Ancient Knowledge Review – Digging Your Own Grave in the Annals of History

Disclaimer: Ancient Knowledge was provided for free by VR Distribution, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

Do you ever sit back and wonder about the lives of those who came before you? What did they learn about the world, and did they pass everything on to us? This question is in the heart of every budding archaeologist, and the heart of the wonderful new tableau-building game, Ancient Knowledge.

Throughout the game, you play monument cards containing real megaliths, pyramids and ancient cities to your timeline. While on your timeline, these monuments are alive, bristling with all of the knowledge of the period it was built. Like where to get the tastiest cappuccino, or what the best board game of the time was.

Unfortunately, with each turn, time moves forever onwards. Moving these ancient civilisations and structures one step closer to being forgotten in the annals of history. It’s your job to collect all of the knowledge tokens off these monuments before that happens. Because if you can’t, they become negative victory points at the end of the game.

Thankfully, you have two actions per turn to prevent this from happening.

One of the actions you can take is adding new monuments to your timeline. Each monument dictates where on your timeline it begins, how much knowledge it starts with, any victory points they’re worth at the end of the game, and an ability.

Take, for example, the Statues of Ramesses II card. It starts on the second space on your timeline, with two knowledge tokens. If it makes it into the past, it will give you two victory points and let you draw four more cards.

Beyond creating monuments, you can also use your actions to create artefacts that give you powerful and persistent passive effects. Or visit the technology market board, where you’ll find instant one-time-use technology cards. Or excavate any amount of monument cards in your past, drawing two cards for each.

The rest of the actions you can take should come with a warning: only in case of emergency. They are highly inefficient but will get you out of a tight jam. One such action allows you to discard cards from your hand to archive knowledge, while another lets you draw a single card from the deck.

After you’ve used your two actions, all of the cards on your timeline shift one space to the left. Any cards that slide off your timeline go into the past. With any leftover knowledge captured as negative victory points.

As soon as one player has fourteen monuments in their past, the game ends. At that point, everyone counts their victory points, taking away points for each unarchived knowledge. Whoever has the most remaining points, wins.

Oh the tangled webs we weave

After reading Ancient Knowledge’s rules around leftover knowledge being transformed into negative victory points I worried about how punishing the game would be. I imagined points to be hard to earn and taken away quickly.

But this wasn’t the case at all. Points came as freely as sand in an hourglass, and while knowledge tokens frequently fell into ruin, there was almost always an option to remove them. Or at the very least, use them as part of card abilities to gain even more points.

Still, knowing the existence of these options doesn’t remove the looming threat of the guillotine that is lost knowledge tokens. As with each turn, your monument cards slide one step closer to the past, and with them, all of the knowledge they hold. Increasingly putting pressure on you to do something, before it’s too late.

There’s something funny about this though. Where you play monument cards for their abilities to save knowledge, yet in doing so, the cards you play (and their knowledge tokens) become the next problem to solve. So, despite your intentions, you’re responsible for every awful situation you find yourself in.

Another consideration with monument cards is that their abilities are only in effect while they’re on your timeline. As a result, you never get a chance to get comfortable with the powers at your disposal. Unlike other tableau-building games where you play cards to get more powerful, here you play them just to stay afloat.

So while you’re playing monument cards to save as much knowledge as you can, you’re also looking for ways to gain victory points, and draw cards. Because, again, unlike other games in the genre, Ancient Knowledge forgoes the traditional end-of-round card drawing. You must either excavate, use monument abilities or activate technologies to add cards to your hand. Although, none of these methods are straightforward and require some forethought and planning to activate them.

Through these mechanisms, Ancient Knowledge creates delightful and original problems that are interesting to solve. These challenges are new but feel familiar. Yet because they morph every turn, they keep you perpetually engaged and eagerly wanting to play more.

The one fatal flaw

Despite introducing a lot of unique and unseen twists to its gameplay, Ancient Knowledge is first and foremost an excellent tableau-builder. The combinations you can build with monument cards are as varied as they are fun to put together.

Special mention must go to the artefact cards which provide you with persistent passive effects. You can only build five during the game, but each goes a long way to shaping your strategy. Therefore, figuring out which ones to build, and which to pass on, is another interesting decision in a game filled with interesting decisions.

Yet it’s these artefacts that make each game of Ancient Knowledge feel unique. Since you’re never guaranteed to get the same lineup each game, you must be ready to switch up your strategy and adjust to the cards you draw.

By now, it’s no secret that I thoroughly enjoyed Ancient Knowledge, but it succumbed to the same weaknesses all board games with low player interaction have. Downtime when it’s not your turn.

Now, Ancient Knowledge is nowhere near some of the worst offenders when it comes to downtime (I’m looking at you Yamatai). However, on some turns, a player’s first move might be to draw six cards. At that point, they have to stop, read, and think about each one. So you best make yourself comfortable, as it might be a long time before your next turn.

With that in mind, I played Ancient Knowledge at both two and three-player counts. But I much preferred it more at a lower player count for this reason. Although, you might experience less downtime with more experienced players.

Otherwise, for a game about the past, there are so many excellent fresh ideas within Ancient Knowledge. However, it doesn’t lose what makes tableau-builders great. The card-play is as wonderful as it is temporary, keeping you on your toes while adding another dimension to your decision-making.