- Designer: George Halkias, Konstantinos Karagiannis
- Publisher: Capstone, DLP
- Players: 1-4
- Age: 14+
- Time: 90 minutes
- Played with a copy I purchased myself
Welcome to the legendary island world of Atlantis. You’ve arrived just before it is about to disappear forever, and it is up to you and the other kings to save as many citizens as possible.
Your goal is to accumulate as many points as possible by rescuing citizens, preserving knowledge and building settlements for your displaced citizens.
You start by putting the rondel that represents Atlantis in the middle of the table and then assembling the main board around the island. The rondel is filled in with workshops, ships, agoras, and citizens as indicated on the rondel. The rest are put off to the side of the board face-down as a draw pile. Three residences are turned face up. All of the remaining citizens go into the draw bag.
Two pillars of remembrance cards are revealed for each level of the pillar (top, middle and bottom) and placed in the appropriate space next to the board.
Knowledge cards are revealed based on the number of players and laid face up in the appropriate slots. The Influence cards are shuffled and placed nearby.
Monuments are placed face-up in the appropriate spots on the Apotheosis track.
Books, coins, and influence tokens are all placed near the main board.
Each player takes an identical player board, a coin and one book in each color. Each player has a high priest, which they place on the starting spot of the Apotheosis track, and a king that will be used as their action marker. Players also have an action token that goes on the action order track.
To start the game, player order is determined by the youngest player deciding whether they want to go first, gaining no bonus, or to go later, gaining the bonus pictured on the space they choose. For all future rounds the selection will go in reverse order, with the player going last choosing first.
On your turn you place your king on an empty space on the innermost section of the rondel and collect the bonus shown on the space. This could be a building, it could be a ship, it could be citizens or it could be books, cards or other benefits. Buildings are placed on your board in the requisite spots; ships go in the ship area, workshops can go on any space except those designated for agoras, and agoras go on their specific spaces (one per row). You gain an immediate bonus for the place where you put it. Citizens go above your board next to the relevant color.
After all kings have been placed each player gets 2 actions. You can:
- Advance a step along the Apotheosis track.
Moving on this track gives you bonuses as you move along; any time you land on or cross a depicted bonus you receive it. As you progress further along you have the chance to take a monument, which will reward you with end-game victory points for having buildings of a certain color or in a certain pattern. Monuments are placed on your player board (more on that later).
You can spend the resources depicted to train your settlers in a particular profession or upgrade them to a higher-level profession. Take a settler from the space above your board, pay the costs, and place them on the profession.
You can do lots of things with your settlers. One option is to send them to a ship that you have already built on your board; that citizen becomes a permanent citizen in that color for you, which will be important later, put them on the ship and take the printed bonus.
Another option is to send them to a workshop that you already have on your board. Sometimes workshops want settlers of a particular color, sometimes they want one that is already trained up. These settlers still get a bonus when you place them. but trained settlers give you a better bonus.
Maybe you don’t have the resources to train anyone, and you don’t have any empty ship spaces either. No worries – you can build your settlers a residence. Take a residence from the three on display and put it on a space on your board of your choosing, gaining an immediate bonus, and place the settler there. You get the generic printed bonus. Maybe it doesn’t seem that exciting, but untrained settlers left over at the end of the game are going to be negative points, so you don’t want too many of them around.
All knowledge cards required specific trained settlers to complete them. If you have the correctly- trained settlers you can take a knowledge card from the display and place it in front of you; you will earn end-game points for the conditions on the card.
If you have an influence card, typically gained from the Apotheosis track but available in a few other spots as well, you can play it as an action. An influence card will give you a one-time benefit.
You gain PIllar of Remembrance cards through spaces on the rondel, through training a stonemason or through influence cards. Pillars are built from the base up, and each pillar gives you an effect you can carry out once in the action phase. Bases are active right away; body and cap cards require a trained worker but give you significant benefits.
Throughout the game you can also gain favor tiles; favor tiles can be spent on your turn to gain an additional action. You are limited to how many you can have based on how many buildings you have built, but you can use as many as you’d like on your turn.
