Ayar: Children of the Sun asks you to please two ancient gods at once: the Sun and the Moon.
Predictably, one of them is always going to end up disappointed in you.
Guide the last surviving Ayar to Cusco by building up pottery, weaving, farming and reed bundling, then score whichever of your two devotions, Sun or Moon, let you down the least.
Ayar: Children of the Sun Game Overview
Quick Rules Summary
Ayar plays out over 4 rounds, each with a Day phase and a Night phase.
On your turn during the Day phase, you place a Step marker in an empty slot of your Tambo grid, which decides both which coloured Ayar moves and how far.
You move that Ayar along its path, then take a Tambo from the row or column where you placed your marker and slot it into an empty building space behind the Ayar, one matching Pottery, Weaving, Terrace Farming or Reed Bundling.
You then perform that activity with a power equal to the number of empty Tambo slots left in that row or column.
Each activity reveals its own mix of Sun and Moon icons as you go.
- Pottery has you collecting Pots for later sets
- Weaving has you filling in a grid of Textiles
- Terrace Farming has you planting Maize
- Reed Bundling has you sailing a boat around the lake
Emptying a row, column or quadrant of Tambos triggers Personal Bonuses and lets you place a Temple, and passing a Raymi tile hands every player Sun devotion and possibly a Llama.
How do you win?
Once each round’s Step markers are all placed, an Ayar retires (whichever has travelled least)
Scores Moon points for its owner based on that activity’s specific rule plus any Temples and Step marker bonuses attached to it, and everyone converts their current Inti dial reading into Sun points for the round.
After the fourth Ayar retires, you spend any Llamas you’ve collected to top up your Sun or Moon score however you like, then your final score is the lower of those two totals.
Whoever’s lower score is highest wins.
Main Mechanisms
Escalating-power action selection through emptying Tambo rows and columns, set collection spread across four distinct mini-activities, and a dual scoring track where you’re graded on whichever devotion you neglected.
USP
Being scored on the weaker of two separate tracks is an interesting idea; it should force you to keep glancing between your Sun dial and your Moon prospects and constantly correct course rather than just piling points onto whichever pile is winning.
Theme
Inca mythology wrapped around the founding of Cusco, the Ayar siblings, Inti the Sun and Mama Quilla the Moon.
Setup
A proper sit-down job: main board, lake board, four player boards each loaded with 16 Tambos in a grid, Temples, Bonus markers and an Inti dial, Raymi tiles randomised onto the path, and the Ayar pieces placed to start their journey.
Budget a good fifteen to twenty minutes before anyone’s actually taking a turn.
Components & Artwork
Andean-inspired art across the boards and tokens, textiles, pottery, sun and moon iconography, and a nice tactile Inti dial for tracking devotion.
Ease of Teaching
The “step marker into power” takes a round to click, and running four separate activities each with their own scoring rule is a lot to hold in your head for a first game.
Similar Games
Honestly, any bland-looking euro really. This sits comfortably in the crowd of perfectly competent, faintly forgettable mid-weight Euro games doing worker-placement-adjacent set collection.
Ayar: Children of the Sun Review
Positives
The action selection mechanism is a good one.
There’s a lot to do; four different activities keep each turn from feeling repetitive.
The scoring is interesting on paper; being marked on the lower of two separate tracks is a good way to force balance rather than letting one strategy run away with the game, but…
Negatives
…in practice, though, the daytime Sun scoring ends up mattering far more than the Moon side.
Summary
A pleasant euro with a clever scoring idea that doesn’t quite land the way it should.
The actual winning play just means racing for Sun points and treating the Moon side as an afterthought.
Fine for an evening, but it doesn’t do enough to distinguish itself.
Jesta ThaRogue