Description
The game is a contest of arms between two warriors from numerous historical periods. Each game lasts a maximum of five rounds. The game is unusual for a card game in that it does not use shuffling as a randomization technique. Anachronism "decks" consist of five cards, and players do not draw cards or have a "hand" of cards. Despite the relatively small number of cards used in each game, card interactions and strategy can become surprisingly intricate, especially in the later rounds. Each player places his chosen warrior card on the playmat and his four support cards, face down, in slots corresponding to the first four rounds. The support cards may be any combination of inspiration, weapon, armor, or special cards. Each player flips his leftmost face-down support card at the beginning of each round. Initiative numbers on the support cards determine which player goes first in each round. The warrior cards may move and be turned (faced) as in a miniatures game. Support cards represent a variety of historical weapons, armor, items, deities, people, places or concepts such as the Norse sverd or Japanese book Go Rin No Sho. The game's name is derived from the ability to mix the various support cards such that the ancient Greek Leonidas wearing a kimono may fight a Japanese ninja who is wielding a gladius. Dice are used by both the attacker and defender to determine the outcome of battles.
Each warrior card has four stats: life, speed, experience, and damage:
- Life indicates the warrior's starting life total. Current cards have values ranging from 5 to 10.
- Speed shows how many actions the warrior can take each round. This is usually 3, but a few warriors have slightly more or less than this.
- Experience has subtle but far-reaching effects as an all purpose tie-breaking stat. It is the most variable of the statistics with current extremes ranging from 1 to 10.
- Damage shows how much damage the warrior deals with a basic attack. This is almost always 1. However, Aztec warriors usually have a base damage value of 0 and at least one warrior has a base damage value of 2.
Every warrior and weapon card has an attack grid showing what bonus or penalty is applied to attacks rolls to each possible space. Blank spaces on an attack grid indicate that the warrior or weapon can not attack that square. Attack grids are relative to the orientation of one's warrior, so skillful management of attack grids becomes very important to successful gameplay.
Read more about this topic: Anachronism (game)
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