Antike

(image courtesy MacGerdts @ BGG)

Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been fighting off a nasty cold and the weather hasn't been cooperating much. Thankfully Monday night I was finally able to get some gaming in. I got Antike in trade not long ago and have been itching to try it out so we decided it would hit the table.

Antike is a game of conquering Europe (and eastern Mediterranean if you use the flip side map) for up to six players. Sure, there are a lot of games that involve beating each other up in Europe but Antike has a few unique things going for it. First off, there is zero luck; not a single die roll or card draw. Second, it uses an interesting mechanism called the rondel for choosing player actions.

I'm a big fan of luck. Rolling lots of dice makes me happy. I find some sort of sick enjoyment from managing the randomness while pulling from a deck of cards. No luck can be a scary proposition for me in a game and I was a little worried about that in Antike. Most games of this sort at least use a d6 for combat but not so here. Battles are simple and brutal; in general, like units are eliminated 1:1. If two players each bring three soldiers into battle, nobody is left with soldiers at the end of the day.

Initially that makes the proposition of combat a little scary. You know going into battle if you'll win or lose and at first it seems like that would lead to some serious stalemates on the board. While I'll need more plays to determine if that's fully true, I really didn't get that feeling in our three player game. Combat isn't a means to an end in Antike, it's a tool that you exercise at the precise moment you need it. Figuring out those moments and trying to make them happen is extremely fun and rewarding.

The game is played to a number of victory points which varies based on the number of players. Points are earned in a few different ways: owning cities, building and destroying temples, controlling seas and researching technologies. Combat becomes a tool for either earning those victory points or denying someone else points. What makes it really work is that you earn points for reaching various milestones. For example, you earn a point for every five cities you control. At the end of your turn, if you own five cities you earn a point. That point will never go away, even if you drop below five, and you'll never re-earn that point. Your next point from cities will come when you manage to control ten cities and so on. That system allows you figure out which attacks will push you to your goal. You might push hard to take a city from someone simply to earn you your tenth for an extra point and immediately abandon it because that city is now useless to you.

Actions are taken by moving around the rondel which is a circle divided into eight parts. You get to move three spaces for free and need to pay resources if you wish to move further. There are three resource gathering actions and their counterparts along with two maneuver actions. Iron is used for building new units, so iron and arming are directly opposite each other on the rondel. This clever system not only makes it easy to remember what resources are used for (just look opposite on the rondel) but also means that you can't generate a resource one turn and immediately use it the next without paying out an additional resource. You end up making some tough decisions on where to move on the rondel as you'll have lots of things you want to do and getting back around can take a couple of turns if you pass up something.

Turns fly by too, which is great. It's a longish game... I would plan for three to five hours depending on the number of players, but that's pure speculation on my part based on our one play. Each turn is fast though so it never feels like there's much downtime and you have plenty to be thinking about while others are going. With no luck involved you really have nobody but yourself to blame if things go poorly!

My only major complaint is that the game was a tad fiddly. There are little cardboard coins to represent your resources that you are always earning and spending, plus you have to add up how many resources you gather all the time. I think I'm going to print out little sheets so players can easily track how many resources they are gathering to help cut down on time and potential errors.

Overall I was really impressed and can't wait to play some more. I thought the no-luck factor would turn me away but it ends up working just fine. It's a very dynamic game - our map changed a lot and key territories were hotly contested - so there's plenty of excitement. You do have to play it a bit differently that your typical conquest game though as you need to pick your battles wisely and decide when to push for points. If you like conquest style games, though, I'd really suggest giving Antike a look. It's something a bit different and it won't suite all players but, like me, you may be surprised at just how fun it is.

EDIT: I may have overestimated the length a bit. Thinking back our learning game with three was around 2 1/2 hours and we probably could've done it faster than that. Although I still think it'll take awhile with six, especially depending on how analysis prone your players are.