After everyone has taken their turn you repeat, moving your king to a spot on the center rondel. You are limited to choosing a space you can reach from your current spot, indicated by the pillars. Take the bonuses, and then take your actions. After everyone has done that, you move to a spot available to you on the outer rondel.
After everyone has taken their actions on the outer rondel, the round ends. Everyone removes their kings from the game board, the year token is advanced and the catastrophe tile is flipped face up. The inner and middle levels of the city rondel are rotated 90° to 360° clockwise, depending on what the catastrophe tile says. All ships, workshops and agoras are removed and replaced with new tiles, and any empty settler spots are filled in. New pillar of remembrance cards are placed on top of the piles that are already there and new knowledge cards are added.
If it was the end of the 2nd, 4th or 5th year a settlement scoring will happen. You score victory points for having more settlers in each of the colors than other players. Each row of buildings counts for one scoring (so row 1 is used after year 2); you add up settlers on buildings in this row as well as any settlers on ships.
Player order is then determined, with the player who went last deciding what bonus they would like and thus what their spot in the turn order will be.
After 5 years, the game ends. A final settlement scoring is completed, and then final scoring begins. You get negative points for any untrained settlers still in the area above your board. You get positive points for completed rows and columns of buildings, monuments, knowledge cards, and unused influence cards. The player with the most points wins. Ties are broken by the number of settlers you saved; if there is still a tie you rejoice in your shared victory.
MY THOUGHTS ON THE GAME
I like the game. It has a lot of choices without being overly complex, it has different paths to victory and it has some interesting mechanics. I was willing to take a flyer on it both because I thought the theme sounded interesting and because Capstone has been putting out some really great games over the last few years.
The components are well-made and attractive. The rondel turns just easily enough to make it work without moving any time someone brushes the board. The rules are clear and easy to follow. My only quibble with the components is that the brown and purple settlers can be hard to distinguish if you are not playing under a bright light. I am not at all color blind, but I still had a hard time. I wish they had made one of those a more distinct color; I am going to “fix” my copy by marking one of those colors with a paint pen.
I am not sure I really feel that I am saving an ancient civilization, but I don’t feel like I am not, either. The actions make sense with the theme, and the art integrates well.
It is relatively easy to explain. While there are many, many things happening, they make sense and you can see the logic in why something is the way it is. Since all of the actions are public knowledge and since you can see the spaces any one player can move to it is easy to review the rules as someone is taking an action.
The game has a mix of mechanics. You have to worry about resource management while simultaneously building, training settlers and developing technology. Sometimes you have to take something with a short-term gain, but you can’t lose sight of your long-term plan, either. You have to make some difficult choices. You also have to be flexible, because another player might go to the space you wanted to go to, or they might take the knowledge card or monument you wanted, so having some flexibility to adapt is important. The game board is also constantly changing; two levels of the rondel rotate at least one rotation every turn, so every round the pathway of choices will be slightly different. There are also knowledge cards that might move the rondel in the middle of a round. You have to pay attention to what the other players are doing to ensure you’ll be able to take the actions you want at the right time, keeping everyone engaged on everyone’s turn.
The game moves along at a reasonable pace and comes in at 90 minutes or less. Since you have to be paying attention to what the other players are doing you always have something to think about anyway.
The game has good replayability. There is definitely not a clear path to victory. You can focus on different paths and still do well. You are rewarded for building a good engine, but how you built that engine is going to vary game to game. It is definitely a fun challenge to adapt your strategy to what is available to you.
The game works well for 2, 3 or 4 players; there are modifications in place for both 2 and 4 players to ensure it works well. There is a solo mode that I have been told is good, but I have not tried it myself.
THOUGHTS OF OTHER OPINIONATED GAMERS
Lorna: I like the rondels and the limited actions in this game make it a challenge. I was disappointed that the game lacked tension related to the theme. I didn’t feel there was a tie in to the sinking of Atlantis. Atlantis Rising did a much better job in that regard.
Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers
- I love it!
- I like it. Tery, Lorna (somewhere between Like it and Neutral), Mark N.
- Neutral.
- Not for me…
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