Akropolis: Pantheon

• Designer: Jules Messaud
• Publisher: Gigamic
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 8+
• Time: 45 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4u8kNmg
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

The time for rivalries is over! At the height of their glory, the once-opposing Cities now join forces to build a grand Capital together and honor the gods. Erect splendid Divine Altars dedicated to the protectors of the Capital, and let its aura shine throughout the ancient world. Managing Stones, coordinating placements, and anticipating Challenges are essential to achieving collective victory. 

Akropolis Pantheon is a cooperative expansion for the game Akropolis. The base game is required to play. The Architects’ goal is to work together to construct the Capital and achieve the highest possible score by using the best strategy. You must therefore join forces and play cooperatively.

Setup

Together, players choose one of the three available scenarios: Corinth, Sparta, or Athens, each offering an increasing level of difficulty. Take the appropriate tile matching the chosen scenario and place it on the table for all to reference. Each player receives a starting tile which serves at the start of their City, while the remaining tiles form the heart of the Capital, placed in the center of the play area. 

Three Architectural Challenge tiles are revealed, along with their corresponding Divine Altars. Players also receive two Stone cubes and three City tiles, which they keep in hand like cards.  You can describe your tiles but cannot show them to your teammates.   Unlike the base game, there is no tile display.

Turn Structure

On their turn, each player may:

1] Add a tile to their City..  Placement rules are the same as the base game, and you do gain stone for each Quarry that you cover.  After placing your tile, check to see if your own City meets the criteria in order to complete an Architectural Challenge. If so, each completed Challenge allows you to place a Divine Altar in the Capital on a plaza that matches the color of the Challenge.  In this expansion, Plazas function differently: for a Plaza to be scored at the end of the game, an Altar must have been placed there.  

A completed Challenge is immediately discarded and a new one is revealed.  At the start of the game, the display of Challenges maxes out at 3.  At any point in the game, a player can unlock an additional display slot by spending 5 Stones.  There is no max to the number of display spaces.  Further, at any point, a player can spend a stone to discard a Challenge tile and replace it from the top of the deck.  The discarded Challenge is out of the game forever.

2] Contribute to the construction of the Capital by placing their tile in the center of the play area, allowing points to be scored at the end of the game.  In order to place a tile in the Capital, you must pay a price of 1 stone.  In general, the basic scoring criteria remain the same from the base game.  Additionally, it is possible to gain stones if you cover quarries in the Capital.

All stone costs are generally paid out of the active player’s personal supply.  Other players can contribute, but they must discard one stone for each stone they give to the active player. 

At the end of the turn, draw a tile to always have three in hand.

End of the Game

The game ends when all City tiles have been played. Only the Plazas in the Capital adorned with a Divine Altar are scored – additionally, the scenario rules may add further restriction on valid Plazas.  Personal Cities do not grant any points – they are merely a tool used to place Altars on the central Capital and to gain stones. The final score is compared to the chosen Scenario’s target score.

My thoughts on the game

Wow. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I heard that there was going to be a cooperative expansion for Akropollis, but as I love the original game, I was super excited to get a copy and try it out.  Akropolis is one of my “gamer gateway” games… a game that is maybe a bit too much for non-gamers, but one I’m always ready to show those already starting in the hobby.

Here, players work in their own area to build a village to gain them stone and to complete the objective cards.  You need to complete objectives in order to gain altars; these are placed on the Capital area in order to activate scoring.  Of course, the central Capital area has to already have a corresponding scoring plaza played down to accept the altar.  This leads to all sorts of planning and conversation as the players have to optimize their timing to make this all happen.

It’s important to note how many of each color altar is in the game.  You’ll want to make sure that you don’t use too many of the altars in the player cities as you’ll need them in the central Capital.  

Players will likely have to alternate between playing in their own area versus the Capital – in part because you need to use a Stone each time you play in the center, and it’s much easier to set up plays to generate Stone on your own town.  Don’t forget the rule that players can contribute to your stone cost by discarding an extra stone to the supply.  It is surely too expensive to do this on the regular, but sometimes the cost is worth it to keep the timing of the group’s plan on course.

This version uses most of the rules of the base game, so if you’ve played Akropolis, you’ll have the bulk of it already in your head.  The rules to this expansion are a bit brief for me.  Sure, you need to have the base game to play this expansion, and you will therefore have a copy of the base rules to refer to… But, it would have been nice to have some illustrations/examples of this new cooperative version in the rulebook.  It would have also been nice to have explicit clarification on whether you could use this with the Athena expansion or advanced scoring rules.  The rules are also a bit vague on whether you can complete a challenge which you cannot place the altar.  Can you do it and then burn the altar? Or must you spend a stone to remove it from the game?

We pretty much had to house rule on everything as there is not much info available online, and historically speaking, the designers have not offered much assistance at all for either the base game or Akropolis:Athena.   As it stands, the game is honestly quite difficult, so we’ve actually ruled on the lenient side in all cases because otherwise we don’t see any way we’d be able to score the points required by the most difficult levels.  So, we are playing that any time on your turn, you can claim an objective, so long as you meet the criteria. 

Despite the rules questions, this version of Akropolis is really great, and we have been having a great time with it.  As I mentioned earlier, the game is quite difficult, and even with favorable house rulings in all cases, I have yet to be in a game that has won with a grand victory.  I am definitely not going to give up on competitive Akropolis, as again it is one of my favorite intro games – but this new cooperative expansion breathes new life into the game, and it also now allows this franchise to be an entry point to both the cooperative as well as competitive gamer.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

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

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