Ancient Knowledge first impressions

Ancient Knowledge from Iello is a tableau-building card game. There are many of these out there, but I was immediately drawn to it when I first heard about it. I think the ancient civilization theme bundled with the amazing graphic design does it for me. 🤩 Plus it has some unique twists up its sleeve! Here’s how you play: 🧐

On your turn you do 2 actions, then end-of-turn abilities activate, then you push all of your monument cards one step towards the end of your board: your Past pile. ⌛ Then it’s the next player’s turn. There are no rounds so you just play until someone has 14 cards in their Past, which is the end of the game.
Super simple, but there are some great ideas that make Ancient Knowledge stand out! 😊

There are 2 types of cards:
🏆 Artifacts have effects to custom tailor your playstyle, but you only have 5 slots for these, so you need to choose carefully.
🏛️ Monuments come in 3 colors and they are the main thing bringing you victory points. They enter the game with Knowledge tokens on them (little cardboard stone tablets that I find lovely 🥰). If a Monument goes to your Past and it still has Knowledge on it, the tokens go to your Lost Knowledge pile and count as negative points. So the main puzzle in the game is how to best get rid of Knowledge tokens before it’s too late.

Even though we just played one full game at UKGE, I already saw tons of combo possibilities. 😮 Many cards synergize with many others in very cool ways. You will also draw and discard lots of cards, so draw randomness shouldn’t be a big issue. There are even cards that score off of Lost Knowledge, so you could intentionally not remove tokens as a strategy.

You can additionally learn Technologies. 📃 They usually have certain prerequisites before you can get them. Techs either give immediate benefits, or end game scoring opportunities - both helping you fulfill a chosen strategy.

I am not sure how long we played, but the game is pretty fast. Turns are quick but the gameplay is satisfying - there are so many combos to build and discover. We can’t wait to have the final version in our hands! 😁