Board Games Top 10: Featuring The Ancient World

Burgeoning cities appear on the shores, aided by the surrounding tribes. But dangers loom beyond the mountains as the Titans of old must be destroyed before humanity can reign.

The Weekly Board Games Top 10

“The Hotness” on BoardGameGeek is a list of the currently most popular games, as based on views. This week brings us these winners:

This is the longest record we’ve seen since starting this Board Games Top 10 series. Root has been in the #1 spot for three weeks running! And, frankly, I’m not surprised, because it’s great. Gloomhaven has finally had enough and pushed itself back up into the Top 3, where it had been for a LONG time before Gen Con and other hype pushed it out of the way for a while. Everdell is also holding strong at #4 and Brass and Spirit Island still holding the backline. But today, since it’s been #3 for two weeks now, today we’ll be looking at The Ancient World (2nd Edition).

The Ancient World

The Ancient World is a competitive worker placement game with set-collecting and resource management mechanics.

Players are each trying to build up their own city and compete for favor of the surrounding tribes to gain their aid. The main issue for which the players will need aid is dealing with the attacking Titans. Players can use one of the worker placement actions to challenge a Titan and in doing so will send their military units against the Titan, using a simple combat score comparison.

Combat with a Titan allows the Titan to fight back, however, which can result in damage to your city, which will require repairs. Defeating the Titan earns favor with the surrounding Tribes, marked by the colored banners on the Titan cards. Gaining favor with each tribe is key to scoring the most victory points at the end of the game. The more banners each player has with each Tribe, the more points they will gain. Getting six banners with 1 tribe is much better than getting 2 banners with 3 tribes.

Players will also be able to construct Empire card to improve their city, which in addition to specific bonuses, might also grant additional worker placement options and Tribal favor.

If you’ve played The Ancient World before, the Second Edition comes with a lot of gameplay and UI improvements, with new and expanded cards and unique player faction abilities. The update is currently on Kickstarter. The campaign has reached its initial goal and is barrelling through the stretch goals as well.

The designer and artist of this game, Ryan Laukat, has also designed Above and Below and Empires of the Void II among many others.

From Red Raven Games

The Ancient World (Second Edition) – $50 on Kickstarter – Campaign Ends September 7

In an ancient world forgotten by time, enormous titans terrorize the land. Five tribes have been fleeing from the titans for centuries, but things are about to change. Growing city-states pledge to end the reign of terror, determined to take on the titans and make the world a safer place for all. Each city-state competes to attract the tribes, eager for the strength of the combined peoples, with the hope that the titans can be defeated once and for all.

In The Ancient World, players compete to grow the largest and most influential city-state by managing citizens, treasury, and military and by defeating titans. Players take turns sending citizens to take special actions or using military cards to attack titans. One of the actions a citizen can perform is to build Empire cards, which give more citizens, money, and abilities. A city-state’s influence in the world is measured by sets of tribe banners that it owns. Each Empire card has one or more tribe banners, and tribe banners can also be gained by defeating titans. Players gain victory points (VPs) for sets of tribe banners. After six rounds, the player with the most VPs from sets of tribe banners wins.

Author: Matt Sall

Matt has loved games of all kinds his whole life: board, video, war, roleplaying, and card. He's worked as a writer for BoLS since 2017.