Tabannusi: Builders of Ur Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Tabannusi: Builders of Ur, an area control, city building game published by Board and Dice. Tabannusi: Builders of Ur is the newest in the "T Series" of board games designed by Daniele Tascini.

The “T” series of games started in 2012 with the release of T’zolk’in: The Mayan Calendar. Since that time, designer Daniele Tascini and several co-designers have embarked on a recurring thematic tableau linked by the same first letter. There was Teotihuacan: City of Gods in 2018. Then Trismegistus: The Ultimate Formula in 2019. Then Tekhenu: Obelisk of the Sun in 2020. Outside of the shared designer, another common thread is the use of a colon and descriptor to evoke the innovative central design element.

Based on the release timeline above, it was no surprise to see a new “T” series emerge in the year 2021. Tabannusi (which roughly translates to “build”) is followed by the evocative descriptor Builders of Ur. So, Build: Builders of Ur? Released by publisher Board & Dice, Tabannusi sees players navigating the ancient waterways, and in a wicked twist of fate, tasks them with building the city of Ur.

The main board features five areas distinguished by different colored barges where dice are rolled and placed based on player count. Three of these areas are districts related to the city of Ur and functionally work very similarly, whereas the other two (the ziggurat and the port) are unique. Players have both an architect and an assistant meeple. On a turn, players choose a single die from the barge in their current district, move their architect to the location based on the die value, and then use their assistant to take two actions before following to the new location.

A chosen die is added to a player’s resource pool and