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Greece, the country with some of the richest ancient history in Europe in my humble opinion, from mythology to ancient civilisations and tumultuous battles for control, there are rich pickings for a board game theme based in Greece!
Corinth - Hannah Blacknell
Corinth is in my opinion a very underrated roll and write game. Inside the box are simply a rules leaflet, pad of papers and some white and yellow dice. However, what you can do with those simple components is have a whole bunch of fun.
At the start of a round, the active player will roll nine white dice, and perhaps some extra gold ones if they have bought them, and place all the highest value dice on the top gold space. They will then collect the lowest numbered dice, usually 1’s onto the bottom row for goats and then fill each row bottom up with the next lowest dice. As the active player you get first pick and then the other players get to pick from the rest (but they cannot benefit from your tasty gold dice).
There are a few different regions within the pad, you can collect goats and coins to manipulate your dice later or you can build buildings with them that will give you one time end game scoring or special abilities for the rest of the game. You are collecting orange, purple, blue and green goods, trying to race to complete your rows for points but also be the first to do so for a sweet bonus.
There is nothing particularly wild about this roll and write and I wonder if that is why it has flown under the radar quote so much, but it's a fun one to crack out every so often.
Santorini - Luke Pickles
Ah Greece. Two things immediately come to mind when I think of this country – islands and their rich mythology. And my pick for the game that exemplifies these two elements of Greece is Santorini. Based on the real island which I’m sure you’ve seen a picture of, (white buildings, blue domes, you know the one,) Santorini is an abstract strategy game for two to four players. In this game, you build like mortals to rule like gods. Each turn, players will move one of their workers around the board and then build something. This can be a tower piece or potentially a cap onto the top of the building. The overall goal is for you to get one of your workers to the third stage of a building before your opponent does. Seems pretty straightforward, right?
Well, that’s not all there is to it. You see, each player has their own unique power, granted to them by their god. You can be Hermes, allowing you to move further, or the satyr god Pan who has an alternative win condition if you jump down from the second level. The way that these god cards can interact with each other can swing the game wildly from one extreme to the other, if you play them well. The game itself has a wonderful production, with all the tactile pieces as you build your towers and move around the board. I’m not a huge fan of the Golden Fleece expansion, personally, but the recently Kickstarted co-op expansion has got my attention.
This game really brings you into the heart of Greece, upon one of the most beautiful islands, surrounded by the Aegean sea and the mystery and might of the gods. Delightful.
Akropolis - Favourite Foe
Sometimes a game comes along and it sings all the right notes. It’s simple to learn, small on the shelf, and it’s an absolute beast to master. Akropolis is one of those games.
It’s a placement optimisation, tile laying game where players earn points for building a city in ancient Greece. Each tile is a tri-hex shaped piece that contains a mixture of quarries, plazas, houses, temples, markets gardens and military barracks. Markets score if not competing with other adjacent markets. Barracks need to be on the outskirts of your city to score. Houses are worth points if they are connected together. You get the idea. Every new tile you draft and place must touch at least one side of an existing tile in your city. And whilst quarries don’t score anything, covering them with other tiles will earn you stones that you can spend to buy better tiles on your turn.
And I say cover because, whilst you can build out, you want to be focusing on building up. Not only will you generate income, but you’ll gain more points. You see, scoring in this game
is crunchier than sand in your sandals. Like NMBR9, every level you go up increases the number of points that each terrain tile is worth at end game. But you need at least one plaza of each district type you want to score to be visible in your city at end game. Plus, if you add in the advanced placement modules then the point potential goes up again!
Akropolis is full of delectable decision dilemmas. Do you spend stones to buy better tiles? Do you keep storing stones for end game points? Do you focus on a strong base or do you cover existing point scoring tiles with different ones?
We love Akropolis. Although it’s abstract, the scoring for each district type makes sense. As such, we do feel like we are building our own ancient Greek metropolises
Horrified: Greek Monsters - Rachael Duchovny
Do you have what it takes to defeat the legends of Greek mythology? If you think you have more power than Hercules or that you could show Jason’s argonauts a thing or two about battle then this is the game for you. Horrified is a 1 to 5 player co-operative game from Ravensburger with Greek Monsters being the third version of this popular game. Just as Jason did, will you survive the Siren or like Hercules can you defeat Cerberus?
Whilst you don’t have Theseus, Perseus or Bellerophon to play, which would have been a nice touch if I do say so myself, you have a range of heroes to choose from including an actor, shepherd and ranger. But… Choose wisely because each hero comes with their own special ability. The Musician may place themselves in the space with a legend whilst with the power wielded by a hoplite they may place themselves in a lair.
The aim of Horrified is to take on and defeat monsters. Depending on the difficulty you set for yourself or your team you normally choose between 2 to 4 monsters which each have their own
objectives to be defeated. Can you put all the Chimera’s heads to sleep? Will you be able to assemble the Minotaur’s maze? Unique challenges for each monster make each game you play
uniquely different as you can mix up heroes and monsters alike. Winning is simple… just defeat all the monsters! Easy right? Erm…
Let’s not forget our legends! Monster cards reveal legends that you must return to their safe location to avoid monsters murdering them and raising the terror meter; not to mention saving a
legend will gain you useful perks. If your hero loses a battle the terror meter also raises by 1. If your terror meter ever reaches the skull then it’s game over, prepare to meet Moros because, well, you’re losers. Whilst monster cards will generally cause you more harm than good there are a few that have some advantages and since they are typically the most common way to place valuable item tokens required to defeat monsters onto the board you sort of need to take the bad with the good. Run out of monster cards however and, well, you lose!
Will you be victorious? Play Horrified to find out if you have the stuff of the Greek legends!
