New Boardgame: Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East

    Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East by GMT games covers the same period as AH's Civilization

One of my presents to myself (used with Christmas money) was a new, multiplayer boardgame. Many years ago, we enjoyed extremely long-playing games such as Britannia, History of the World, and Civilization. No longer being able to play all night long, we slowly switched to more Euro style games. Some may still take a few hours to complete, but all in all, with streamlined mechanics they tend to play much faster than the old dinosaurs I remember fondly.

I saw Ancient Civilizations of the Middle East by GMT Games at the local game store and was intrigued. I read several reviews online and checked its Boardgamegeek rating (7.6 out of 10). I decided to pick it up and read through the rules. Streamlined yes, but there are a lot of steps and rules. Would it play well? Would it be the 21st century version of Civilization (considering it dealt with the same time period)? I convinced the Sunday evening gang to give it a try. On the day of the game, I re-read the rules, set out the board with initial placements for six civilizations and even dealt them their hand of Fate cards.

    My fellow "Ancient" players gathered around the board game table figuring out how to play

It took about a half hour or so to run through all the rules, and the guys were patient and asked clarification questions. So, we got started actually taking the first turn around 6:30pm. We had very few rules questions, actually, for a first play-through. We quickly found out that the Fate cards are nasty! A civilization can be gutted and lose half of its circular disks representing population on one card. One of the cruelest of the night was when I played the Biblical flood of "40 Days and 40 Nights" on my friend Allen controlling Assyria. I was stunned how badly it affected him. Of course, I got my comeuppance when his brother Joel hit me with a sea version of my river flood and then Keith hit me with a different river flood. 

Everyone enjoyed it, though. We resolved to play it again, but perhaps when we have more time allotted than a standard Sunday evening gaming time (3-4 hours). I like that the game has an irregular mechanism for how many turns an "Epoch" will last. Our first epoch ran long, and I timed it right to have a couple victory point lead at the end of it. We did the transition to Epoch 2, ran through most of our first turn of it, and then decided to call it at 10pm. Definitely an interesting game, and one that will see all player civilizations suffer the slings and arrows of Fate cards. 

    The starting positions for six civilizations all set up and waiting for my players to arrive

I look forward to our next game of it!

Miniature Painting & Purchasing Tally for 2024

• Miniatures purchased in 2024: 15
• Miniatures painted in 2024: 14