Archeos Society Review – A Spreadsheet in Indiana Jones’ Clothing

Since playing Ethnos, I joined the congregation of fans praying for a re-release with an updated theme and more appealing artwork. With Archeos Society, the heavens opened up and delivered.

Except more was changed than just looks.

Archeos Society introduces substantial rule changes to the game. Giving it a different feel, despite sharing so much with its predecessor.

How to Play

Played over three rounds, Archeos Society is a game of building and playing hands of cards. Based on the cards you play, you carry out different abilities and move up different location tracks around the board. All to uncover and collect the greatest archaeological treasure of all: victory points.

But before you set off on your grand archaeological adventure, you must first set up the game. Archeos Society has a monumental amount of variability that starts with you choosing a combination of 6 out of 12 different card types. Then, 6 different locations, of which some will be advanced mode.

Now that you’re ready, you start each round with one card. These cards are the game’s focal point and have a type and a colour.

On your turn you’ll have a choice between:

• Picking up a known card from the market
• Picking up an unknown card from the draw deck
• Or playing all the cards in your hand, creating an Expedition

Forming an Expedition requires one or more cards of the same type or colour. Any cards in your hand not taking part return to the market. So choose wisely.

For instance, five blue cards of any type could be an Expedition, and so too could three different coloured Guide cards.

Once you’ve decided which cards are in your Expedition, you then choose a card to lead. The leader’s card type determines the ability of the Expedition.

Some of the abilities:

• The Physician allows you to keep cards not in the Expedition in your hand
• The Student can’t lead, but is great for bolstering your other Expeditions
• The Patron lets you draw cards from the draw deck equal to the Expedition size

The leader’s card colour is also important, as it determines the Expedition’s location.

Each of the six coloured locations has a track to climb, the higher you climb, the more victory points you’ll get at the end of each round. However, the further you go along the track, the more cards are needed in your Expedition.

Importantly, your position on these location tracks isn’t reset between rounds.

Keep taking turns drawing one card or playing Expeditions until three monkey cards are pulled from the draw deck. At that point, you end the round and score victory points based on location tracks, and the size of the Expeditions played, where bigger Expeditions earn you increasingly more points.

A cart crash of opportunities

Much like its predecessor, Archeos Society is a game of simple card play with far-reaching decisions.

Putting together Expeditions is the simple part, knowing where and how to play them is where things get difficult. Because from an empty hand, you start collecting one colour or type of card but they quickly disappear from the market.

From there, you start drawing random cards from the deck. Before you know it you have a rainbow assortment of all different card types. Providing you with a wealth of options to choose from.

Here you spend a couple of fun minutes thinking about the Expeditions you can form and which gives the most points. Weighing up the powerful abilities each leader gives you, the location you want to move up, and the size of your Expedition.

These three scoring opportunities collide head-first like hand-pulled carts hurtling through the markets of Cairo. Causing you delightful misery as you figure out your best move.

What’s impressive about Archeos Society is not how often this entertaining decision happens. But how simply it’s enacted.

On your turn, you have a choice between two easy actions. However, the same actions become sizably more difficult after a couple of turns.

Yet, because of the simplicity, turns are quick and the game flows smoothly.

Although, that’s not always the case.

In Archeos Society, there’s much to absorb when making your Expedition decision. Chief among them are all the different locations and the points they offer.

Some locations, like the blue one, are a multi-round investment. You won’t see a single point from this location until you’ve performed at least three Expeditions.

Meanwhile, the green location will shower you with victory points. But only if you meet its steep Expedition requirements beforehand.

Deciding between these six different locations is tough, but that’s not the end of it. Advanced locations provide active abilities requiring you to pay close attention to them.

So between these locations and powers of the card types, you’re keeping track of twelve different objects. It’s a lot to handle and can feel overwhelming.

However, that’s not my biggest gripe with the game, that title goes to the lack of direct interaction between players. This is probably because I’ve played plenty of Ethnos, which I discuss in the next section, but interaction is limited to some card-type abilities, so you can only focus on your own game.

As a result, it’s hard to stop your opponent from getting a lead and running away with the game.

More importantly, though, it creates a lot of downtime between turns.

Especially at higher player counts.

Low-interaction games are fine when you’re fully engaged in the system and can think through your moves while you’re waiting. Here, the system isn’t that deep. So, at higher player counts, you spend most of your time waiting rather than thinking and acting.

Archeos Society vs Ethnos

Right out of the gate, you’ll notice a big difference between the two games. Not in terms of the rules, as both games follow a similar ruleset, but in terms of feel.

Ethnos is a competition. You’re constantly looking at what others are doing at each location and deciding to match them or go elsewhere. Alternatively, you can create big piles of tokens in specific locations letting other players know you’re king of this castle, and not to waste their time.

Either way, it’s a conversation through tokens and battle plans. No pleasantries, or how-do-ya-dos, just players stating their intentions, and backing it up with colourful pieces of plastic.

Archeos Society, on the other hand, is introspective. Excluding some card abilities, you only care about climbing the location tracks. So you focus almost exclusively on what you’re doing, not your opponents.

This works for Archeos Society because there’s so much more going on in the locations. From the way they dole out victory points, to the requirements to advance up the track there’s a lot more information you need to take in.

Especially, when using the advanced tracks.

Because of this change of focus, there’s a distinct lack of tension in Archeos Society. When the monkeys start showing off their golden faces, you don’t feel the need to rush to complete anything.

Specifically in the later rounds, where the requirements on locations are so high you can’t do anything. Unless you have an Expedition of four cards or more.

In Ethnos, this is when you feel the most excitement. As players put in their last-ditch efforts to secure territories and gain some much-needed victory points.

That’s the big difference between the two games covered.

Ethnos is more adrenaline-fueled battling over regions. Whereas Archeos Society is more laid back with a focus on finding the perfect Expeditions.

Outside of the change to locations, theme and artwork. Not much has changed. It surprised me to learn that out of the twelve different card types, there are only two changes. The Orcs and the Curator, and the Trolls and the Professor.

A band of Orcs granted you a coloured token based on their leader. Any time during the game, you could trade all of these tokens in for victory points. Gaining more victory points for every token traded.

The Curator removes the ability to trade in these tokens at any time. Scoring them all once at the end of the game instead.

Playing a band of Trolls in Ethnos, collects you a token letting you win tie-breaks for different regions.

An Expedition of Professors also grants you a token. Whoever has the most Professor tokens at end of round chooses a location track to move up freely. Conversely, the player with the least moves down a track of their choice.

I miss the interaction

One thing I truly appreciated about Archeos Society is its ability to play two-player. Something you could never do with its predecessor. Having played it at a couple of different player counts, two-player might be my favourite.

But, boy-oh-boy do I miss the interaction and competition of Ethnos.

I also miss the text on the cards from Ethnos. As Archeos Society opted for pure iconography. As a result, it’s nearly impossible to pull it off the shelf and start playing without a code-breaking session beforehand.

Weighing up everything, Archeos Society is perfectly fine. Those who want to experience the awesome and simplistic design of Ethnos without any conflict are in for a treat.

But if you don’t mind a bit of argy-bargy, then you’re best off braving the generic fantasy theme and artwork of the original.