Archeos Society: a playful and strategic archaeological journey in a board game

what is the board game Archeos Society ?

Archeos Society sends you on exploration in different archaeological dig sites, but you will have to choose between numerous small expeditions, or larger, less frequent ones. Because building a team worthy of the name takes time.

Accessible from the age of 12, it is intended for 2 to 6 players who are already familiar with contemporary games, without being reserved for experts, for games of around 60 minutes.

Published by Space Cowboys, Archeos Society is a game by Paolo Mori, illustrated by John McCambridge, and sold for €44.90 at Philibert.

How to play Archeos Society?

Establishment

The game offers different setups to vary your games. In any case, six archaeological sites are placed in the center of the table, among twelve possible variations.

There are twelve character types, but only half of them are used in each game. Just shuffle the matching cards into a pile.

Finally, each player places one of his cute little wooden pawns in his color, in the shape of a vehicle (boat, car, submarine, hot air balloon, etc.), on the first space of the track of each archaeological site.

With a few details, that’s it, and the game can begin.

Course of a game

On your turn, you have a choice of two actions. You can add a card to your hand, knowingly from the common recruiting area for everyone, or randomly from the draw pile.

These cards represent the characters and professions (botanist, linguist, teacher, etc.) that make up your expeditions. In addition to the role, they are also defined by a color.

The second possible action is to launch an expedition. To do this, you play a group of cards from your hand, which either share the same role or the same color. One of them is the expedition leader: his color determines the site to be searched, and his role allows you to benefit from the action specific to it. The pilot, for example, allows you to search any site, even of a different color from your expedition. The guide counts as two maps instead of one, etc.

If the size of your shipment is sufficient, you advance one space on the corresponding site. This is usually synonymous with more points, but each site has its own intricacies.

Thus, the first boxes of some sites bring nothing, but the last a lot. Another site may require large expeditions to score a lot of points, but has few boxes. Another has one trapped square out of two, which earns fewer points than the previous one… Several scenarios are possible.

Finally, all the cards that you still have in your hand are added to the recruitment area, and are now available to other players.

When the deck is empty, the digging season ends. You score points according to your progress on each site, but also thanks to your expeditions. The bigger they are, the more points they earn, it’s (archeo)logical.

Depending on the number of players, a game is played over two or three seasons, and the highest final score wins.

Why play Archeos Society?

If this description vaguely reminds you of something, it’s normal: Archeos Society is a reissue ofEthnos, released in 2017. Having not played the latter, we cannot say what changes between the two. It went completely unnoticed, and received a bad reception, in particular because of the mismatch between the warlike promise of its cover and its mechanics.

Will Archeos Society manage to convince where its big brother failed? A priori, yes, since it is part of our selection…

Indeed, the game is very pleasant to play. Its rules are simple to understand (one action out of two each turn is fine), once you have fully understood how expeditions work. The turns are fluid, without dead time.

The light strategy, just like the interaction between the players, and the chance in the order of arrival of the cards can be redhibitory criteria for players looking for an expert game, but allow in return to play it with a fairly large audience. However, avoid presenting it to complete novices, they risk getting lost in it. Especially since the theme, interesting on paper, is ultimately rather flat, and makes the game very mechanical. Instead, start with Rail Adventurerswhich offers, on closer examination, some similarities.

Nevertheless, the choices are tough when it comes to composing the best expedition with your cards. We always want to pick one more, to try to target another, more interesting site. THE “push your luckused by English speakers describes this feeling well. Even more when the end of the package approaches, and therefore the end of the season. Is it better that I content myself with this small expedition, or do I still have time to compose a larger one?

The game could have been a bit repetitive after a few games. But the author and the publisher had the very good idea of ​​proposing several possible configurations. As each game is only played with half the roles and on half the sites, replayability is largely assured. Nothing to fear there.

Without being a totally family game, the rules ofArcheos Societyare simple enough to be able to present it to a wide audience. A bit of luck, a bit of strategy, all sprinkled with a bit of risk-taking…the mix works well and provides smooth and enjoyable gameplay. Finally, the icing on the cake, the many different configurations will make each game unique.

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