Ancient Terrible Things

The doomed expedition was shrouded in whispered rumours, only a single explorer returned, carrying a battered journal of fanatic scribblings. Inside was filled with descriptions of a sinister chateau and a ghastly gorge, encounters with a deranged cult protecting an alien carcass and other ancient things that were too hard to describe. The Heiress was not finished reading the journal before she had already made the decision to consign it to the sanatorium furnace. No one else needed to know any more information about awakening these terrible things.

Supplies

Ancient Terrible Things was released by Pleasant Company games and they describe it as a pulp horror dice game. You’ll notice the box art outside and most of the content art inside all matches up, giving you the feeling of travelling down a dark jungle river in this pulp horror setting. Among the contents inside you’ll see the playing components almost set apart, being brighter and more colourful so they stand out so you can easily see what you’re using. These include various coloured dice that you’ll roll as you play the game, character tokens with stickers to apply their art to each face (making sure to note that the colour of the board doesn’t match the colour of the art background, I did my first stickers incorrect by accident) and also the encounter cards are different difficulty with each having a separate-coloured back to warn you how dangerous they are becoming. And don’t forget a punch board of tokens, with the dim terrible thing tokens being used for gameplay, while the brighter coloured tokens are the resources you hoard on the character mats during the game.

The Expedition

The rulebook comes with a full page spread for setting up, so everything is clear and easy what it does and where it goes. The game comes with a variety of different set up options, each player count will have a slightly different number of cards and tokens available to keep it balanced, and in these counts there will also be a number variation based on whether you’re looking for a short or long game, finally choose from two different scenarios to play which gives an easy or hard game experience. When you’re ready to go just start some dice rolling, all the rules are easily recapped from the player aid mats or on the cards themselves.

Riverboat Shuffle

The gameplay for Ancient Terrible Things follows the same pattern every round. There will be a different encounter at each of the 6 map locations, you choose one to challenge, gain location effects from where you have travelled to, see if you can overcome the encounter through courage and determination, and if not then attempt to beat it through the use of dice rolling, Yahtzee style. Every encounter card will display a pattern or combination that you’ll either need to match or beat in order to defeat the encounter. If that seems that you might struggle, and some of these can be slightly tricky, you also have some fate cards that can change the course of your exploring by giving you options to mitigate dice rolls or other beneficial effects, providing you can cover their costs, and even if you fail you can still exchange your dice for more resources, so a turn is never wasted. The different scenarios available determine what resources you can obtain by the combinations of dice you may trade in. Once you’re done attempting to overcome the encounter, either you succeed and return to the riverboat, taking back some Ancient Secrets with you (the scoring criteria for the endgame), or you’ll fail and watch the points disappear to the rumours pile while you are just left holding a Terrible Thing token, negative points for the end of the game. Finally, once back to the boat you’ll embark on a touch of shopping, spend any gold tokens picked up during your exploring in order to acquire yourself some awesome swag. Repeat this each round until the jungle has been emptied of encounters or too many terrible things have been awakened, then just have the biggest collection of ancient secrets to win and leave with the battered journal.

Lone Survivor

One thing that comes up in the game is a variable turn order – whoever owns the map starts each round. One of the locations lets you take the map, but otherwise it just remains in place. What this means is that a player can, through no fault of their own, always be positioned to be last in the round, or only have the worst options available to them. Whilst it isn’t exactly a game killer it can be detrimental to a player’s ability to choose the best way to acquire end game points, and couple this with the game involving dice rolling, means some times players could be very unlucky, especially if they cannot obtain any sort of mitigation. However, as mentioned before, dice not used for beating encounters can be exchanged for resources later on, meaning no matter how terrible your rolling is the turn will never be wasted, and this should help you build up for future turns. The game has come with a few expansions, such as The Lost Charter, which have introduced new ways to mitigate any bad rolls or terrible turn position, as well as making the start of the game less punishing for unlucky players. The game is also based off the Dice Quest system which features in future titles from the publisher such as Konja, meaning that the mechanics are a living system and there is a ‘version 1.5’ rulebook available online, this offers a few improvements to the gameplay that have been developed over the years and through multiple games.

