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Welcome to Which Game First where we boldly explore the hilariously huge world of board games. Did we unearth any hidden treasures you’ve been missing out on? Let’s find out!
First up this week: We grab some d6’s and ignore our better judgment in Don’t Go In There
Next up: We are long ago architects building ancient Greece one hex at a time in Akropolis
And lastly: We dodge rodents while digging for treasure in Piratz
Don’t Go In There
Designed by: Jeff Chin, Andrew Nerger
Published by: Road To Infamy Games (R2i Games) (2022)
Players: 2 – 5
Ages: 14 & up
Playing time: 25 – 35 minutes
Don’t Go In There is a worker placement and push your luck game, where you play as a meddling kid wandering too far into a creepy haunted house, and now you’ve accidentally awoken an evil presence in the house. Undo the curse to escape with your sanity or forever be haunted!
On your turn, choose a part of the haunted house to explore by placing a meeple in one of the 3 rooms. Each room has 5 placement spaces. The deeper you go into a room the more likely you are to get the cursed item you desire, but be careful! The further you go, the more ghosts will haunt you.
When 3 meeples have been placed into a room, the ghost dice are rolled. Depending on the result of the placement of the meeples players will gain ghost tokens. Next players will take cards from the room, depending on their meeple’s position.
At the end of the game. The player with the most ghost tokens is haunted! They will gain curses equal to the number of ghosts they have collected. Players will then add up the curses from their ghosts and their item cards.
The player with the fewest curses wins, and gets to say boldly and proudly, HA, I Went In there!
Akropolis
Designed by: Jules Messaud
Published by: Gigamic (2022)
Players: 1 – 4
Ages: 8 & up
Playing time: 20 – 30 minutes
Akropolis is a tile drafting game in which you are an architect in ancient Greece trying to construct the grandest of neighborhoods.
On your turn, you will draft a tile, and pay for it with stone – but the leftmost tile is always free. You are trying to place your tiles in a way to get the most points out of the various types of structures that are on the tiles. On the tiles are Housing, temples, markets, gardens and barracks, and each type of building scores differently. For example, orange colored areas are barracks, and they will only score if they lie on the edges of your city. Whereas purple tiles are housing, and they must be surrounded by other tiles on all sides to score.
Some tiles also have stars of matching colors. These are the all important multipliers for those specific scoring areas. And you can also build upwards, stack your tiles up to three in height for even more points. It requires more stone to build upwards, so don’t neglect your quarries.
Points totaled at the end of the game when the tiles run out, and the most points win, becoming the Grand Architect of Akropolis.
Piratz
Designed by: Oliver Igelhaut
Published by: Igel Spiele (2021)
Players: 2 – 4
Ages: 7 & up
Playing time: 15 – 30 minutes
Piratz is a press-your-luck card game in which you’re collecting treasure to outdo everyone else.
The deck consists of fifty treasure cards, with each card showing one or more items on it; these items can be any of the six types of treasure or a rat. Each player also receives a shovel card.
On your turn, either reveal the top card from the deck and place it face up on the table or you can pass on revealing a card. If you reveal a card that has a rat on it while another rat is already visible, you must take one of these rat cards and add it to your collection. If you pass on revealing a card, you must choose a type of treasure and collect all cards that have this treasure on it. So if you are taking coins, take all the cards with coins, even if there are other treasures on those cards with coins on them.
After taking one or more cards, place your shovel card on a face-up treasure card, then sit out until all players have placed their shovels, with the last player taking as many turns as desired as long as the rats stay away. You then each reclaim your shovel, while removing the covered cards from play. Continue taking turns until the deck is exhausted; if not all players have placed their shovels at this point, shuffle the removed cards and continue play until all shovels have been placed.
For each treasure type (rings, coins, etc.), players count how many of these items they have on their cards, with the player who has the most (and second most in a game with more than two players) claiming a scoring cube for this treasure type. Once all the cubes have been claimed, sum the value of your cubes to see who wins.