The Coatl is only finished when both the head and the tail has been placed. Prophesy cards can be added before the Coatl is complete to score, with one Temple cards being able to be scored during the turn a Coatl is completed.
Once a player has completed 3 Coatl, the end game will trigger. The round will complete, back to the first player, then each player will get one more turn. The player with the most points at the end of the game win.
In this one, the tutorial was created by thunder0491. The tutorial was very straight forward and taught the important concepts of the game well. The one thing that could have been more clear, is that even though the Prophecy cards only show body segments, the head and tail segments do count for the patterns.
This one was a fun and enjoyable game. Super light and super family oriented, but it made me think a little bit deciding which cards to take, which serpent pieces select and how to assemble the Coatl. This definitely would show off that toy factor more in a physical copy of the game. but it plays well on BGA.
This might make it to my list of games to get a physical copy of, as I think that my 8 year old would be able to play and enjoy this one.
I’m rating this one a 6/10 on Board Game Geek. It just falls a little too much on the lighter side for me to be a frequently played game, but I think this is a great game for families with kids in the 8-15 or so age range.
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