A Review. Ayar: Children of the Sun

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A Review. Ayar: Children of the Sun is a cracking Euro game that sounds like a friendly, approachable, almost polite game… right up until it takes a tight knot around your brain and smiles while doing so.

Designed by Fabio Lopiano (Merv, Sankoré) and Mandela Fernández-Grandon (Sankoré, Overstocked), the pairing should instantly signal for the most seasoned Euro fans that this is not a kind of “shuffle some cubes and check out the outcome” situation.

Both designers have a reputation for games that reward planning, timing, just the right amount of regret — and Ayar fits snugly into that tradition.

The artwork is by Ian O’Toole, and we need no introduction right this time. I mean — this review would take longer to list than that and listing all these games he’s illustrated.

Suffice to say, the man has an innate capacity for making complex Euro games appear neat, legible and subtly beautiful. Ayar is no exception. The Incan mythic setting is beautifully realized, with bold iconography, vivid colors, and a board on which one feels as good as the visuals.

You'll find the full thematic back story, rules breakdowns and detailed analysis on BGG, but this review is more about what the game feels like at the table.

Good first impressions. The board looks great and crucially, doesn’t require a banquet table to play on. It’s one of those long rectangular boards, but your own player board is small enough so everything fits comfortably on a regular-sized table.

Setup is also quick and painless — about 10 minutes, once you grasp what you’re doing. A few components on the main board, some pieces on your player board and you’re on the go.

Its smooth in learning the game too-- the rules are clear there, nothing is too fiddly. Each player plays four pairs of “Ayars,” in Teal, Brown, Purple and… Black (or Dark Blue?! We’ll come back to that.)

That is probably my biggest — and the smallest — critique of the game. The colors are a little bit awkward. When somebody says the phrase “move the blue one,” do they mean the Teal Ayar or the Dark Blue-that-looks-black Ayar on a black track? It’s a minor gripe, but it does lead to an occasional pause at the table and awkward pointing.

These Ayars begin divided through the board: a pair begins squirreling away in the bottom-left corner and is only salient in the second half, while the rest start on their tracks, which constitute about 80% of the board’s real estate.

On your turn you’ll move an Ayar along one or two spaces and then place a Tambo in any space behind it to take that action. In order to do this step, you place the matching colour token on your player board (you get one of each colour plus one wild), take the action, and pass play along.

In each round, you place a small number of Tambos—five in the first round, four, three, and two. Once everybody’s out, the round ends. Scoring occurs in and at the end of rounds, divided into the Sun points and Moon points.

Now, here’s the twist: your total score is whichever of those two totals is lower. So you can’t just lean into one, or ignore the other — you have to balance them, or else you’re going to be silently punished by the game for your hubris.

Like with most Euros, there are four primary “paths” to scoring. Do you focus hard on one? Spread across two? Or try the dangerous, glorious tightrope walk of chasing all four?

We were lulled by our first round into a false sense of security. “Ah, this is a nice light Euro,” we thought. We were very wrong. But in Round 2, reality struck:

1. Sun points are tricky. Early scoring is simpler, but with fewer points — and you’re less likely to receive another shot down the road.

2. You need to move around a particular Ayar at times to score… but the actions are not exactly what you want it to be.

3. Indeed, to move that Ayar could well help your opponent more than you — but if you don’t move it, you can’t do anything necessary.

By round three, we were all cursing openly about our previous decisions and realizing how much differently we deserved to play. Which, of course, is precisely what a good Euro should make you feel.

Ayar hits a sweet spot, approximately 90 minutes of playtime, easy to teach without feeling overwhelmed by meaningful decisions. I would happily put it in a medium-weight Euro category. And it’s one I would strongly recommend add on to your own playlist.

Ayar is a gem of my choosing. I imagine It’s easy to relearn again after years on the shelf — but I can’t believe that this one is going to be gathering dust any time soon for my group.

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