Attika - a game for 2 to 4 players, aged 10 and up which takes around an hour to play.
Components
22 Game Board Tiles each with 7 hexagonal tiles (1 central hexagon and 6 surrounding). Each Game Board Tile has a number of resources (between 2 and 4) printed on it.
4 Shrines.
15 Amphoras (awarded for completing a group of buildings).
4 Player Boards representing the ancient Greek city states of Athens (blue), Corinth (green), Sparta (yellow) and Thebes (red).
120 Building Tiles, 30 in each of the 4 colours (blue, green, yellow and red) and representing all of the Buildings shown on the Player Boards.
60 Landscape Cards (used to supplement the resources printed on the Game Board Tiles, they are Water, Forest, Hill and Mountain).
Set of illustrated rules.
Objective
The objective in Attika is to be the first player either to:
- Connect any 2 Shrines with your Buildings.
- Place all 30 of your Buildings on the Game Board (as built by the Game Board Tiles).
Setting Up
Shuffle the 22 Game Board Tiles and then stack them face down on the table. Select 4, 6 or 8 tiles depending on how many players (2, 3 and 4 respectively) are playing and then set them up as shown in the Illustrated Rules.
Place a Shrine on each corner as shown in the Illustrated Rules.
Each player then takes a Player Board and then the 30 Building Tiles of the same colour. Separate your tiles according to the colour of the symbol on the back.
- The 6 Black backed ones are your major buildings and are shuffled and stacked into 1 pile.
- The 24 White backed ones are other buildings, shuffle these and stack them in 3 piles of 8 each.
Each player now draws the top Building Tile from each of the 4 piles and places them on their Player Board.
Shuffle the Landscape Cards throughly and then deal 4 to the starting player, 5 to the 2nd player, 6 to the 3rd player and 7 to the 4th player (if there are 4 playing).
Place the Amphora to one side so that each player can reach them during the game.
You are now ready to play Attika
Game Play
On each players turn they can do one of the following actions:
- Draw 2 new buildings from one or more of the 4 Building Tile piles either placing the Building Tile on the Player Board or using it to Build on the exposed Game Board Tiles.
- Build up to 3 buildings from the Player Board onto the exposed Game Board Tiles.
- Any actions can be dropped in favour of drawing an additional Landscape Card but having drawn one the player may not go back to their previous actions but may continue to draw Landscape Cards, 1 for each action not taken.
Whichever action is chosen the player needs to consider the Building Cost, each Building Tile shows a cost to play, for example to play the Vineyard you need 1 x Water, 1 x Forest and 2 x Hills, these are a combination of resources shown on the exposed Game Board Tiles and Landscape Cards from hand.
Note that if you don't have the correct resource cards you can substitute 2 other cards for each one you don't have.
However, there are ways to reduce the Building Cost to zero and this is where one of the main gameplay considerations comes into play. In our previous example we paid to place the Vineyard Building Tile. Now, looking at our Player Game Board we can see that the Vineyard has an arrow from it to the Vintners. If the player is able to place the Vintner adjacent to their Vineyard then the Vintner costs no additional resources to play.
There is an additional benefit to linking the Vineyard and the Vintner, in this case the player completes a Group and for that they earn an Amphora. The Player Board shows the Groups quite clearly and careful placement (and a great deal of luck) could lead a player to gain 7 Amphora.
When a player places Building Tiles on the exposed Game Board Tiles they create Settlements. A new Settlement is created whenever a Building Tile is placed and is not adjacent to one of that players existing Building Tiles. The cost for doing this is 1 Landscape Card for each pre-existing Settlement, for example, if a player has 2 settlements then they pay 2 Landscape Cards to start the third.
A player can use an Amphora during any of their turns. Each Amphora used (can be more than one) enables the player to either Draw an additional Building Tile or to place an additional Building Tile from their Player Board.
The last thing to mention is expanding the playable Game Board. When a player is Drawing Building Tiles from one of the 4 stacks and when the last one from any of their stacks is drawn the player plays that Building Tile as normal but then drawns an additional Game Board Tile and places it adjacent to an existing spaced piece, see the illustration below which shows 2 different options.
The 1st Option shows how the Red player may choose to place the tile giving them an option to reach the Temple.
The 2nd Option shows how the Yellow player may choose to place the tile to make it more difficult for the Red Player to link to that Temple.
The Hooks
There is an interesting balance in using resources printed on the Game Board Tiles and playing Resource Cards from hand and whilst it's good to have Building Tiles on your Player Board they don't win the game for you whilst they are there.
The random element in drawing Building Tiles can play a part in which or how many Groups you complete thereby determining how many Amphora and therefore additional Actions you are able to collect.
There are obvious times at which you may need to block someone else to prevent them from winning which makes paying attention to your fellow gamers positions vital.
Your Tactics
The less you have to pay in terms of Landscape Cards to lay your Building Tiles the better, this means that you need to get your Groups active and it is often beneficial to the Main Buildings (those with a Black Symbol on the back) early on.
You are unlikely to complete your Capital with it's associated buildings as a group (a total of 10 Building Tiles) so playing these early to establish some territory or to claim one of the Temples can be beneficial.
Keep Landscape Cards and Building Tiles available to thwart another players plan to win the game, you may need to keep an Amphora handy for this purpose as well.
The simplest way to win is to lay a Game Board Tile and drop 2 more Buildings onto it in the same turn, however this requires 3 actions and so an Amphora is essential for this, as are Landscape Cards and a bit of luck.
Conclusion
This is a well presented, visually appealing game, I particularly liked the clear rulebook and the Turn Notes which are printed on each Player Board which summarise what each player may do.
The game plays very well with each player having plenty to think about and often leads to a request to play again straight away.
Given that the game takes an hour and is quick to setup it's a good way to either start or end an evenings gaming.
Additional Reviews
Details from Boardgamegeek
