Customer Reviews

Antike

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Antike is a fun board game of politics and resource management. The win condition is to be the first player to accumulate 10 "achievements" (represented by cards with historical figures, with individuals correlating to the kind of achievement). There are multiple paths to winning achievements, which can make the route to the victory condition quite complex.

The board is two-sided, consisting of either the Mediterranean (centered on Rome and Carthage) or the Middle East (centered on Babylon). The map is broken up into regions or provinces, roughly congruent to historical divisions. Each region produces a good; marble, iron, or gold. Each player begins in a different civilization capital, such as Athens, Tyre, or Rome. Antike has a particularly interesting method of resouce management. There is a "production wheel" that has the 3 resources that can be produced (marble, iron, gold) and the 3 products that consume those resources (temples, soldiers, science). On your turn you can produce a resource type or consume them on a product type, but you can only move around the dial up to 3 spaces for free (moving farther on the dial costs resources). Also, there is only one production wheel, so your options depend on what your opponents do. There is also a generic payout of resources on every full round (like passing "Go").

Building temples increases the amount of resources that are harvested from a region, and helps to defend the region from invasion. Soldiers are built with iron and are used to garrison new regions (to harvest their resources) or to fight enemy civilizations. Science is bought with gold and gives bonuses like extended movement or better defense.

Achievements come from building temples, destroying other temples, and discovering science. It is possible to win the game just by discovering science. Science can be a double-edged sword; the first discoverer gets the achievement point but pays the full cost. Afterwards, any other player can also get the benefit for a reduced cost.

Overall, Antike is an interesting game of war and resource management. The production wheel has a particularly interesting effect of causing a cyclic nature to the game. There is a lag time in responding to opponents and power consequently ebbs and flows. And a reminder that you don't win by conquering regions, you win by accumulating achievements; you may find that a military only gets in the way of victory.