Our review

Ships, buildings, actions

Antarctica

Majorities on ice

Antarctica is a game designed by Charles Chevallier for two to four players, published by Argentum Verlag. As stated on the box, the game is intended for players of ages ten and up – on principle I can agree with this rather well, but of course such age notations are usually rather subjective. On the one hand, Antarctica can be assigned to the range of games for expert players, but is, on the other hand, not really difficult to play.

For me, personally, graphics are not really close to my heart, but I have noted a few times, when looking at the game, that the graphic design by Dennis Lohausen is very attractive on the box cover as well as for the game board; especially for the game box a lot of attention has been paid to details – in accordance with the topic the dominant color is blue, blue like ice or cold.

As regards to theme, the game is set into future probably not too far away and in the Antarctic, at a time when the sea levels have risen due to the warming up of earth and you need to make use of new land masses where you set up research stations and produce energy.

During the complete course of the game you find that the sun in the game moves counter-clockwise and frees ships by melting them out of the surrounding ice and thus make them available for actions. In all other situations, too, activities of players are resolved in counter-clockwise direction.

When you take a close look at the game you note that it is designated as a development game – well, you need to do some developing, but in the end is a game on majorities and aim of the game is to achieve as many lucrative majorities as possible.

However, unlike most majority games, in Antarctica second positions are not interesting at all, you should be in first place in every case, because the leader, to put it bluntly, gets everything and the players in the successive positions receive only the minor contribution made by the player in the position before them, which means a score of for instance 18 points for first place, three points for second place and two points for third and fourth place. And, again contrary to most other majority games, you need not share the score for first place in case of a tie, but all players involved in the tie receive the full number of points. Anyway, in case of a game of four players there are 15 opportunities to score a majority, of which however the majorities for eight sectors on the game board usually are the most lucrative ones.

I believe that you should very soon, that is, already in your second game, use the variable start of the game, as you can position yourself rather more tactically that way and there is no real difficulty in using this start. I believe also that the attraction of the game is highest when played with four players. Anyhow, the game plays rather differently in relation to the number of players, as is the case for many games. So I will note my impressions for a game with the full complement of players, that is, four players.

How do we play the game? To begin with, each player places two ship, in analogy to Catan, first one way and then back the other way. Already at that point you play the first turn counter-clockwise, but you get used to that rather quickly. That is also the moment in which you are faced with the dilemma that you want to plan some actions or do some actions, but on the other hand want to do your turn as early as possible. This dilemma keeps cropping up over all of the game and again and again demands the best possible decision. However, at the start of the game and even in the first few games as a whole you do not really have a plan and thus decide on doing your turn early.

Because, as soon as the game starts, the sun moves by one section counter-clockwise and enables the ship next to the sun in the sections, which is the one that was placed the earliest, to do an action. This is done by taking the ship and putting it into one of the other seven sections, provided that one of the three slots there is still available.

You then have the following options for actions:

- You build a building, which can be one of 14 different buildings, provided that you meet the conditions for constructing this building. The condition is usually access to one definite building (or to two buildings, in one case) or access to the the necessary resources which are produced by the buildings, and you need to have a scientist in your personal stock (two scientists in case of one of the buildings) and then you can advance accordingly on the research tracks. At the start of the game you have two out of twelve scientists – in a game of four players - in your personal stock. Additional scientists must be acquired with the respective actions.

Buildings never belong to any of the players, but are always available to all players. In general, there are five different types of buildings. The Disc buildings allow you to acquire a new ship or new researchers for your personal stock. Resources buildings are already available at the start of the game – one building of each type, as I need them to build additional buildings; similar to this work the Know How buildings, which are not available at the start of the game. Then there are also additional discs which represent research stations that allow you to advance on the research tracks later in the game. Finally, there are prestige buildings which have no additional functions.

I must admit, that in my first few games I did look at the components with a critical eye, as especially the prestige buildings are made from cardboard and are somewhat dubious. In the meantime I have learned that the design of the building and the material – wood, cardboard and cardboard tiles – make a lot of sense.

The action of building a building enables you to place scientists into the sections, who become very important for the majority scorings at the end of the game. But scientists are also necessary in order to make the actions of hiring scientists or scientific advancement on the research tracks more effective. It is not allowed to have two buildings of a kind in a section, which could cause some problems towards the end of the game as you might want to place a scientist into a certain section but cannot do so as the buildings that are left to select from have already been built in the sector.

Basically, there are three stacks of buildings and therefore three buildings are available. Should a stack have been used up, the selection is reduced!

