As an ancient builder, you hold knowledge from millenniums
of civilization, and your mission is to protect it by helping with its
preservation. Ancient Knowledge is a unique strategy game in which players use builder cards to construct
a game engine that evolves through several rounds. Builder cards contain
monuments that hold knowledge, which age each round until they become part of
the past. If you can stop the knowledge of these monuments from being lost before
they join the past, you can also prevent the loss of victory points.
Game Play in Brief:
Each player has a builder board, and as they obtain builder
cards, they place them at the top of the board, which is the timeline zone with
slots numbered 1-6. Each card indicates which zone it starts in and how many
knowledge tokens to place on it when played. The cards also show one of five
types of activations. They are: 1) immediate, 2) continuous, 3) during the
timeline phase, 4) when the card declines and moves into the past, and 5) final
scoring.
A player’s turn
consists of three phases:
Action Phase: Players choose two of the five available actions:
- Create: place a builder card, which is either a monument on your timeline or an artifact card on the board that provides game benefits.
- Learn: Place a technology card to the right of your player board in one of three areas matching its symbol. There are three types of technology cards, and they are either level I or II cards. Level I cards provide help and resources while level II cards provide end-game points.
- Archive: This action lets players discard builder cards from their hands in exchange for discarding knowledge tokens from builder cards in their timeline.
- Excavate: Rotate builder cards that are now in your past to gain two new cards from the deck for each.
- Search: Draw one card from the deck.
Timeline Phase: Builder card effects for this phase activate and benefits are collected.
Decline Phase: For builder cards in slot 1 in a player’s timeline, any effects for this phase trigger. After this, all cards move one slot to the right with the cards in slot 1 moved to the zone of the past to the left of the player board. Any knowledge tokens that remain move to the lost knowledge zone on the board and will lose victory point for each at the end of the game.
Game End Trigger: Once any player has 14 cards in their zone of the past, everyone who has not had a turn that round completes one more turn and the game ends with scoring. The sources of points are:
- Game-end points on builder cards in each player’s past
- Game-end effects on builder cards
- Builder cards remaining on the timeline score one point each
- Technology Card end-game points
- Subtract points for each knowledge token in the lost knowledge zone
The person with the most points becomes the master builder
and wins the game!
This game was released in 2023 and many game players count it as a favorite for the year. I find this game to be unique and relatively quick to play. Ancient Knowledge accommodates 2-4 players, and I have enjoyed its play at all player counts. The game time runs around 30 minutes per player. ~Marsha