Game Play
In Amun-Re you are trying to get more victory points than your opponents through a number of processes. First, a number of city cards are flipped for the number of players and they bid on the properties (one each). Once this is completed, they can build pyramids, buy farmers, and draw cards.
All pyramids count towards the mid-game scoring, and the final scoring. Farmers assist in raising funds for your future purchases. Cards can help with funds, additional farmers, cheaper pyramids, and several ways of additional scoring.
So, each player, in order will purchase cards, farmers, and bricks/pyramids on an increasingly more expensive scale. After this phase, players choose how much money to use for sacrifices to the gods. Each player also has a card they retain at all times that allows them to not give money to the gods and actually gain 3 gold during this phase and subtract 3 from the sacrifice. Depending on how much money is used determines the god's happiness. This is on a scale of 1-4 and that multiplier is used to determine how profitable farmer's are during the harvest. The person who bids the most gets to go first in the next round and gains three of any combination of cards, farmers, and bricks. 2nd place gets 2, and everyone else to bid a positive amount gains 1.
After the sacrifice, the harvest phase happens and player multiply their number of farmers by the god track, plus any inherit city bonus and bonus cards to come up with their additional income.
They then start over bidding on new cities. This happens three times per Age. At the end of the third rotation, depending on the number of players not all of the cities on the map will be used. If not used in the first Age, they are kept out of the second age. When the first age is ended, all points are awarded as listed on the scoring cards. These include such things as counting up your pyramids, your sets of pyramids, having the most pyramids on one side of the river, temples (listed on the board: two in one city, and one in two others) multiplied by the sacrifice track, and any special cards that were fulfilled.
After the scoring of the first age, every token on the board except for point tracking tokens and pyramids/bricks are removed. You then proceed to cycle through the processes of the first half. However, this time, many cities will be more valuable depending on the pyramids built there in the first half of the game, now referred to as The Old Kingdom. The second half is referred to as The New Kingdom.
Once the three cycles of The New Kingdom are complete, the final scoring commences. There are a couple of extra scoring factors that only take place at the end of the game, including who has the most money remaining. The final points for The New Kingdom are tabulated and added to the points from The Old Kingdom to determine the winner.
Our Play
Gene, Eric, Doug, Paul, and myself
In our game, I started off a bit shaky, having never played the game before and therefore ended up building three pyramids on my first city. One other city got a bit of construction and my third was pretty much left alone. I had some farmers, but not very many. At the end of The Old Kingdom I was surprised to find that I wasn't doing too bad in the scoring. I believe I was in third, but not too far behind. I had purchased the city with two temples and managed to get the sacrifice track up enough to make them payoff along with the temple on one of my other cities. My large number of pyramids also helped.
In The New Kingdom, my hugely built up city went for big bucks and I had to try to some other strategies. Everything just happened to work out for me as I was able to build lightly on some already built areas, get a couple of temples, turn in a special scoring card at the end, and even save just enough money to get an extra point for cash. This came in very handy when I ended up tying for first after scoring. We then went to the first tie-breaker and were tied again. We had to search the rules for the second tie-breaker, and I just managed to come out on top.
Final Thoughts
Amun-Re was a great game for a fairly new gamer. It is one that is easy enough to pick up on the fly with a little help from the special card cheat sheet. However, it is also one that lends itself to allot of replay value as numerous strategies can be used in which cities and types of cities to try for along with the numbers of temples, farmers, and cards to optimize those cities. Each game is greatly different due to the random drawing of cities to add to the variety.
There is a good amount of luck in the game in the form of the special cards, but I feel that it augments the game to keep it fresh rather than making it hinge too much on luck.
It was fun getting lucky and winning one, but the real win was discovering this neat little game.
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