Tuesday 22nd August - Antike

antike_end
Originally uploaded by coljen.

After all the excitement over the bracket on Steve’s table we eventually got to play a game. Steve had forgotten it was his choice this week and quickly dived into his collection and presented us with a choice of Indonesia or Antike. Well, from all reports Indonesia took over 3 hours to play. Steve said he knew that we would’nt finish but we would get to know the rules, anyway Garry and myself fancied Antike as neither of us had played before. Antike seems to be very popular at the moment with gamers, getting a solid 7.5/10 on BGG.
So Antike it was, Steve ran through the rules for Garry and myself, both Richard and Steve had played it a number of times before. This obviously reflected in the final scores. Basically you get a card to give you a starting position, in the 4 player game it’s either, Romans, Germans, Greeks or Phoenicians. Richard got the Romans and Steve the Phoenicians with Garry and me sandwiched in between with the Germans and Greeks respectively. The game is driven by the Roundel on the board which you move round, giving you a number of options, like recruit, get resources, build temples and so on. Richard had said that it was entirely possible to win the game pursuing a peacable strategy, but as it turned out I don’t think Garry and myself were aggresive enough because Richard had a pretty clear run. Steve, with the Phoenicians was at the other end of the board and couldn’t really get at Richard to stop his all conquering. I had read on the Geek of games taking 3 hours to finish, maybe with 6 players, but our game took about 105 minutes, including rules explanation. As we neared what looked like a pretty easy win for Richard, Steve was explaining what Garry and myself could do to prevent it from being quite as easy. I was 1 short on money to get to the development segment to upgrade myself to prevent Richard getting the VP. In the end it was an easy victory for Richard, but I think in the next game it will be closer as Garry and I will have a better idea of the gameplay.

Final Scores
Richard 9, Steve 6, Garry 5, Colin 4

In a subsequent email, Richard said that we were playing the game slightly incorrectly. We had been playing that to move more than 3 segments on the roundel you had to pay money, when in fact you could use any resource. So I could have got to the development segment to prevent Richard from getting that VP. I don’t think it would had stopped a Richard victory, just slowed it a bit.