Ancient

Santorini: Pantheon Edition

NOTE: Pantheon Edition includes all material from the Golden Fleece expansion, as well as every promo card and many new cards. A lot of cards are revamped, reworked and rebalanced.

Santorini is an accessible strategy game, simple enough for an elementary school classroom while aiming to provide gameplay depth and content for hardcore gamers to explore, The rules are simple. Each turn consists of 2 steps:

1. Move - Move one of your builders onto an unoccupied neighboring space that is a similar level, up one level, or down any number of levels.

2. Build - Construct a building level adjacent to the builder you moved. When building on top of the third level, place a dome instead, removing that space from play.

Winning the game - If one of your builders moves from a lower level to the third level, you win. Or, if your opponent cannot move, you win.

Variable player powers - Santorini features variable player powers layered over an otherwise abstract game, with many thematic god and hero powers that fundamentally change the way the game is played.

HUANG

Lead an ancient China kingdom dreaming of imperial power, establish new states, build pagodas, strive for influence – and battle to unite the country under your glorious dynasty! HUANG is set in the Warring States period (475-221 BC), a time of endless wars between seven rival states: Qin, Chu, Qi, Yan, Han, Wei, and Zhao.

HUANG is a 2 to 4 player game set in ancient China, during the time of the Warring States. You take control of one of the Warring States, battling to unite the country under your dynasty. Each player has five different leaders: Governor, Soldier, Farmer, Trader, and Artisan.

Clever placement of these leaders and their corresponding tiles on the board is key, allowing you to build pagodas to score points, trigger or avoid wars, and instigate peasant revolts that bring down your enemies. Play is fast and addictive, lasting around 90 minutes, with a very short teaching time reflecting the elegance of the ruleset.

Celtae

Celt — Latin Celta, plural Celtae — were an early Indo-European people who from the second millennium BCE to the first century BCE spread over much of Europe. Their tribes and groups eventually ranged from the British Isles and Portugal to as far east as Transylvania, the Black Sea coasts, and Galatia in Anatolia, and they were in part absorbed into the Roman Empire as Britons, Gauls, Boii, Galatians, Celtiberians, and Lusitans.

Celtae is a "worker swapping" game powered by a rondel in which players choose actions to perform during their turn. On their turn, players swap one of their three active workers with one of the three workers on the action space they wish to perform, then they perform the action — which will be boosted if they have in their worker pool specific types of workers: farmers, builders, soldiers, and nobles.

The farming action allows players to draw cards, and it's boosted by farmers. Cards have three types of uses in the game: building, preparing for battle, and engaging with the druid order.
The build action allows players to build and expand citadels on the board by placing their discs on them, and it's boosted by builders. At game's end, only completed citadels will score, and players have to work together to complete them and score their presence on them. Each time players build in a citadel, they gain a bonus that was randomly assigned during set-up. The combination of these bonuses with a timely performed action often results in powerful combos.
The battle action, which is boosted by soldiers, allows players to defeat increasingly stronger Roman armies and to garrison the outskirts of the citadels on the map.
The recruit action, boosted by nobles, allows players to recruit workers to their tribe, increasing the number of available workers to boost future actions. However, if you manage to send certain types of workers from your tribe into the druid order, you'll get their favor and a druid worker who functions like a joker and boosts almost every type of action.

Every player has a leader card assigned to their tribe at the beginning of the game. At a certain point on the game, players will have to choose if their leaders stay on its regular side and like that gain a small number of points at game's end or forfeit those meager points and flip it to its heroic side, which has much harder requirements for much larger endgame points.

Each time the action marker on the rondel completes a full turn, the player who currently holds the favor of Teutates places a progress marker on one of the progress cards next to the game board. At game's end, only progress cards with progress markers will score, so as the game advances, players determine what will score...and what will not.

—description from the publisher

Aeterna

In Æterna, you take the role of a Roman Gens (family) that will try to increase its prestige through three eras: the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire.

Your goal is to increase your influence over the city by supporting the conquest of the provinces, ruling over "the seven hills of Rome", and contributing to the construction of monuments and buildings. While doing this, you must not demotivate the people in the hills under your direct control as unrest could put you in a bad light. If you manage majorities, cards, and resources better than your opponents, your Gens will be remembered in the history books as one of the most important in Rome.

Atlantis Exodus

The legendary Atlantis is shrouded in so many stories and myths, an island realm that was reputed to have completely drowned in only one night.

Atlantis Exodus presents the player kings with the challenge of rescuing as many citizens as possible before the impending downfall and, by doing so, saving the knowledge they have acquired for a different world and time.

Thanks to an innovative rotation mechanism, 1-4 kings have to face constantly changing conditions and keep adjusting their own strategy to the different action possibilities in order to ultimately become the savior of the achievements of their time.

—description from the publisher