To make the building action somewhat simpler, especially in the initial phase of the game, each player has already at the start one resource card witch can be used once instead of having access to the necessary building; I can get this card again when I reach the relevant position on the corresponding research track. You could also acquire a resources card due to “research” for the two Know-How buildings.

- Another action option is to hire new scientists for your personal stock. This can be done in a section in which the building type of Camp, a tile, is present, and with a strength according to your presence with units in this section – units are ships, also the one that was just placed, and scientists, thus at least a strength of one unit. If you acquire all your scientists early in the game, you then probably will also determine/trigger the end of the game, as the game ends either when one player has placed all his scientists or when all buildings have been built. I have not done the calculation if a game end condition by building all buildings is possible at all, but as you also place scientists when you build a building the scientist game end condition is probable the common one.

- Build a ship: As soon as the tile/building Shipyard is on the board, you can transfer a new ship from the area for „unused game pieces“ into the sector where the sun is currently located. This gives you more actions on the one hand, but also easier access to buildings and also more units in the sectors.

- You also advance on the research tracks – are are five of them – in relation to your strength in the respective sector in which the intended research station is already present. There are three kinds of research stations, which are each assigned to two research tracks, and there is only one research track to which two research stations are assigned. At the end of the game there is also a majority scoring on the research tracks. On those tracks you pass point stages – the player in first place receives the total of all players in the game, and the ones ranked behind him receive the points of those in front of them. (Sorry, I will definitely not use gendering – when I write in the male form I include the ladies, too, but not due to lack of respect, but due to better readability.)

When certain cases on the research tracks are entered or passed, this triggers a certain action, either for all players in case of blue or a certain action for the respective player in case of red. Those actions should be included in your plans. Possible action options can be a new scientists, relocation a ship on the board, it might be a resource card or you might receive one of the coveted Shipyard cards or you might be able to advance on one of the research track or even receive a new ship.

Always when a player places a new ship on the board the other players receive a Shipyard card, as long as there is one available. These shipyard cards might give you an action from the Icebreaker in a sector where your ship is in second place, or two scientists for your stock, a scientist for a sector or an advancement of three steps on a research track.

Steps on the research tracks are counted in a way that you only count cases without cubes of players; that means, that you arrive late on a track you can advance quite some distance.

An action that should not be left out of considerations is the action that you can do before or after your action, which is to take one of your pieces – that can be one of the cubes available for the research track, a ship from the area of unused pieces or even a ship from the board – and place it onto the area for “Discarded Resources”. Those playing pieces are then out of the game for good, but you get a scientist for your stock and this area is also scored at the end of the game.

I have not yet mentioned one last scoring, which is done for building cards which are deposited in front of players and basically have no function anymore. There are cards with stars and cards without stars. The stars are scored, in the same way that is used for other scorings: The player in first place, that is, with the most stars scores the number of all cards with stars, the others as many points as the player in front of him.

A somewhat funny factor with the building cards is that the conditions to build one and the same building are different on cards and the stars also seem to be randomly allocated to the cards, at least I have not yet managed to discover a system for the distribution.

It is also a bit difficult to recognize which building or buildings are meant to be part of the condition for the building. That is a point where the graphics could be improved a bit, in my opinion.

All in all, Antarctica for me is a well-made game which demands well-considered decisions throughout the whole game. The end of the game sometimes arrives rather suddenly, but can be calculated by observing your fellow players. In this end phase you need to decide where you make a final try to achieve majorities or to defend them; whereby you are always in danger of being outbid after all, if you are not the player who triggers the end of the game. In my test games the player who caused the game to end has usually done very well or was the best, as this player also has placed most scientists.

The mechanism itself is a bit unusual and offers lots of options out of which you need to find the most profitable one.

As the building cards are shuffled at the beginning and the buildings become available always in different order in each game, each game therefore takes a different course and so you can probably not rely on only one single strategy for winning.

The use of cards – you are limited to the use of one card for each action case – cam be of immense importance.

Even if some of my test players denied to play another game, for me the replay value of the game is very high, and there surely are options for interesting expansions.

Hans Mostböck

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 90+

Designer: Charles Chevallier

Artist: Dennis Lohausen

Price: ca. 35 Euro

Publisher: Argentum Verlag 2015

Web: www.argentum-verlag.de

Genre: Development, majorities

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en fr

In-game text: no

Comments:

Functional components

Graphic design goes well with the topic

Unusual mix of mechanisms, especially the majority scoring

Compares to:

Development games with majority scoring

Other editions:

Argentum Verlag (en, fr)

My rating: 5

Hans Mostböck:

For me an interesting game with a high replay value which demands well-considered decisions throughout all of the game.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0