From a settlement to a metropolis
At the beginning, we choose or draw one policy. We take the board, place the selected city tile on it and markers in special recesses. Place the appropriate discs on the main board according to the symbols on the tracks. The icons on the components make it very easy to set up the game, so it will take us a short while to prepare. Fortunately, the manual is well written, so it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.
As a result of all the preparations, on your board you have the economy, culture and army tracks, while on the common board there are four more – citizens, taxes, glory and soldiers, and an area with knowledge tokens. Each player also receives seven action tiles and three dice. Take five to your hand from the pile of policy cards. They will be drafted at the start of the game and then laid out as one of the possible actions.
The game is played over nine rounds, each with seven phases:
- Reveal an event card;
- Collection of coins according to the tax track;
- Roll the dice and choose an action;
- Consider actions;
- Progress on one track on your board;
- Consideration of the event;
- Check of achievements.
A detailed description of these stages would take a lot of space and would not give a full picture of the game due to too many dependencies between the actions. In general terms in the game, we are going to develop our policies, so we really should move all markers up, which of course is impossible. Therefore, the tactics based on the drawn city, the policy cards selected at the beginning and the dice rolls on which our actions depend, will change during the next games, which gives the opportunity to try different paths to victory.
After nine rounds, add to the points marked on the scoring track those gained by developing your own city, from the policy cards, and the product of the level of the glory track and the greater knowledge tokens earned. The person with the highest score is the winner.
Every Polis for himself
First of all, the performance should be praised. All the components are solid and thick, the boards have special recesses to prevent the markers from moving, and the iconography, although it can initially overwhelm less experienced players, becomes understandable after reading the manual and a few rounds without looking at the rules. The rules are well-described, so once again Portal Games was up to the task.
Khora was presented as a game of civilization and indeed during the game the feeling of developing “something” is felt, but it could be anything. The theme of the game has nothing to do with the mechanics. Of course, it is better to win the ancient polis than to move the markers on the tracks of triangles, squares and circles, but not much would change in feelings. It’s all based on the stats we pick up, actions and cards.
If not the subject, maybe the mechanics will defend itself? Of course. It is quite a successful amalgamation of several well-known solutions. Everything fits nicely and works well together. In addition, the game time is quite short for this type of game, and should close in 1.5 hours. There are several decisions to be made, but they are not complicated enough to hold the game for a long time. After rolling the dice, we have to assign the results to actions and then execute them in order of increasing values. These give us the opportunity, among others raise stats, draw or place cards. The feeling of development is given by subsequent unlockable elements, such as the third die or additional actions assigned to a given policy, which in turn guarantees asymmetric gameplay and other benefits depending on the city being managed.
Khora is for people who like to play for themselves, and opponents are noticed from time to time. There is no interaction between players, and the only thing you can do to harm others is to take a knowledge token or get an achievement faster than they do. However, in this type of title, it does not bother me because I focus on my stats and optimal moves anyway.
Can Khora be called a game of civilization? Maybe in the light version and then treat it as an introduction to this category. In turn, for beginners, it has too many rules and possible paths to victory. It seems to me that this is a proposal for people who already have several titles behind them, but are not familiar with advanced eurograms. For me, this is a nice position to bring to the table when I don’t have a few hours for bigger titles, but I’d like to try to figure it out a bit.
