Ankh’or
Designer: Frank Crittin, Grégoire Largey, Sébastien Pauchon | Artist: Gaël Lannurien
Pleasing two-player games that feel as if they have been actually designed for two people are rare and valuable gems. It can often feel like many games are aimed at larger groups (or rather, foursomes, truth be told) and when they are played with less it feels a bit too roomy on the board, too plentiful in resources, and too much like a reminder that it’s really hard to get friends together these days isn’t it?
Thankfully, Sébastien Pauchon, the creator of market-trading hit Jaipur, is here (with two friends, ironically) to give us twosomes something to spend our tabletop time doing. Ankh’or is a similar market game to Jaipur in that you’re making trades with an automatic market, providing speedy, quick play across or around the table. The lovely, replayable, smart thing here is the use of the price markers. There is a central fold-out board with small holes for price tokens to randomly be slotted into. What this does is randomize the market each game, making every time you play feel different. This might sound minor but it’s a central pleasure of the game. In one game you might need to pay two charcoal for something, whereas in others you may only need one, but with something else – making charcoal a safer bet to pick up from the resources pile.