Theme: Native Americans / First Peoples

Pueblo - the ultimate building challenge! Work with the other players to create a mighty home for the Chieftain, stone by stone. You are a craftsman, but you cannot let the Chieftain see your trademark stones, or you will be penalized. The longer you play, the more difficult this task becomes! Take on your opponents and become the Chieftain's Master Builder.

The theme setting is the Native American Pueblos of the Southwest tribes of the Zuni and Hopi. The board is a fairly small square. Each player gets a number of building blocks in their own color, and also some neutral colored blocks (1 fewer than the colored). Starting with the odd colored block, the player places it on the board, and then gets to move the "Chieftain" around the outer track surrounding the board. If the Chieftain can look straight across and see any colored blocks, those players gain points -- but points are bad. And when the Chieftain lands on the corners of the track, he looks down on the Pueblo from above, and all visible player's blocks gain them more points. Now, on each subsequent pair of turns, you have a choice of a colored block and a neutral block. Once all players' blocks are played, the Chieftain makes one last trip around the board, players gaining points all along the way. The player who has gained the fewest number of points is the Master Builder and the winner of the game.

There are also some extra components for making the game more challenging by adding an element of bidding for turn order, and from 1 to 4 sacred sites that cannot be built upon.

Original description from box.

The Zapotec were a pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the Valley of Oaxaca in Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence reveal their culture going back at least 2,500 years. Remnants of the ancient city of Monte Albán in the form of buildings, ball courts, magnificent tombs, and finely worked gold jewelry testify of this once great civilization. Monte Albán was one of the first major cities in Mesoamerica and the center of the Zapotec state that dominated much of the territory that today belongs to the Mexican state of Oaxaca.

In a game of Zapotec, you build temples, cornfields and villages in the three valleys surrounding the capital to generate resources needed for building pyramids, making sacrifices to the gods, and performing rituals.

Each round, players simultaneously pick a card from their hand to determine their turn order and the resources they collect. Players then perform individual turns and spend resources to build new houses, gain access to special abilities, make sacrifices to the gods and build pyramids. The played action card determines three important aspects of each player's turn:

The resource printed at the top of the card determines the row or column to activate on the resource grid to collect income.

The icon in the middle of the card matches one of the nine properties of the building spaces on the map (one of three building types, one of three regions, or one of three terrain types). On their turn, players may build only on spaces that match that icon.

The number at the bottom of the card dictates the turn order for the round when the card is played.

At the end of the round, players draft new cards from the central offer, with the final undrafted card becoming the scoring bonus card for the following round.

After five rounds, players score points for pyramids, for their position on the sacrifice track, and for their ritual cards. The player with the most victory points wins.

—description from publisher