Pyramid Review
Agora
Published by Cheapass Games
Designed by James Ernest
34 cards and rules sheet; $4.00
There comes a time in every board-gamer's life where he or she says, "I'm tired of being told where I can lay my tiles." Hip Pocket Games (a tiny little division of Cheapass Games) has heard your plea and answered with the card game called Agora.
In Agora, two to four players take turns drawing and placing cards that represent stores in an ancient Greek marketplace. Designer James Ernest added an interesting twist when he decided that players could place their cards anywhere on the table at any angle. Thus, there is no imaginary grid and no need to line up cards. The only restraints are that no cards can overlap, you can not join shops owned by two different players, and if you play a card edge-to-edge with an existing card, only then must their grids line up.
Like most Cheapass games, Agora contains only the essential components . . . in this case, 34 cards and a rules sheet in a ziplock bag. The grayscale art is serviceable but not flashy. The cards are thick enough to stand up to repeated use. Players must supply about 20 counters in a different color for each player as well as a score pad.
Each card is divided into one or more shops. The art here is abstract, so the shops look more like a series of odd-shaped hallways than stores. Each shop is marked with one or more counter icons. Larger shops have a greater number of counter icons. Each shop also has . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: August 23, 2002
Copyright © 2002 by Steve Jackson Games. All rights reserved. Pyramid subscribers are permitted to read this article online, or download it and print out a single hardcopy for personal use. Copying this text to any other online system or BBS, or making more than one hardcopy, is strictly prohibited. So please don't. And if you encounter copies of this article elsewhere on the web, please report it to webmaster@sjgames.com.