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Polis is a two-player civ-lite game set in the beginning of the conflict between the two major poleis of the 5th century B.C: Athens and the Delian League against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. The winner will be the Empire with more population and prestige at the end of the game.
Both players must secure their supplies and the routes to five markets to trade with them. Every turn you get goods from a territory where you have population supporting your Empire, but you should feed them.
You can fight to control the territories and siege other polis or you might use your diplomacy to convince a polis to join your league. But polis are proud of their independence so you will have to create some projects to gain prestige needed for your military manoeuvres.
This new edition of Polis has updated revised rules and new art that will enhance your game experience.
—description from the publisher
- Simple to learn and play
- Inexpensive
- Portable
- Has a unique move where opponent's piece is trapped and moved
- Derivative of Pente
- Thin, unsightly pieces with a large 'C' on them
- Cloth board is disliked
- Lacks the depth and tension of games like Chess or Pente
- Doesn't feel unique
- Pente
- Checkers
- Chess
- Othello
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Five in a row — The objective of the game is to get five of your pieces in a row to win.
- Piece trapping/flipping — A special move involves trapping two opponent's pieces between two of your own, flipping one, and forcing the opponent to move it instead of placing a new piece.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- Smarter than checkers, more fun than chess. A rip-off of Pente.
- It's okay. It's okay, right? It's very okay
- Chess has trauma. This doesn't really have drama, unfortunately.
References (from this video)
- Simple, accessible card-driven play
- Clear strip-back design with elegant minimalism
- Fast play and easy to teach
- Limited depth and fewer juicy combos
- Transparent decision space reduces replay value
- Not much incentive to revisit after first play
- temple conquest, resource management, exploration
- Temple-island exploration; ships travel along rivers to temples
- strip-back, card-driven actions with immediate feedback
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Card-driven actions — Players play cards to perform actions; value is determined by card overlays.
- movement along rivers/streams — Ship tokens move along rivers to reach temples and enhance actions.
- overlay/overlap cards — Overlapping cards changes the sum of values and determines available actions.
- Resource management — Gather gems of different colors; wind tokens modify card values.
- resource management (gems, wind tokens) — Gather gems of different colors; wind tokens modify card values.
- temple progression / end condition — First to reach temples or build temple presence for points.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- It's a very light Euro game that's card driven.
- I love the strip back nature of the game where all you do is you play a card and you take that action.
- I don't think Aolos quite cut it.
- for what I want now in a Euro, I want it to be a little bit more interesting and just a bit more going on.