Unspeakable Event

Ancient Terrible Things is pretty fun to play and it has some nice options for varying up play when you come back to it, but it can seem a little bit repetitive at times, which, when coupled up with the issues of dice rolling luck and the turn order, can mean that on its own I wouldn’t consider the game a Must Play. It is 10 years old and just the base game this shows through. However, once you start mixing in the improvements, the game does start to improve and offer more reasons to come back to play it. The lower score than expected is just for the game as it is currently. There is also a reprint planned which would take Ancient Terrible Things up to the 2nd edition standards, which addresses many of the issues mentioned already, and for lucky owners of the base game an upgrade pack will be made available so they won’t have to buy a completely new copy of the game.

The Doomed Expedition

Are you ready to take on the role of an intrepid adventurer, exploring a dark jungle river in order to discover its ancient secrets? If so then hop on the riverboat as its time to depart!
In Ancient Terrible Things you will compete against the other adventurers to overcome the most Ominous Encounters in order to acquire the largest amount of secrets. But be warned that failure will result in releasing many terrible things, counting as a negative score at the end. Only the adventurer with the most discovered secrets will return back to civilization, carrying their battered journal with the only details of the expedition and the uncovered mysteries.

Picking Up Provisions

To set up Ancient Terrible Things you first need to set up the Ominous Encounter deck. Separate the deck into the three different colour backs, then take cards from each deck based on the number of players, 4p – 12 from each, 3p – 8 from each, 2p – 6 from each.

Place the stack with the red cards on the bottom, orange cards in the middle and the green cards on the top to create the deck.

The Swag and Feat decks are placed on their respective spaces, 3 Swag cards are flipped face up on the marked spaces on the Trading Post and the top Feat card is placed faceup in the discard. All the Achievement Cards are laid out by the board waiting to be earned by the players.

The Expedition Track will be set up with a number of randomly chosen Ancient Terrible Things Tokens based on the number of players:
4p – 13 tokens, 3p – 10 tokens, 2p – 7 tokens.

Arrange these in descending order from the top of the track by the number of tentacles depicted, between 0-3.

Finally, decide who will choose their Ancient Terrible Things character first via dice roll, then all players pick their adventurer in order, taking the matching character mat and pawn, 3 Feat Cards, one of each resource (Courage, Feat, Focus and Treasure) plus any additional starting resources listed. Every player gets a scenario card placed on the same side, Scenario I for an easy game and Scenario II for a more difficult game. Place all player’s pawns onto the Riverboat and the player with the Map will be the starting player, this will be the Captain if he is in play, otherwise the last player to pick a character takes the Map.

Setting Sail

Ancient Terrible Things is played over a varying number of rounds, each round all players will take a turn starting with the player holding the Map, and each player completes their turn in full before play passes to the next. A turn consists of 7 phases:

1. Riverboat
2. Explore
3. Desperation
4. Encounter
5. Terrible Thing
6. Trading
7. Refresh

Riverboat Phase – This phase is skipped if there are any Encounter cards on any of the Locations.

Deal Encounter Cards face-up into each location, from the lowest to highest numbers. For each card take resources from the supply matching the types shown and place them on the location too.
If there are no cards in the Encounter Deck at the beginning of this phase then instead proceed immediately to the end of the game.

