Aegeapolis

It's 431 B.C., and the Greek world is sliding into war.

Four city-states stand at the center of it, and you lead one: the naval power of Athens, belligerent Sparta, the trading giant of Corinth, or seven-gated Thebes. Each has its own leader: Athene, Leonidas, Sisyphos, and Phix. Each plays to a different strength.

But history is yours to rewrite. Every city is free to choose how it is governed, as a monarchy, a democracy, or an aristocracy, and it can change course later at a price. Will Sparta turn to democracy and the open sea? Will Corinth raise an aristocratic empire and conquer its neighbors? Nothing here is fixed. You decide.

You play on two boards at once. The first is the board on the table. Here the rules are clear, and you can think through every move: explore the map, build trade routes, recruit and march your phalanxes, capture cities, and fight for the ground that matters. The second is the table itself, where a single transaction can shift the whole game. As the map fills up, the player whose road you need can often influence your plans. A deal is rarely just a deal.

Two paths lead to victory, and the map joins them. One runs through coins and commerce, the other through battle and control. You can prosper through commerce, or take by force what you will not buy: block a rival's trade route and seize the cities that feed it. The game can be played fully competitive, but that might come at an unforeseen cost. Trade rewards those who use it: trade well and you pull ahead; refuse every deal and you might fall behind.

The coin is the shining star of the game, and the rest of Aegeapolis turns around it. A single coin has many uses: it pays for actions, it passes between players in trade, and it wins scoring rounds. The economy is closed, a fixed constellation: 40 minted coins in eight designs, five of each, plus 20 unminted, 60 in all. Minted coins shine brighter still, because each also counts in the mint ranking, but only for a player who controls a city that strikes its design. Because the supply never grows, the system has a heartbeat. It heats up as coins gather behind player screens, and it cools again when scored coins return, minted to the bag and unminted to the edge of the board. The bag can run dry, and that is by design. When coins grow scarce, the few you hold shine brightest and become real bargaining power. For all that, Aegeapolis is not a coin-collecting game: the coin sits at the center, but it is one bright part of a wider strategy.

You play across a 5×5 grid of city tiles, each player starting from a corner. Victory points arrive in recurring rounds: from the coins you commit, from the cities and mints you control, and from Mission Cards, hidden goals you draw and keep in secret that let you surprise the table and even end the game on your own terms.

One box holds two ways to play. The sandbox is the finished, competitive heart of the game: 3 to 4 players, 90 to 240 minutes, about 150 on average.

The campaign is its growing side: scenario-driven play for 1 to 4 players, solo included, from 60 to 240 minutes, in three shapes. Colonization sends two teams of two to explore and settle an unfolding map across five years of war. King of the Hill sets defenders against attackers over a single contested prize. Emporion turns from conquest toward trade and collection, a gentler path built on coin sets and commerce. All three run on the same components, in the same box.