13th November 2007, a multi-platform video game release by Ubisoft Montreal, launched one of video games most successful and enduring titles… Assassin’s Creed.
The franchise has since grown to an impressive 21 titles across all platforms, with more announced, alongside a film starring Michael Fassbender, comics, graphic novels, books and several tabletop games.
Now, Mantic Games board game division has thrown a ‘leap of faith’ and published their latest game, Assassin’s Creed: Animus.
Memories in the Blood
In Assassin’s Creed: Animus, players take on the role of one of the franchises assassins, or a duet of assassins in some cases if you have the Master Assassins collector’s box. Players compete to score points, by assassinating key targets from each characters timeline, and minimise the amount of desync tokens taken, with the aim to have the most points at the end of the game.
This competitive and thematic, asymmetric game is a true love note for the fans.
Enter the Animus
There are two sets fans have been able to get a hold of. Either the standard retail edition, or the master assassins collectors edition. If you were lucky enough to get this game via the Kickstarter, you will also benefit from all the usual stretch content.
This review is based on having the collector’s edition, but the gameplay and component quality won’t differ greatly, only really the number of characters you will receive, and you won’t receive things like the acrylic tokens.
Essentially though, you will receive a set of different character busts (at least enough to play up to 4 players), each with their own player board, memory cards, assassin cards and special cards.
You will get animus cards, which are a shared set of cards in the centre of play, an animus board, where you will track scores and stack unused tokens, as well as placing the shared draw decks.
The boards for each character have unique layouts, and all characters are asymmetric in play, meaning you will have to think differently to hone your skills with each assassin.
All the components have the usual attention to care that Mantic are known for finding that right balance of quality without over inflating the cost to entry.
Nothing Is True; Everything Is Permitted
Game set up is very simple.
Each character’s memory cards are shuffled together to create a single draw deck that is placed near the animus board, joined by the shuffled deck of animus cards and desync tokens.
Each player then sets up their characters board as explained on their boards set up guide, which will essentially include, where to place your character bust at the start, a draw deck of assassins cards on the left hand side of the board, and a special deck, which relates to the characters unique playstyle and rules.
The first player is then determined by the character era, earliest era first.
On a turn, players complete the following steps
- Move
- Face challenge
- Actions
- Combo Turn
- Assassinate
- End Turn
Move
This is exactly as it sounds, players move their characters bust to the next available space, following the arrows on their board which dictate what your options are. Usually a choice of darker spaces or lighter spaces (which are combo spaces – more on that shortly).
Face Challenge
If the space a character is moved to contains a challenge such as an assassination, fight or stealth challenge, players must complete the challenge before moving on to the next step.
To complete a challenge, players declares it, then equips any items from their hand (if they have any equipment cards).
Opponents then get to play an animus card, which often makes the challenge harder for the player.
The player continues their challenge by playing a reaction card, if they have one in their hand, and/or readying any equipment that may make the challenge more successful.
If the active player has successful scored the right value on either fight or stealth between cards and equipment, the challenge is a success. If it is a fail, you can either resync starting again from a character determined starting point, allowing them to make their way back and rechallenge. If they want to however, they can take desync tokens to win. This can be a gamble worth taking, as some tokens hold no value, whilst others will reduce points at the end of the game.
If a challenge was faced, and won, or if the space doesn’t have a challenge, the player will then take actions on the space you are on.
Actions
Actions cover a number of things, from drawing cards, doing assassin special actions, taking or removing desync tokens, or taking and playing memory cards.
Memory cards will add memory blocks to a player’s board, either your own or you can choose an opponent. These memory blocks will include basic challenge spots, or targets to assassinate, as well as branching paths and dead ends that affect where players characters can or will move to. Unused memory cards are then sent to a discard pile.
Combo Turn
This only happens if you land on a lighter space. If you are lucky enough, you will essentially get to cycle back to step one and take another turn.
Assassinate
If you have defeated a challenge that included assassinating a key target, you will then complete this step, which includes scoring points for your target, removing that memory card from the game and any connected memory cards that created the path up to them.
The opponent then also draws up to the 3 animus cards (max hand of 3), for them to play against you or other opponents in future challenges.
End of Turn
Here, players resolve any ‘end of your turn’ effects, discard readied equipment, action cards with persistent effects, and if your assassin is on a resync space, they reset to that character’s animus space, and their player draw deck is reset.
Once enough target are killed by any one player, the game ends and scores are finalised.
Here, players will reveal any desync tokens and remove those points from their end of game score, with the highest final score being the winner.
Final thoughts
On the surface, it is easy to draw comparisons to the game Villainous. Asymmetric player characters, with player boards, where a player will move a bust to then trigger available actions, whilst playing cards they want to their board or to an opponent’s board to hinder them.
However, arguably here, each character offers a little bit more variation in play than villainous, as the boards don’t have a set design.
This game is a massive love note to assassin’s creed. From the beloved characters from the franchise in the game, locations, characters, weapons and equipment that players will remember from the game, and artwork that evokes memories from the video game series.
Each characters unique playstyle also tries to capture something of the spirit of each character. For example, Altair is very much about your classic assassinations, Ezio has his inventions, or if you have the collectors set, you could have two of the more recent characters, Naoe and Yasuke, both played no the board together, encouraging the player to decide when each character is best used to get the desired outcomes (or if you are lucky, combos).
Component quality is good. Nothing feels flimsy or likely to fall apart which is great, and the miniature busts themselves are great representations of the characters from the games.
Gameplay is your typical Mantic ‘fun first’ rule set. No over bloating or overly complicating the rules, but simple clear rules to ensure players can be enjoying the game over rules searching every few turns. In fact, by our second game, we didn’t really go back to the rule book at all except for trying to clarify how a character’s rule interaction worked the first time we played them.
Some players might not like how simple it is, or feel it lacks depth, but this game is trying to aim at AC fans as much as it will be to board game hobby fans, and for that, they do well.
If you’re a casual board game player or not a board gamer at all, just as AC fan, this game is definitely worth checking out and is good fun.
If, however, you are looking for something crunchier, you won’t find what you are looking for here and will likely be disappointed.
However, as someone who doesn’t mind simpler games alongside more complex ones, and a mahooosiv Assassin’s Creed fan and a fan of Mantic’s games such as Worms, Umbrella Academy, Dungeon Saga the dice game, and Kings of War Champions, this a really fun and wonderful addition to our collection board games and Assassin’s Creed collection which includes the video games, books and model collections.
About the author:
We are Peaches and Meeples, busy professionals who love to chill out to fun table top games. We love board games, card games, miniatures games, competitive or co-operative. Put some dice in our hands and we are in our happy place.
We are also proud guinea pig parents to two lovely fluffballs of joy.
