Troy Tempest

On a day when the BBC put an article entitled “Board Games: why are they becoming so popular?” four GNN regulars met up for a first attempt at Ancient Civilisations of the Inner Sea. In the BBC video, not one of the reasons given was that people wanted to be dicks to each other while playing a game of indeterminate but considerable length. But that’s why we were sat around Sam’s kitchen table.

Ancient Civilisations of the Inner Sea is set at the dawn of the Bronze Age around the Mediterranean Sea as each player adopts the role of a local aspiring empire. In our game, Sam was Troy, Adam was Egypt, Ian was Carthage and I was Gaul. It superficially resembled Time Of Crisis and I swiftly expanded into Rome almost out of habit. Sadly it wasn’t a game-winning move.

Adam, though, sprang into an early lead, building cities and using cards to put him onto four points, to Sam’s three and Ian and I sharing one. (Or should that be sharing two, since we had one each?) Sam sent Civil War into Egypt, removing five of Adam’s discs. Adam just drank slowly from his beer while regarding Sam coldly.

Why are board games so popular? Hmm. Good question.

Soon after this point there was an event entitled Breath of God which saw everybody instantly discard their hands and draw four new cards. Cue a chorus of grumbles at the unfairness of it all. Ian seemed to make the most of the new opportunities as he built loads of cities: so many that our attempts at stopping him were largely fruitless. He picked up ten points that round, jumping into first.

He retained his estate of ten cities for a while until Adam played the Bread & Circuses card which meant that the player with the most cities had to lose that many VPs, or pay for them with money or cards from his hand. That knocked six points of his tally. Finally the first epoch ended and it was 9.30. We’d been playing for two and a half hours! A full game lasts four epochs.

Epoch Two began with a general agreement that this could be the last. But before too long another event, Time Marches On, brought the epoch to an abrupt end. The score at this point was Adam 34, Sam 34, Ian 31, Andrew 27.

Adam was the main target of our ire, as we set about dismantiling his Egyptian/Palestinian empire. But we always had an eye on each other, as I sent barbarians into Sam’s lands and tried to stop Ian’s expansion into southern Spain.

Being in last, I was mostly unhindered by my opponents but the game itself still managed to get in my way. The event Resistance To Chance cost me three points for most cities just as I was about to score big.

Then, wouldn’t you know it, Time Marches On made another appearance. Epoch Three came to a sudden end and, with that, so did the game. It was 10.50, so we didn’t feel like risking a fourth epoch.

Sam 42
Adam 41
Ian 40
Andrew 37

While it had been long, it had never been boring with a remarkable lack of downtime between turns. There’s always something to watch and something to react to. It was fun, but the fact that there’s no real way to guess how long a game will be makes it an “event” game rather than one that’ll make an appearance at the weekly meet. Ian also noted that the name itself - Ancient Civilisations on the Inner Sea - was slightly too long. Sam promised to bring it to Novocon.

Then Adam decided it was time to go, but was persuaded to stay for one more by the wall of rain outside. We played Yokai. It was a breeze after the hardships of ACIS. And we did very well, hitting Legendary on the score track thing.

And then we set off, into the rain. Thanks for the evening.