Ancient

Game description from the publisher:

In the strategic game Sparta, set in 228 B.C., you will relive the fascinating experience of skillful Spartan and Achaean warriors. Will Sparta seize power, or will the Achaeans maintain their stance?

Designer Yannick Holtkamp developed this strategic game at the age of 12. Still at school at age 14 in late 2011, he is enrolled as a science student at the University of Düsseldorf.

User summary:

The game is played on a 10x10 grid. Each player starts with a row of eight fighters on their side of the board. In the middle rows of the board, there are eight cities - each player owns four of these.

Each turn, a player may move one of their fighters up to two squares in any direction, changing direction between the moves if so desired.

If the fighter ends its turn in one of his own cities, he is promoted to a hero, and may move up to three squares on future turns.

If the fighter ends its turn on an opposing city, the city is conquered; it now belongs to the player that conquered it.

If, after the move, there are pieces trapped in between two opposing pieces, they are captured and removed from the board. Pieces are trapped if they are between pieces of the other side along a horizontal, vertical or diagonal row without a vacant square in between.

The game ends if one of the following happens:

One player owns all cities. That player wins the game.
One player has only one piece left on the board. His opponent wins the game.
Both players have only one or two pieces left on the board. The player with the most cities wins the game.

It is the year 41 AD. The emperor Caligula has finally gone too far. An occasional political assassination you can understand, but his personal habits are too much to bear! It’s time that somebody step in and deal with the madman before it’s too late. And if you should happen to profit at the same time you rescue the Republic, well, who could complain about that?

Caligula puts you and your friends in the togas of the true powers in Imperial Rome: the guys holding the knives! Send your legates throughout the empire to further your own plans and seize valuable opportunities. Keep a wary eye on your rivals and make them pay dear for their gains. Marshal your resources with care, and when the moment is right, strike! Secure your favorite on the throne, and all the wealth and glory of Rome will be yours for the taking!

Caligula is the first game by Italian designer Pierluca Zizzi, and the sixth title from the up-and-coming young publisher Post Scriptum. ElfinWerks is pleased to be able to bring this exciting game of plots and politics to America. Do you have the savvy to navigate the treacherous politics of the Eternal City? Or will your rivals leave you banished from the halls of power? Take up your knives for the Republic (And for yourself!) in Caligula!

In an interesting departure from his normally computational-heavy game structure, Reiner Knizia put together this negotiation game. Players are represented on the board by a group of politicians moving through a network of committees, and need to seek support from their competitors to advance upward toward the Senate. Supporting an opponent gains you prestige, needed in quantity at the end of the game. Once all five Senate positions are filled, the game is over, and only players who have a politician in the Senate are eligible to win. Of those players, whoever has the most prestige wins.

Alexandros is an abstract strategy by Leo Colovini, thematically inspired by the military expansion of Alexander the Great. It includes the "triggered scoring for all" mechanism, which can be considered a trademark of the designer, implemented in many of his games. It forces players to evaluate their actions in relation to what other players can earn.

The goal of the game is to have more points than other players when the trail/border markers are depleted or someone scores 100 points first.

Gameplay is driven by cards, used for all actions. Clockwise, players are first obliged to move the figure representing Alexandros across a triangular grid. They do this by playing cards with symbols matching those on destination spots. This is the core concept of the game - when the figure of Alexandros is moved, it leaves a trail of borders behind it. Soon, these borders begin to form provinces composed of triangular spaces: either with symbols or empty.

After moving Alexandros, players either build their hand of cards by drawing them, take over provinces or trigger scorings if the situation on the board suits them.

Players can occupy provinces by playing cards from their hand and placing tokens representing their leaders on spaces with corresponding symbols. When a scoring is triggered, provinces earn points equal to the number of empty spaces in them. Players can take over empty provinces and/or those occupied by other players. Each player has only four generals and placing them costs valuable cards - the game requires careful hand management and point-to-point movement - to create worthy provinces for scoring.

Awarded title of "Best Family Strategy Game" by Games Magazine in 2005.

Ostia is an economic game of trading goods and donating them to the senate of Rome. You have to decide, whether you want to earn money for your goods or whether you want to donate some of them to the senate. The senate grants victory points for the most needed goods, but no money. Therefore you have to put some goods to the market, hoping that they are rarely sold there to earn enough money for the next trading phase.
The ranking of goods mostly needed changes each round and you can see the ranking for the next round. Accordingly you may decide to keep some of the goods for next round, when they are more valuable to the senate. But you can keep only one card of goods per storehouse and storehouses are expensive.