Akropolis

Here in the Bailey family, we love tile-laying games and while Katie(35) says we own enough, for game 13 I couldn’t help myself with the recently released Akropolis played by myself, Jack(7) and Toby (4). Toby is not pictured as he decided he wanted to play the game “just in boxer pants”. Jack is also wearing his Xmas PJs but whatever it’s the summer holidays…

Not to be confused with “Agropolis” which I reviewed a few months ago, “Akropolis” is a tile drafting game that I can best describe as the shop system of Century, with laying tiles similar to Calico but the scoring of Kingdomino.

You start with a starting tile and each turn you choose a tile from the construction site (shop) taking the first one free and then paying an extra one stone per slot (similar to how buying works on games like Century). You then lay it in your city to best earn points.

As you lay tiles you can lay tiles on top of other tiles to make multiple levels. If you lay over a grey tile you can take an extra stone.

Scoring works with colours.

There are 2 types of tile per colour… a plaza which has stars on and acts like the crowns in Kingdomino and districts which act like the terrain in Kingdomino. At the end of the game, you score by multiplying your plaza stars by how many scoring districts there are of that colour. The really cool addition however is that the second level grants 2 points per district as opposed to one and if you manage to get to a third level you get 3 (but that is actually quite hard to do.

Unlike Kingdomino however, the district has to follow certain rules.

Blue – only get points for your largest connected group.

Yellow – only get points for ones not touching other yellows

Red – only get points for ones on the edge

Purple – only get points for ones totally surrounded

Green – auto gets points and can be anywhere.

We played 2 games of this and everyone really enjoyed it. Toby(4) found the forward planning needed to be effective and very challenging but still enjoyed it and earned a reasonable score. Jack(7) loved it and got very competitive demanding a second game when I narrowly won the first.

I adore this game. now I do really like tile and scoring games so this is 100% my jam but this is definitely one of the best in the genre and is definitely one that requires the most though as you cover up point-scoring sections to hopefully get higher point-scoring sections. This is simple enough to play with kids but a fantastic adult game as well. Some maths practice in there as well for those of you that love educational elements.

Component quality is decent. The tiles are very thick cardboard and the wooden cubes are nice. The insert for the game is an unholy mess that while I can see what it was going for doesn’t work in practice.

Akropolis has only been out a few weeks but is very fairly priced at around the £20. Overall I would say this is a great game at the price and definitely something that can sit alongside Kingdomino and Calico as my fave tile laying games.