Players: 2-4
Playing Time: 30-60 minutes
The Components
Atlantis comes in a small bookshelf box with tiles, cards, and several wooden bits.
The Tiles: The game contains 84 path tiles, divided into 42 "A" tiles and 42 "B" tiles. Each of these tiles shows resources that you can gather in 7 different colors (each of which is also represented by a specific symbol). There are also 24 water tiles and two (much) larger tiles representing Atlantis and the mainland. They're all printed on sturdy, linen-textured cardboard and feature very attractive artwork and design.
The setup of Atlantis is a bit tedious. Basically you lay out a long row of tiles between Atlantis and the Mainland. The "A"s go on one half of the track and the "B"s on the other. A single water tile separates them. Once you get through the several minutes of laying tiles out, however, everything looks quite nice.
Cards: The 105 cards match the tiles, each clearly depicting one color and symbol. There are 15 each of the 7 varieties. They're medium weight, linen-textured. Sadly, they're only half-size cards, which makes them harder to shuffle and use. I also didn't find them quite as beautiful as the tiles, but they're still nicely done.
Wooden Bit: Each player gets three meeples in his color (blue, white, black, or red). Each player also gets one wooden bridge. These are all nicely cut wood.
Overall, Atlantis has some nice components with bits that run the gamut from attractive to beautiful. The only things that really hold the game back from top ratings are the fiddly setup and the small cards. Nonetheless, it earns a high "4" out of "5" for Style: very good.
The Gameplay
The object of Atlantis is to get your three meeples from Atlantis to the mainland, while simultaneously collecting valuable tiles.
Setup: A track of path tiles is laid out between the mainland and Atlantis, with a single water tile right in the middle. There are actually only 52 tiles on the track (excluding the water) because 8/13th of the tiles are stacked in piles of two. This ensures that not too many watery gaps appear at the start of the game. Each of these path tiles features a certain color and a value from 1-7.
Each player places his three meeples on Atlantis and takes an initial hand of 4+ cards (depending on where he is in the player order).
Order of Play: On his turn, a player does the following things:
- Buy New Cards
- Play One or More Cards to Move a Figure
- Pick Up a Path Tile
- Draw New Cards
Buy New Cards: As you'll see, you're going to pick up a path tile during each turn of play. If you want, you can turn in a tile at the start of a turn, taking 2 cards for each 1 value of the tile.
Play a Card: Now you get to choose one of your meeples to move forward. You do so by playing a card, then moving them forward to the next tile of that same color. This could either be a short distance or a long distance, given that the tiles are randomly arranged, so good card selection can be very important.
However, you don't get to stop if there's another meeple on that tile you'd land on. You instead must play another card to immediately move the same meeple again. Only when the meeple is on a space all his own is this part of your turn at an end.
Water. Water in your path is an obstacle. At first there's just that one tile of water right in the middle of the track, but more water appears pretty quickly. To pass a water tile you must do one of two things:
You can place a bridge (though you only have one), which becomes a permanent way to pass that water, without cost. It even expands if the section of water combines with others.
You can discard tiles and/or cards. The cost to go over water in this way is the value of the cheaper tile adjacent to the water. You pay that by discarding tiles (whose values are noted) and/or cards (which have 1 value each) until you've paid the full cost (or more).
(However do note that it doesn't matter how long a stretch of water is: it still only takes one action to get past. In fact, if two water sections combine because the tiles between them are taken, they just become one water section that's thus easier to get past.)
Getting to the Mainland. The Mainland space effectively has every color on it, so you can move a meeple there by playing a card which has no matching tiles between the meeple and the mainland.
Pick Up a Path Tile: You now get to pick up the closest unoccupied tile behind you. This may create more water or just expand a current water section. The tile can later be used to buy cards, get over water, or earn victory points at the end of the game. A tile's value is important for all of these things, so you want to pick up high-value tiles when you can.
Draw New Cards: Finally you draw 1 card to replenish your hand, plus 1 card per meeple who has already reached the mainland.
Ending the Game: The game ends when someone gets their last meeple to the mainland. Then every other player must pay the cost to get their remaining meeples over the existing water to the mainland, using tiles and cards.
After that, each player totals up the value of his tiles and his cards. The player with the highest total wins. The first player to get all his meeples to the mainland is probably likelier to be the winner than anyone else, since he earned the last tiles and cards and doesn't have to pay anything now.
Relationships to Other Games
The mechanics of this game will sound somewhat familiar to fans of Colovini's Cartagena. In both games, you're moving multiple figures forward by using cards that match icons/colors and you can't land on the same spaces with other people.
I find Atlantis to be both the more beautiful and the more strategic game, while Cartagena is more elegant and simpler. I think they complement each other nicely, and definitely aren't too similar to own both.
The Game Design
I was actually surprised by how much strategy there is in Atlantis. You have to think about which meeple to move, what color to move to, whether you want to bounce off of any other meeple spaces, how you're going to get across water, and what tile you're going to collect at the end. There's actually sufficient thought that it can induce Analysis Paralysis (AP) in some people, when they feel that they can't find any good moves.
(Really carefully explaining how players will have to pay for any water movement at the end of the game might help to break paralysis.)
I always have some qualms when a filler length game ends up being really thoughtful, because there's the danger that it'll end up more dense than its length can support. However, I liked this design enough that I'm willing to put the effort into finding players who will play it quickly, but still enjoy its nuances.
Beyond its strategy, Atlantis is also original (despite the similarities to Cartagena), primarily thanks to the slow disappearance of tiles and their eventual replacement with water. Not only is that a neat mechanism, but it creates some nice theming for an Atlantis-based game that otherwise is pretty abstract.
On the whole I've given Atlantis a solid "4" out of "5" for Substance with the warning that you shouldn't play it with people who take it too seriously or else they might spoil the game.
Conclusion
Atlantis is an interesting play-a-card-and-move game that's reminescent of Colovini's classic Cartagena. It's a dense game in a filler-length time, and if you can find the right crowd who won't play it too slowly, you'll find that it's a very satisfying game.
