Recently at WBC 2019, I ran multiple Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea (ACIS) learn to play sessions. All but one game had six civilizations participating with more than one player occasionally sharing control of a civilization, like Bridge partners, so everyone who stopped by the table and was interested in learning and playing the game had opportunity to do so. That meant DOZENS of gamers got to experience ACIS during WBC. A number of them said they’d visit the GMT Exhibit Booth to order the game while its P500 discount price still applied. As P500 sales increased since WBC that appears to be the case. Your patronage is appreciated.

All who voiced opinion were highly complimentary of the game’s attractive map and card graphics as well as Chad Jensen’s fine work in editing the Player Aid and Civilization Displays (10 of them, one for each Civilization) along with the game’s Rule Book and Play Book. 

The game mechanics were teachable in a matter of minutes to these experienced gamers who immediately got into the spirit of the design and had a blast carving out their respective empires and flinging all manner of grief at one another via Fate Card play (the “screwage” factor, as Mark Herman termed it for ACIS when introduced to the game during this past June’s CSW Expo in Tempe, AZ). To learn more about the wide variety of events ACIS’ Fate Cards offer, see the “It’s ALL in the Cards” InsideGMT article series here.

The games, with so many players and limited time, were almost always of a single Epoch. I insisted each game have an end-of-game Epoch Event, although explained it is optional since it can influence who wins. When play halted all results were close in terms of VP between civilizations. This precipitated remarks of how balanced the game is, every civilization could have won had play continued… as long as participants kept to the recommended “get the leader” approach. 

In teaching the game to date, it became apparent a second Player Aid could prove helpful to quickly access key information regarding ACIS’ civilizations and Wonders. Although civilization information exists within the game’s individual Civilization Displays and Wonder Cards, a consolidated presentation within a single two-side printed sheet made it much easier for players to “at a glance” assess each civilization’s special attributes (e.g. Egypt’s “Gift of the Nile”) and Wonder benefits… particularly when choosing which Wonder to build.

Consequently, Charlie Kibler, one of GMT’s excellent graphic talents, with whom I’ve collaborated since 1989’s Avalon Hill version of The Siege of Jerusalem, as well as GMT’s Rebel Raiders on the High Seas and Hitler’s Reich: A Card Conquest System Game; devised the ACIS Player Aid you can now download from GMT’s ACIS game page or from the link below.

One side of this Player Aid summarizes the attributes of the game’s 10 civilizations. The other side of the Aid describes each Wonder’s benefits and Fate Card color coding, e.g. black for an Event which brings black colored Barbarian disks onto the map, which I developed with Blackwell Hird, whose creativity and appreciation of art history is manifest in each card’s illustration.

Hopefully, this bonus Player Aid will enhance players’ enjoyment of Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea and, as I found, assist in their teaching the game to others.

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