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"Polis: Fight for the Hegemony" is a two-player civ-lite board-wargame 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.
With a growing empire, feeding your people is the main goal. Wheat was scarce in Greece, so both players must secure other goods supply and the route to five markets in order to trade them for wheat. Each territory may give you different amount of wood, metal, wine, olive oil, silver and some wheat; these two last ones are hard to get but precious. It’s up to you if you want to get more of only one good or less from several of them. Every turn you get goods from a territory you must have some population there (supporting your Empire) but in the end they also have to be fed.
Fighting for the control of the territories and the sieges of the polis will be the job of your hoplites, your triremes will struggle to secure the routes to Egypt, Persia...so you can trade with them when the price is low, and a good use of your Diplomatic may convince a Polis to join your League easily.
A Polis may be your ally, but they are very proud of their independence, so you will have to create some Projects (statues, temples, artists, philosophers, games...) in order to gain Prestige which is needed for all your military manoeuvres.
- Tight and tense gameplay
- Good for two players
- Interesting decisions
- Intimidating rulebook/player aid
- War
- Ancient Greece
- Twilight Struggle
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- action selection — there are like eight different actions you can do on your turn but you can only do two.
- Area Control — you are either playing Athens or Spartan Sparta and you're basically trying to get control of all of these areas.
- Resource Management — build up your resources so that you can do more do better than your opponent.
- Route Building — close the routes for other people to be able to trade things.
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- I think the crunch of deciding which Cathedral or which Tower I guess you want to go into is really really neat.
- The dice movement around the board and strategically moving so you can get yourself additional bonuses I think is super clever.
- Everything in this game just flows so smoothly and so cleverly that and even the static in this game and the table presence is spring is brilliant.
- I was scared because the expansion has as much content in it as the base game basically it's a half teaks mansion and I was scared it was going to be overwhelming but it's not at all and it's fantastic.
- it's a very intimidating game because they literally give you this giant piece of paper that is your guide to how you should play the game.
- it is a very complex game.
- this back and forth creates this real high tension moment where you don't know whether or not you're going to be able to trade your resources because ilia's over here trying to blockade you and take over your countries.
- it's a really tight game.
- I love that it is just a two-player game it felt super super natural to get into it.
- it is the one of the original bag Builders there's others out there but this is the one that really put when people tell you about bag building on the map and it's a brilliant game.
- it's really crunchy.
- every decision you make in this game is so impactful to your strategy.
- it just flows so well and it has everything that I love in bag Builders.
- if you're looking for a yearly beige type of game that has bag building this is this is it this is the one.
- the decisions that you have to make are extremely tight.
- that's where I think it gets more and more intense.
- it kind of just like snowballs from there it really escalates as you play this game.
- I feel like this is like the game that the complexity is just perfect for what it is.
- it looks very approachable it looks really friendly.
- if the truck doesn't land in exactly at the space where the pipe is to receive that color then everything is ruined.
- this game fits perfectly into what I enjoy.
- it's crunchy it's grindy the mechanics are there the resource management is tight the decisions in the round one versus the round two are really vibrant.
- the way the board is set up there are resources on the board that you could be like oh yeah conveniently you've got this or over here that I'm just going to use because I can.
- it can like create some tense moments in the game.
- I took the port from you I remember that yeah you ruined ruined me maybe that's why it's not as high on my list.
- the sheer element of how you do your actions is based on how you place your tile and if it creates a joint group and all of a sudden you have more of one symbol it's just such a clever way to utilize the actions you can take in the game.
- then there's so much like layers in it goals you can take of racism you are going for the recruiting there's so many different things you can do.
- even the way that you travel with your boat like how you position yourself is so clever.
- I really do think it's the entry thing.
- there's a lot of iconography it's a lot to take in initially but once you play it and once you understand what's happening it's a game you'll simply want to get back and back to the table.
- it's a wonderful game I absolutely love bonfire.