Architects of Amytis

• Designer: Jeremy Ducret and Romaric Galonnier
• Publisher: La Boite de Jeu
• Players: 2
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link:  https://amzn.to/43lhYUN
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

The King of Babylon wants to offer a marvelous present to his wife, Queen Amytis: The most beautiful city ever created. He asks two of the best Architects in the world to design the city, and only the very best one will be built. It’s now up to you to create the best design.

Les Architectes d’Amytis (“Architects of Amytis”) is a Tile placement game, containing some worker placement and even some “Tic Tac Toe” mechanisms. During your turn, you’ll have to select a tile among the available ones on the main board, and place one of your Architect Pawn on the corresponding pile.

Then, you’ll place the tile on your board wherever you want (on a free spot, or covering another tile to make your city grow higher). Each tile is colored (4 colors) and represents a building (6 different types). Each building type will score directly when you place the tile. And the colors will allow you to reproduce some of the King’s projects (a colored pattern inside your city) that will grant you points at the end of the game.

Furthermore, while placing your architects on the main board, if you manage to create a line, row or diagonal of 3, you’ll be granted a King’s favor: another type of score,triggered at the end of the game.  Buildings all have 2 types of scoring, so you can play different kind of games one after the other Which strategy will you choose to create the most marvelous city of the World? 

The three boards used in this game (the main baord, the score board and the Favor board) are all placed on the table between the two players.  On each of the 9 spaces of the main board, a stack of 5 Building tiles is placed.  The project card deck is shuffled, placed on the table, and the top 3 cards are flipped over to form a market. Each player takes their own player board, and the 6 building cards are arranged nearby so that each card has the same side showing as the opponent.  Each player also gets 2 random Project cards to start the game.

On a turn, the active player goes through the four different phases before the next player repeats the process.

1] Retrieve your Architects – take all your architects back if you have three of yours in a row/column/diagonal line on the board OR if all your architects are on the main board.

2] Choose a building tile – choose any unoccupied space on the main board that has at least one tile in its stack.  Take the top tile and then place one of your Architects on top of that same stack.

3] Place the tile – Place the chosen tile on any space on your personal board; it can be an empty space or be placed on top of a previously placed tile.  Once placed, then apply the effect of that tile.  Each of the tiles has a scoring effect that is calculated based on the visible (i.e. topmost) tiles on your player board.  Score the points awarded to you from the tile on the score board..

4] Claim a King’s Favour – If you have made a tic-tac-toe line, place one of your player tokens on any unoccupied space on the favor board.  Each spot leads to a particular end game bonus scoring opportunity.

Before your turn ends, check to see if you have achieved any of your Project cards – by having a configuration of tiles as shown on the project card.  You can use a rotated arrangement of tiles but NOT a mirrored arrangement.  Finished Project cards will be scored at the end of the game.

The next player now takes their turn, going through the same phases.  The end of the game is triggered when there are two empty stacks on the main board.  Complete the round so that all players have played the same number of turns.  At this point, players score points for their complete Project cards and for any Favours they have on the Favour board.  The player with the most points wins.

My thoughts on the game

The Architects of Amytis is a really simple game (at least  rule wise) that really puts you in a tight two player challenge.  Essentially, choose an available tile, place it in your area and then score it.  Extra points for making a full row, column or diagonal.  The whole thing takes only a few minutes to teach, though you may need to spend a bit of time going over the individual actions on each tile. 

You generally want to do a few things each turn, and you’ll have to choose a tile that helps you move towards your different goals.  You might just focus on the direct scoring of the tile.  Perhaps your board is already set up to really maximize the scoring criteria of the tile.  Alternatively, maybe you are working towards one of the Project cards, and they do give you a nice bonus score for completion.  You might also be trying to complete lines in order to get your tokens on the particular King’s Favor for a big end-game bonus score.

  I suppose that you could also try to play defensively by taking a tile that you know your opponent really needs; but that is a bit more than I think I want to do in this game.  I already have enough options amongst my own stuff, I don’t need/want to clutter my decision making process too much.

The games will play out differently each time based on the order in which the tiles are revealed.  Players who are best able to adapt tactically to the options available will do well.  The game plays a bit faster than the 30 minutes on the box, my games are closer to 20.  The turns can really get quite rapid fire once players are familiar with the game. Sure, there are some turns when you really need to weigh your options; but for the most part, turns can go pretty quickly as you see a good move and take it.

The Architects of Amytis is a fairly easygoing game where you work on your own puzzle – not quite in solitaire, but very close to it.  In that sense, it’s my sort of game where other players can’t mess with my stuff once I start working on it.  For a relaxing 2p game session, this would fit the bill.

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/43lhYUN 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale Y
• Neutral.
• Not for me…