We are happy to introduce today Assyria, a game by Emanuele Ornella published by Ystari Games.Assyria takes place in Mesopotamia in ancient times. You lead a tribe that tries to dominate the desert. The game mechanism is original and based on 8 turns with 3 successive phases:
- Phase 1: you pick a column of resource cards. Resource cards are used to feed your tribe.
- Phase 2: you can expand your territory by placing new huts on the board. The key mechanism of the game is that at the end of this phase, you have to feed each hut by playing a corresponding resource card. For example, if you play a card with a "Grape" and a "Barley", you can feed a hut on "grape" space and a hut on a "Barley" space. If you fail to supply a hut you can't keep it. Finally, you earn revenues (camels) and points (prestige) depending on the remaining huts positions.
- Phase 3: you may spend your camels to improve your tribe. You may build some ziggurats (additional points), influence dignitary (points + special abilities), make an offering to gods (make ziggurats provide more points) or buy some joker resource cards.
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Assyria is a very good game, simple to learn and quite fast. To win you must balance between long-term investment (ex: offering to Gods) and opportunistic moves. Consequently there are many different possible strategies!
Assyria adaptation for BGA has been realized by Sébastien Prud'homme (daikinee) using BGA Studio: thank you Sébastien for this very nice work!
BGA would like to thank the whole Ystari team for making such good games and for making possible to have this game here.
Enjoy!
