As spring dawns the great thaw begins. Deep beneath the lush meadow grasses the queen stirs in her nest and the colony comes to life. Soldiers venture forth, battling centipedes while clashing with opposing colonies for territory. Workers dig an ever-expanding network of tunnels in their tireless search for food. The first larvae hatch and it is clear this generation will be different: the young colonies rapidly evolve into a multitude of new forms. The ants march out to claim the meadow as their own.
In March of the Ants, you create the shared Meadow board by sending your ants to explore it, revealing and strategically placing two dozen unique tiles like Fern, Pebble, and Nest of Centipedes.
Populate new territory by breeding larvae and marching your ants onto collection sites. Will you engage competing colonies in battle, seeking to claim the land for yourself? Or will you establish peaceful, symbiotic relationships and share the spoils? All of this must be done while carefully managing the resources in your underground nest.
Forage for Event Cards like Strange Appetite, Cold Snap, and Fungal Outbreak to impact the entire board – or just one unlucky opponent.
Mutate your colony with special Evolution Cards like the Trap Jaw head, Weaver thorax, and Leaf Cutter abdomen. What weird and wondrous path will your colony’s evolution take: advanced Workers, fearsome Soldiers, or a fertile Queen?
Emerge triumphant by scoring Colony Points as your ants explore and control the Meadow. Search for Colony Goals like Epic Stores, Followers of the Eyeless, and Extensive Tunnels to plan your route to victory.
March of the Ants takes strategy underground…literally!
- Strong player interaction and fast-paced dynamics
- Thematic and mechanically coherent with ant-life
- High replay value with multiple modes (solo, co-op, advanced)
- Well-designed rulebook with good examples
- Card balance issue where some cards are clearly better with few drawbacks
- Rulebook can miss steps despite aids, causing pauses
- ant colony survival, expansion, and battles
- Underground ant colony across seasons with meadow and tunnels
- procedural, emergent gameplay driven by player choices
- Eclipse
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Area control / territory hex control — Players compete to control hex tiles via ant pieces and evolution cards.
- combat resolution — Battles on contested tiles resolved with army strength and cards.
- Deck/building / evolution cards — Use evolution cards to enhance ants and gain abilities.
- Resource management — Manage food, larvae, and cards to fuel actions.
- Variable player powers / evolutions — Body parts (head/thorax/abdomen) grant bonuses.
- Worker, soldier, queen, and slumber phases — Structured phases per round to manage actions and scoring.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I love how this game could easily have gone with a fantasy or sci-fi theme but it didn't
- it's refreshing and not only that but its theme is very well implemented
- the game play is very solid as well it offers players lots of choice and venues for different tactics and strategies
- we strongly recommended and it's staying in our gaming Library
- March of the ants gets 8.5 Army strength out of 10
- there's no downtime with the great reaction mechanics and player interaction is high
- the imbalance in the game is not overwhelming so strategy and tactics Prevail over luck
- the rule book is extremely well written with great examples
References (from this video)
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- the most boring unboxings on the planet Earth
- Even your life's more interesting than this.
- Until next time, I'm Tom Vassel and this is the Dice Tower.
- What is this? This box really has some heft to it.
- Thanks for watching.