Game manual Project Anthony
Players: The game can be played from 2 (1 versus 1) up to 4 players (free for all).
Objective: The objective of the game is to eliminate the other player(s) by destroying their base(s), or by killing all the enemy ants on the board.
Game phases: The game consists of 2 phases: A resource gathering phase, and a battle phase.
Resource gathering phase: In the first phase you can gather food and explore the board.
The board: The playing field consists of a hexagonal grid containing 56 empty hexagons with 4 prefixed antbases and central food source in the middle of the board. The rest of the board is constructed by shuffling the tiles and laying them face down on the grid. There are 4 different tiles:
Normal tiles (30), Food tiles (4) Event tiles (8 categories): 1 anteater(1),
1 zombie(1),
1 flying ants(1),
1 blocking stones(2),
1 weather(5),
1 fire-ants(4),
1 slave ants(4),
1 big blocking ants(4)
Of the event tiles there are multiple tiles per category.
Movement: Each turn the player has movement points based on their total ant number: Movement=Player ants*2. Movement points can be divided over multiple ants. With 4 ants the movement points are 8, which can be spent on 1 ant traveling a distance of 8 tiles or 8 ants traveling a distance of 1 tile.
Movement points can be spent to flip the destination tile, possibly uncovering an event, foodsource, terrain change or just a normal tile.
Colony size: To increase your colony size you can invest 1 food and half your movement points to gain 1 ant in your next turn. Unless you have played a special pheromone card you can only increase your colony size by 1 ant per turn.
Events: Some events can affect the board, some affect ants. There are in total 8 events: 5 good ones
and 3 bad ones. Events only take place once.
- Anteaters : all ants in the radius of three tiles get eaten and die.
- Zombie ant : the ant that triggers the event turns into a zombie and will travel to your base 1 tile per turn. You have to kill it before it reaches your base.
- Heavy rain: mudslides flushes every ants 3 tiles from the position they occupy.
- Fire ant: it does double damage to an enemy base.
- Slave ant: your colony size increases with a number of slave-ants.
- Blocking stones: you find a perfectly shaped stone to block off one of the entrances to your base.
- Big blocking ants: when you find a big headed ant, this can help you defend your base and you gain 2 hit points.
- Flying ant: all new born ants gain wings and can travel 2 times their original distance.
Event tiles are spread around throughout the board, and can be revealed by players when they land on them once they end their movement. For example, if an ant moves two tiles to the north, the player who controls it can choose to flip over the tile which the ant is now on.
Pheromones: You can buy one of the following pheromones for stage 1 or 2. Pheromones can be purchased by spending a specified amount of food which you gather from the board. A maximum of one pheromone can be used per round.
- Food pheromone: when an ant is at a food source, the ant can summon 2-3 ants to the food source at the expense of his own life.
- Mating pheromone: two ants can be born in one turn, for the coming 3 turns.
- Territory pheromone: ant leaves track on 5 tiles. Enemy has to spend 1 extra movement to cross that tile.
- Aggression pheromone: fight or flight (coin flip)
- Predator pheromone: you are immune to the anteater. You can expend this pheromone when the anteater comes up.
Battle: Once you get next to a tile next to your enemy, you can expend one movement to fight it. You knock it over just like in chess. The defeated ant is removed from the board.
| Players | 2-4 |
| Invitation | Curiosity / Visuals |
| Interaction Patterns | 1 v 1 v 1 v 1 |
| Objectives | Collect food, defeat enemy |
| Procedures | Move ants, flip coin, flip tiles |
| Rules | |
| Resources | Food, Pheromones |
| Conflict | Limited Resources |
| Boundaries | Board |
| Outcome | Eliminate all enemy troops or bases |
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