I finally had a chance to play the 5th-player expansion for Lords of Hellas. The GameNight crew and I played earlier this week. I'll share my thoughts on the Atlantis expansion and gameplay. The Dark Ages Expansions Pack includes the Atlantis 5th Player Expansion. This adds an additional game board with the island of Atlantis, several new figures and some new game mechanics. This week we played with five players and got to try out the expansion for the first time. For the purposes of this article, I'm going to assume that you have some knowledge of the original game, either from first-hand experience or from blog posts and the like. What gets added When including a 5th player in Lords of Hellas several things are added. The Atlantis expansion requires that you use the Poseidon monument. When adding Poseidon, two new mechanics are added: Ports and Fleets. Ports are indicated by tokens which are placed in a specific region in each land, allowing hoplites and heroes to travel from one land to the next via the sea port. Fleets are an additional attribute indicating fleet ships that can add to your army's strength in port regions. Each player can raise their fleet attribute by praying at the Poseidon monument, thus increasing possible army strength in port regions. The Atlantis expansion itself has many new additions. It includes a new hero, Cleito, as well as the purple army (hoplites and priests) and associated purple army board. A game-board addition is added with the island of Atlantis containing three regions. The new board connects to the original map/board via sea trails and the introduction of ports (mentioned above). Three new quests are added. Three monsters are included: Siren, Cetus, and Talos. Instead of a normal temple, Atlantis includes a "Factory", which when built summons the new monster Talos who is under the control of whomever controls the Inner Circle region with the Factory. Gameplay This week Nikki, Jeff, Dave, Chris and myself gave the new expansion a try. Starting a game with five players is much the same as any other game of Lords of Hellas. After selecting who goes first, the last player gets to pick the hero and faction color of their choice and place the hero and two hoplites on the board. This continues counterclockwise until the first player gets to select his/her hero. Then play starts. This game went as most games of Lords of Hellas, however, It felt like players were selecting different strategies to focus on. Lords of Hellas has four victory conditions and it seemed as if we were fairly diverse in the tracks we were taking. It did feel like adding the fifth player also created additional down-time between plays. Unless you get attacked, there isn't a lot of player interaction between turns. Most of the off-time is spent strategizing or just socializing. In our game, Nikki started off in Atlantis (the new map/portion of the game board) and was able to dominate that area. She seemed content to control that portion of the map and it was difficult for others to attempt to invade. Once Nikki had the purple glory token allowing her to use the usurp special action in the purple land, it was nearly impossible for any other army to control a region in Atlantis. I tried and failed. As play progressed Dave, Chris, Jeff and myself all vied for control of regions/lands on the main board. Monuments were getting built, quests were being attempted and completed, temples built and blessing drafts added to our abilities. As players began to hone in on their selected end-game strategies, I found myself distracted and attempting too many goals, resulting in leaving some areas vulnerable. Chris ultimately took advantage and seized two lands completing one of the victory conditions and winning the game. Final Thoughts
Lords of Hellas is a great board game with multiple strategies and tactics available to all. The wonderful miniatures add to the visual presence. The Atlantis expansion and use of the Poseidon monument added to that experience. It felt like the additions were able to maintain similar gameplay at a higher player count. None of the cards, actions, monsters, etc... ran out. There was plenty of action to go around. As mentioned above, five players can lengthen gameplay a bit, though it didn't seem to be much longer than a four-player game, considering I did take extra time at the beginning to explain the new features, items and rules with the expansion. The additional Atlantis game board does feel a little "tacked on". It sits to one side and the boarder of the original game board visually segregates the two. I do not have the sixth player expansion "City of Steel" however it adds yet another player and a game board. The City of Steel game board in the 6th-player expansion fills the void left above the Atlantis game board. A third party developed a game mat that incorporates all the maps into one. Awaken Realms has since adopted that full 6-player game mat and now created a neoprene mat that will be available after Spiele '19 in Essen, I believe. That game mat is going to be added to my wish list. The new monsters add some variation to the game. Keeping with the Atlantis sea theme, Siren occupies only regions with a port while Cetus moves from sea lane to sea lane blocking passage. Talos being controlled by a player adds a fun new dynamic. Poseidon added different blessings and the use of ports and fleets. The fleets ended up not being much of a factor in our game, however I think that's due to lack of familiarity. I can see fleets being used more in future games. A lot of new features, mechanics, figures etc... are added in this expansion, yet it feels natural. It's not a big learning curve to add these if you're familiar with the base game. An expansion well done. All said... I think the Atlantis Expansion for Lords of Hellas is a lot of fun. No real issues or broken gameplay. All the additions added something to the game. If you enjoy a lot of minis, battle, strategy, etc... Then Lords of Hellas and this Atlantis expansion just might be for you as well. Until next time... keep checking out King's GameNight blog and... Game on!
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