Explore Phase – Move your pawn to any location containing an Encounter card, called an Active Location. Take any resources from the location, then you may optionally take the special action of the location:

• Accursed Shrine – Gain either a Feat or Focus token.
• Ghastly Gorge – Discard any number of Feat cards and draw that many from the deck.
• Sinister Chasm – Exchange a resource token of any type from your stash with a token of a different type in another player’s stash. Terrible Thing tokens cannot be exchanged.
• Yawning Chasm – Perform a Desperate Act against any Encounter card in a different location (see Desperation Phase for more details). You may still perform a Desperate Act against the
• Encounter in the current location during the Desperation Phase.
• Rusted Gunsloop – Gain either a Courage or Treasure token.
• Crumbling Ruin – Take control of the Map.
• Desperation Phase – You may immediately perform a Desperate Act to overcome the Encounter card, by spending an amount of Courage tokens equal to the Ancient Secrets value of the Encounter and then placing it directly into your score pile.

Encounter Phase – Roll dice and use the results to gather resources and/or overcome the Encounter (if it is still in play). Take the five green Focus dice for your base pool, and then add or modify the dice pool depending on any Swag or Feat cards in play. Roll your final dice pool, then take up to two re-rolls, each time either re-roll all your dice for free, or spend Focus tokens to only re-roll selected Focus dice, spending one token per dice rolled. Other colour dice behave differently – Red Panic dice are unable to be re-rolled, yellow Luck dice can be re-rolled without spending any tokens and blue Feat dice cannot be re-rolled but can have their value increased by one for every Feat token spent before the re-roll.

Before and after each re-roll you have the option to perform any feats by playing a Feat card from your hand and spending the cost in Feat tokens, or use any equipment that your own by Exhausting the card or paying the cost required, as listed on the Swag card.

Once finished with the rolling its time to spend the dice, you may spend any dice required to match a combination on the Encounter card, either single high number, 2-5 matching numbers or runs of 3-5 numbers, with each card showing the minimum value required on the dice to be used in that combination. Remove the dice used and add the Encounter card to your score pile. Then you may use the dice in the same way to spend against combinations on the Scenario card, exchanging the dice for resources and gaining one token for each die used in the combination. Any unspent dice at the end of the phase are lost.

Terrible Thing Phase – If the Encounter card still remains in the location then a terrible thing is unleashed. Move the Encounter card to the Rumours space on the board then take a Terrible Thing token from the Expedition Track for you stash, always take the lowest remaining Terrible Thing token. If the last token is removed from the track then proceed directly to the end game.

Trading Post Phase – Move your pawn to the Trading Post. You may now purchase any face-up Swag cards by spending the cost in Treasure tokens. Once you are finished, if you have purchased any Swag cards then slide all the remaining to the left to fill in any gaps as required, and draw new cards from the deck to the rightmost empty slots until the Trading Post is full. If no Swag cards have been purchased then take the leftmost face-up card and place it at the bottom of the Swag Deck, then refill the trading post as above.

Refresh Phase – Draw back up to three Feat cards if you have less, then Refresh any Exhausted Swag cards.

Once all players are on the Trading Post the round ends. If the Encounter Deck is empty then proceed to the end game, otherwise slide all pawns to the Riverboat and being the next round, starting with the player holding the Map.

Achievement Cards – Each achievement card lists a condition required to be met by the players to obtain the card. The first player to meet the condition will take the card. Anyone else can steal the achievement card by outperforming the owner, in which case they will take the card from them, only one player can own each achievement card, but a player may own multiple achievement cards.

Unspeakable Event

Once you have proceeded to the end game its time to work out who the winning character is, with all the remainder never being heard from again.
Each player calculates their total score of Ancient Secrets, shown by the numbers in a purple circle on any cards or tokens they own, including:

• Overcome Encounter cards
• Swag cards
• Achievement cards
• The Map

Then they take a penalty for any Ancient Terrible Things tokens they own, each token is worth between 0 and -3 points determined by the number of tentacles depicted on the token.

Finally the player with the highest score takes the Battered Journal token. Any ties are broken by the player with the lowest number of Terrible Things tokens, then by the most held Courage tokens.

The player with the Battered Journal token is declared the winner and becomes the Lone Survivor!