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Heirs of Prometheus

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Heirs of Prometheus

Heirs of Prometheus

2022

Designed by Stefan Alexander Beyer

Published by Psyche Interactive

Description

Players control city-states in Ancient Greece, and vie for control of other cities in the Greek mainland. Players acquire power through the form of four influence types: Military, Diplomatic, Cultural, and Economic. Each type has unique ways of counteracting the others, and players must be adaptable to succeed. Multiple winners are possible, so forging alliances and well-timed betrayals can help players end the game among the victors. The main goal of the game is to gain the most Glory, and the game ends when the pool of Glory Tokens is depleted. Players may erect monuments, which provide alternate paths to victory once the game has ended. GAMEPLAY OVERVIEW Players start by selecting a city state, each which has two advantages and a disadvantage, and two focus influence types; there's also a jack-of-all-trades city which doesn't have a focus, but its advantages let it switch among the influence types more easily. Each city is not a specialization, but more of a slight nudge off center. If a city needs to switch tactics based on the situation, they are each able to gain cards and influence of other types to meet the challenge. Each player city contains three districts, which can be developed using building and tradesmen cards; other cities only have 1 district each. Influence is gained in mainly two ways. Players may select what influence to gain each turn (with extra cards if for each focus type chosen), but this happens at the end of each turn, so players must plan ahead for what they will do. The second way is at the start of each turn, but is more randomized. The buildings and tradesmen used to develop a district each have a production number, and gain an influence if that number is rolled. Players may also trade influence and cards on their turn; trading has the extra benefit of making a one-round truce between the trading players, which gives some measure of safety and ensures the traded items won't be immediately used against them. For those influence-gaining rolls, the current player rolls two 8-sided dice: one applies to all players, and the other only to the rolling player. If a rolled number matches a production number the district the card is on gains an influence; however, there is a limit to the influence each district can store, so the same number getting rolled repeatedly doesn't grant extra influence. Also, the game setup makes it so at the start of the game each player has access to cards with the same numbers on them, so players gain influence at the same rate; later cards are needed to diversify their numbers. The starting cards have a 1, 2, or 5 on them (the 8 is only for rare cards, so will mostly be unavailable for players), so 50% of the values are already matching at the beginning. Furthermore, the values 1-4 are only on buildings, and 5-7 are only on tradesmen; since tradesmen must be added onto buildings, the higher numbers are less accessible. Each district can perform one action every turn, so the more cities you control the more you can do. Since most actions cost influence, it's often best to not use all your actions to save your influence for later. Actions allow players to use abilities, which mainly come from two sources: a set of basic abilities available at all times, and event cards a player draws to their hand. The event cards correspond to the four influence types, and usually require influence of that type to use. Victory points, called "Glory" in the game, are gained by placing your pawns (called "Officials") on the board, as well as by winning special events called Contention Rolls. Contention rolls represent things like battles and votes, and utilize a push-your-luck mechanic to determine the outcome. Each influence type has a contention roll, and are the main way officials are added (there is a basic ability to add an official to a neutral tile; the contention rolls are used mainly against other players). First, the player who initiated the roll allocates a

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Game data sourced from BoardGameGeek, used under their API terms.