None can defy the will of the gods but the gods themselves. Driven by the ambition of their king, the Greeks have arrived on the shores of Troy. Some seek power, some seek revenge, while still others seek the great moment in battle that will define their place in history.
Agamemnon is a fast-paced strategy board game in which two players take on the roles of ancient Greek gods during the Trojan War. By tactically deploying warriors to where they're needed across the board, each player may influence the final outcome of the battles famously detailed in Homer's Iliad. Some areas will be decided by the strength of the warriors, others by sheer weight of numbers, and some by the inspiration your heroes provide.
To begin the game, Strings of Fate tiles are placed on their matching spaces on the board, and each player receives one set of fifteen playing tiles. These tiles come in three varieties: Warriors, with a numerical value marking their strength, Leaders, with both a letter rank and a strength value, and Weavers who have no strength or rank, but instead manipulate the Strings of Fate. Each player will shuffle their tiles face down in front of them.
The first player flips over one of their tiles, and places it on any available space. If it’s a Weaver, its effect immediately comes into play: the Warp Weaver may swap two adjacent Strings of Fate, whilst the Weft Weaver simply splits all strings it’s connected to. After the first turn, each player flips and plays two tiles on their turns.
Once all the tiles have been placed, each string is resolved: each Strength String is won by the player with the highest combined strength contained within it; each Leadership String is won by the player with the single highest ranked tile within the string; and Force Strings are won by the player with the most tiles, including Weavers, in the string. Players claim all the tiles from Strings of Fate they have won, and the player with the most tiles at the end wins.
GTS 2016 - Agamemnon
- The game offers different ways to play with variants like playing with revealed tiles (perfect information) or choosing from separated token groups.
- The 'Warp' and 'Weft' tokens introduce interesting manipulation of the board state.
- Ties in scoring result in no points being awarded for that specific string type.
- The theme is that we are Gods manipulating the strings of fate of the armies of Troy and Greece, each wanting to manipulate things for one of those armies' favor.
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — Players choose where to place their tokens on the board to gain influence over different paths.
- Area Majority — Players place discs on paths representing different types of influence (Strength, Leadership, Force) and count their tokens within connected groups to determine majority.
- Hand Management — Players draw and play tokens from a randomized pool, with the number of tokens drawn per turn increasing.
- Set Collection — Players collect tokens representing won strings at the end of the game to determine the winner.
- special action tokens — Tokens like 'Warp' allow players to swap strings, and 'Weft' tokens can break connections between strings.
- Tile Placement — Players place rectangular 'string' tiles and circular 'disc' tokens onto the board.
- Variable player powers — Leader tokens have special properties and are ranked by letters, where the lowest letter wins ties.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- hey everyone welcome to watch it played
- my name is Rodney Smith and we're here at the GTS distribution coming Play Day in Atlanta 2016 and I'm here with pep McDonald from ospry games no that's not right
- The idea is that we are Gods who are manipulating the strings of fate of the armies of Troy and Greece, each of us wanting to manipulate things for one of those armies favor because we each will represent one of them go Troy go Greece.
- This is a preset up board but if you flip it over there's a side called the Loom I'm going to make a mess right now uhoh there is another side this is the loom and this has a very different setup of different paths here right it's not showing the same outline as we saw before that would match these different types that's right
References (from this video)
- Enjoy playing it
- 30-minute setup each time we play
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Cloudspire is one of those games that I would absolutely love to play more of and there are plans for a rematch between me and JP on my birthday week in July.
- The Graft is one of the new factions that just came out and it doesn't have a fortress. What it does is it has one piece on the board which moves around and that is their fortress. So, it's actually a mobile piece and it's big amoeba type thing.
- That's that's nonsense. Um where things like saving the game, the math, the upkeep is made trivial by the video.
- I have Frostpunk the board game. I have Frostpunk the computer game. They're the same game, but they are entirely different experiences.
- As much as I love Agemonia, it's a 30-minute setup each time we play because we're having to get all of these things out and these things and these things and these things. And that's just the nature of the game.
- No.
- Give me a good Uwe Rosenberg game, Feast for Odin. Feast for Odin solo, I love it. It's a beat your own score game, but I I love it.
- The reason why it was a bad experience for me is the solo mode for Perseverance is a very good solo mode at recreating what another player would do, but it was so far beyond my comfort level I really struggled.
- My favorite game in that category is probably either Tower Up or Ingenious. I might have to give it to Ingenious just because of my personal story with that game and the fact that I can play it with Vicky and her family and things like that.
- My copy of Imperium Classics, Imperium Legends, and Imperium Horizons have left my collection.
- I love Star Trek Captain's Chair, so there will never ever be a situation where I would prefer to play Imperium compared to Star Trek Captain's Chair.
- Assyria second edition, which has only just come out, is my favorite game from Garfield Games.
- So, if you're asking honestly for my favorite game from Garfield Games, it has to be Assyria second edition.
- The discussion has been had a number of times.
- It's not as easy as people think.
- 65% of people say that polyomino games are a subset of tile laying games.
- The secret word is scissors.
- As of this morning, we had 1,331 patron supporters.
- I will be back tomorrow at 4:00 with a live unboxing of the deluxe version of World Order.
- And then on Friday is the public public release of the final video in the Star Trek Captain's Chair series, which is the Pike solo play through.