Stone In Love: AKROPOLIS ATHENA review
AKROPOLIS is one of my wife’s favorite games of all time, probably her favorite abstract game. It’s the one non-card game that she has consistently played solo over the years. But after two years of playing it, I could see that even she needed a little bit of fresh air in the game.
And so, she was very excited that I brought home a copy of AKROPOLIS ATHENA, the expansion from the same design team courtesy of our friends at GIGAMIC.
AKROPOLIS ATHENA is my favorite kind of expansion. It’s small, takes just a minute to teach, and doesn’t add a lot of bloat to the game.
Here’s the low down:
Players are trying to honor the goddess Athena by building a beautiful, four part statue. Building it is optional, but boy does it give you some cool bonuses. To set up the expansion, four random achievement cards are chosen from a stack of about 16 cards.
Then below each of the four cards four random mini tiles are assigned, as well as one of the four unique statue parts (with copies of the statue parts for as many players as you have).
That’s the entirety of the set up. And the rest of the game is played just like the original game, except that if at the end of any turn, a player’s tableau matches one of the Athena statue cards, then they get that statue piece PLUS they get one of the mini-tiles.
The mini-tiles are all juicy. Some are just extra tiles of the five main colors. Others add more scoring stars. And finally, some of these are multi-colored tiles. These mini-tiles are just one hex, and they can be placed ANYWHERE (except on top of another mini-hex), meaning you can really open up some scoring multipliers.
There is one more bonus — any player that builds the Athena statue in all four parts before the end of the game changes the scoring multiplier for the quarry stones from one point to five points each. That’s a huge jump, and definitely a nice bump for the person who focuses on building out large quarries and covering them later in the game for a giant pile of stones.
We’ve played the expansion three times this week alone, and I am convinced now that there’s just no way I will play AKROPOLIS without throwing in the ATHENA expansion. It doesn’t change the gameplay so substantially as to create a new game, but but it really does punch up the scoring and strategy.
So, I’ve detailed that AKROPOLIS is my wife’s favorite abstract game, and she told me last night that she (like me) enjoys the game even better with the ATHENA expansion. But where does AKROPOLIS rank for me in terms of favorite abstract games?
I don’t remember ever ranking my favorite abstract games before, but while we were playing last night, I started compiling a list of my other favorite abstracts in my head when it wasn’t my turn. If I had to do a quick list of my favorites, I’d probably come up with this list:
- Azul Summer Pavilion
- Ingenious
- River Valley Glassworks
- Akropolis (with the Athena expansion)
- Savannah Park
Looking at the list reminds me that I’ve never really defined an abstract, but in my mind, an abstract game is one that is primarily about scoring points based on shapes or colors, without any real connection between the mechanics and the theme. (Sometimes, there’s no theme at all). I also assume that it is going to play quickly, for sure less than an hour. (I guess Savannah Park might be stretching a bit, but it really feels like an abstract game to me just dressed up with pretty animal artwork.)
I am curious if anyone has a better definition of abstract games out there, or a better list. Is Hive considered an abstract? Jaipur?
I need to ponder this more.
Until next time, laissez les bon temps rouler!
— BJ from Board Game Gumbo
** A complimentary copy of the expansion was provided by the publisher. We purchased the base game at retail price from our FLGS, Anubis Game & Hobby. **