Designed by: Ralf zur Linde,Stefan Dorra
Pergamon! Historical Greek city containing, beneath its soil, a treasure trove of ancient artifacts. And Pergamon the game sees you playing archeologists digging down to find them, then reassembling the broken pieces – in order to display them in your museum. But beware – other players will be trying to beat you to the punch by grabbing the most valuable artefacts for themselves…
Pergamon’s board breaks into thirds – there’s a score-track, a calendar (where the artefact tiles are placed at the start of the game) and the city itself – or more accurately, five strata of soil beneath it. Along the top of the whole board is another track, which decides both how much money you get from your sponsors at the start of each round, and how deep you can dig.
At the start of each round a set of excavation tiles are placed in the ground at depths varying from one to five – players pay more to dig deeper! Two money cards are then dealt face-down from a deck, giving the players a limited amount of knowledge as to how much cash is floating around this turn. Players then place their pawns on the money track, which decides both how much cash they’ll get, and the digging order. When the money cards are then flipped, money is assigned to the players. There’s a gambling element here; as asking for little sponsorship almost guarantees you’ll get it, but if you push your luck you might end up with more – or with nothing.
Players then pay to dig, and take their finds from the board. There is risk here too, as the artifacts are always broken, and the two pieces making a whole artifact will always be on separate tiles. Over the course of the 12 rounds you’ll be piecing these fragments together, creating a chain of joined-up artefacts, and then when you sense the time is right, announcing your show and scoring it according the values of the pieces it contains.
This is a very elegant little game. Little in box-size, but has the feeling of a proper board game once you've played. The theme is charmingly 'euro', players vying for archaeological funding, but the gameplay is straightforward, with a few clever and intriguing twists and turns. Lovely.
There is a small amount of Take That in that if opponents think your best-laid plans are rather too well-laid, they have opportunities to stymie them by digging before you and grabbing what you were after.
Low.
Low. If you have the gold to dig anywhere, you have more options, but they are hardly excessive. And if you don't have the gold, you need to focus on your fundraising!
Relatively simple rules and a play-time - once familiar with it - of less than an hour make Pergamon eminently replayable. Children - and adults - will enjoy the challenge of piecing disparate artefact pieces together into a chain.
2-4
Players
10+
Years
30-60
Mins
Sam says
Alright, that's a rather dry description - but Pergamon, once you're past the inevitably exploratory first play, is a neat game that doesn't take all that long. The rather academic-sounding theme conceals some nifty game mechanics that allow for risk-taking and brinkmanship - you want to be grabbing the best pieces as much as you can, but to do that you need to keep the money coming in... I'd rate it a solid 4 stars.