Friday Night Gaming: Antike
June 19, 2009
Antike
Most of us had played once before, a few years ago, not long after we first played Mare Nostrum. It was new to Brian, so he spent some time going of the rules on his own while we talked about other stuff.*
This is another civilization-building and expansion game with some interesting mechanisms. You gain victory points when you reach certain achievements, such as establishing 5 (or 10, 15, etc.) cities or building 3 (or 6, 9, etc.) temples, controlling 7 (or 14) sea spaces, or being the first to purchase one of the 8 technologies (4 basic and 4 advanced). The hardest points to earn are those from destroying opponent's temples. The first to a preset number of points (based on number of players) wins.
Each land space is marked with one of three resources: Iron, Marble, and Gold. Each turn, everyone also gets a Coin, which acts as one of any resource. Having a city in the region gives you one of that resource, three if you have built a temple (with Marble) there. You can build a city for one of each resource, but only if you have a unit already there (which requires Iron to build). So what tends to happen is that people expand territory, establish cities, build temples, and buy technology (with Gold) until they have to start attacking other players.
Combat is deterministic and brutal. Units (you have both ships and legions) destroy each other on a one-for-one basis. Cities require an additional unit, Temples two more beyond that. So if you wanted to sack a temple, you have to send in four units plus an additional unit for every defending unit occupying the region.
What we saw this time was an extreme build up of forces between Robert and Merwin, but neither attacked each other. Hell, I was completely vulnerable to Robert and he could have wiped me out, but by then, it would have left him vulnerable to Merwin and/or Brian. Eventually, Robert made his push and destroyed a few of Merwin's temple. Unfortunately, this ended up giving the game to Ian.
Merwin had a temple-focused strategy, eventually building 9 of the suckers. And with a limited number of temples available, it got so no one could build more. I was trying to take a balanced approach, but switched to taking technology before Ian could. Brian maintained his balanced strategy. Ian never attacked anyone, but was able to concentrate on technology. He was prevented from building more temples, but once one of Merwin's was destroyed and put back in the box, I was able to build his third temple for the win. Had Brian or I been more aggressive against Ian, things would have been different, but then the high cost of attacking makes this a very difficult trigger to pull.
We had an interruption in the game when Max decided that leaving the house and going to play in the neighboorhood without telling anyone was a good idea. A search party was gathered and things went on hold for a while until the wayward child was found.
*: At one point, there was a heated discussion of whether an imaginary number like 3+2i is "between" 1 and 10. I maintained that it isn't, but Brian argued it is. It was agreed that the next time someone asks us to "pick a number between 1 and 10," we'd have to ask what they meant by "between."
Antike
Most of us had played once before, a few years ago, not long after we first played Mare Nostrum. It was new to Brian, so he spent some time going of the rules on his own while we talked about other stuff.*
This is another civilization-building and expansion game with some interesting mechanisms. You gain victory points when you reach certain achievements, such as establishing 5 (or 10, 15, etc.) cities or building 3 (or 6, 9, etc.) temples, controlling 7 (or 14) sea spaces, or being the first to purchase one of the 8 technologies (4 basic and 4 advanced). The hardest points to earn are those from destroying opponent's temples. The first to a preset number of points (based on number of players) wins.
Each land space is marked with one of three resources: Iron, Marble, and Gold. Each turn, everyone also gets a Coin, which acts as one of any resource. Having a city in the region gives you one of that resource, three if you have built a temple (with Marble) there. You can build a city for one of each resource, but only if you have a unit already there (which requires Iron to build). So what tends to happen is that people expand territory, establish cities, build temples, and buy technology (with Gold) until they have to start attacking other players.
Combat is deterministic and brutal. Units (you have both ships and legions) destroy each other on a one-for-one basis. Cities require an additional unit, Temples two more beyond that. So if you wanted to sack a temple, you have to send in four units plus an additional unit for every defending unit occupying the region.
What we saw this time was an extreme build up of forces between Robert and Merwin, but neither attacked each other. Hell, I was completely vulnerable to Robert and he could have wiped me out, but by then, it would have left him vulnerable to Merwin and/or Brian. Eventually, Robert made his push and destroyed a few of Merwin's temple. Unfortunately, this ended up giving the game to Ian.
Merwin had a temple-focused strategy, eventually building 9 of the suckers. And with a limited number of temples available, it got so no one could build more. I was trying to take a balanced approach, but switched to taking technology before Ian could. Brian maintained his balanced strategy. Ian never attacked anyone, but was able to concentrate on technology. He was prevented from building more temples, but once one of Merwin's was destroyed and put back in the box, I was able to build his third temple for the win. Had Brian or I been more aggressive against Ian, things would have been different, but then the high cost of attacking makes this a very difficult trigger to pull.
We had an interruption in the game when Max decided that leaving the house and going to play in the neighboorhood without telling anyone was a good idea. A search party was gathered and things went on hold for a while until the wayward child was found.
*: At one point, there was a heated discussion of whether an imaginary number like 3+2i is "between" 1 and 10. I maintained that it isn't, but Brian argued it is. It was agreed that the next time someone asks us to "pick a number between 1 and 10," we'd have to ask what they meant by "between."
Labels: Other Games
posted by Patrick at 4:29 PM
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