More about Ankh

Do you have a favorite Eric M. Lang game? Ankh is our 2nd foray into the Eric M. Lang area-control dudes-on-a-map games. While we enjoyed certain aspects of Blood Rage, there were some that we didn’t like, so we were curious how Ankh would match up. Luckily for us it turned out to be a lot better experience 🥰 - especially as we played as 2p and it’s regarded as the best 2p Eric M. Lang game!

The rules of the game are surprisingly straightforward. 😮 On your turn you do 1 or 2 actions, out of 4 possible actions which are: 🏃 moving units, ♟️ summoning a new unit, 💰 gaining followers (the only currency in Ankh) and 🔱 unlocking special powers.
The interesting part is that these actions are tracked on a central board - each time you take an action you move its action marker. Whenever the marker reaches the end of its track, an event is triggered. 🧐 When you do 2 actions, the 2nd has to be below your 1st action, so certain combinations aren’t possible, plus triggering an event ends your turn.

There are individual events for claiming monuments 🕍 which are important for majority scoring, and there are events for placing down camels 🐪 to split up the board into more areas.
The shared events are the conflicts. ⚔️ This is when battle occurs in every area: you get to play a combat card; score majorities for obelisks, temples and pyramids; and check who has the most power. Only the winner gets to keep their units! 🙀

The game’s framework is pretty rigid, so you cannot just do anything you want. You have to follow these strict rules of what actions you can do, where you can put units, or which cards you can play in combat. But this way you can better calculate your opponents’ plans, so mind-games are that much more fun. It can feel a bit abstract and chess-like, but at the same time the beautifully illustrated board and majestic minis infuse a needed amount of theme into the game. 😍

I also love how Gods have their unique special ability and you can unlock different powers in each game too. Add to this randomly chosen Guardian monsters and different scenario setups for insane replayability! We are already in love with Ankh! 🥰