Naturally, the first thing anyone will notice about the Ancient World is the artwork. <PERSON> has done an excellent job creating not just artwork but an entire world that really helps to bring out the theme of this game. Which brings us to our first important point:
What is this game about?
The Ancient World takes place in (you guessed it) an ancient world that has been oppressed by the wild and savage Titans. For years, the people have been unable or unwilling to fight back and have merely banded together in various tribes and just barely managed to survive. But that's all about to change.
In The Ancient World, you are the ruler of a city-state that is attempting to recruit member of 5 ancient tribes to your city. You do this in two ways. The first is by building up your city-state with various buildings that attract members of the tribes (as well as giving you various abilities and bonuses). The second, and the heart of the game, is by attacking Titans. When you defeat a Titan, members of the tribes flock to your city-state as you are, obviously, a glorious and mighty city-state that will be able to protect them from the Titans that have ravaged their land for so long.
So how does it work?
The Ancient World is a worker placement game. At the beginning of the game, each player has 3 worker of different skill levels (1, 2, and 3). There are 7 actions for you to choose from:
Build - Build an Empire Card from the available pool
Recruit - Recruit a new military unit from the available pool
Learn - Pay 3 coins to gain a Knowledge
Rebuild - Take the start player card, gain a coin, and repair 2 Empire Cards
Labor - Gain 2 coins
Draft - Gain one sword
Expand - Pay 3 coins or a Knowledge to gain a District, which provides more room in your city-state for additional Empire Cards
On your turn you can choose to either place one of your workers on an action or to attack a Titan (more on that later). You can place your worker on any empty action space. Additionally, if an action space is already occupied, you may still place a worker there provided your worker is of a higher skill level (you can place your 3 worker there if there's already a 1 worker).
As the game progresses, two additional action spaces open up:
Explore - store an Empire Card from the pool or draw the top 4 cards of the Empire deck and store 1
Grow - Gain an additional worker (first a 4, then a 5)
Fighting Titans
This is the center and best part of the game. To attack a Titan, you must activate one or more of your armies. You begin the game with 2 armies. 792
If an army has not been used before (in previous rounds) it costs one coin to activate it. You activate an army by placing the coin on the army card. You must have activate enough armies to match the strength of the Titan. Armies each have a number of swords and arrows and you can gain additional swords and arrows from various Empire Buildings, the Draft action, and a few other ways. Titans will show a strength number followed by either a sword or a sword and an arrow. If the Titan shows only a sword, you may only count your sword strength when you are trying to defeat it. If it shows both swords and arrows, you may use any combination of swords and arrows to defeat it.
There are always 3 Titans available to attack; 1 star, 2 star, and 3 star (each one getting progressively more difficult to defeat). If you defeat a Titan, you roll the damage die to see how much damage the Titan inflicted on your city-state during the battle. For a 1 star Titan, you roll the die once, two stars twice, three stars thrice. The damage die can damage one of your Empire Cards, make you lose coins, or do nothing at all.
At the end of the round, you slide any coins on your army cards from the top of the card to the middle. In future rounds, if you wish to activate the army it will cost 1 more coin that the number of coins already on the card (the second time costs 2, the third time costs 4, the fourth time costs 8). As you can probably tell, using the same army over and over gets expensive. That's where Recruiting comes in.
When you Recruit a new military unit, you may place it on top of one of your existing armies. The previous card is turned over to show that it is retired, but the retired officers teach the new recruit a few things. This is represented by the Legacy ability on the back of military cards. Legacy abilities are primarily additional Swords and Arrows, but can also include gaining coins or knowledge, or repairing a building whenever that army is activated. 50