Archaeology: The New Expedition

Archaeology: The New Expedition is a 2 to 5 player Card game with the theme of archeology. It is a remake of an earlier game Archaeology: The Card Game with many interesting and fun additions.

In this game, you take the role of an archaeologist trying to find ancient relics in the desert of Egypt. Search and find the lost pieces to complete the relics and artifacts such as a torn parchment, broken pots, and many such ancient artifacts. Discover treasures in an ancient pyramid. Use local markets and sell your precious relics and artifacts at higher values. Trade shrewdly at the local marketplace to increase the value of your collection. Also, sell the treasures to the museum, etc. But you guessed it right!, all this comes at a cost of desert storms, and other dangers will surely make you struggle to do your archeological work from start to finish.

The game is designed by Phil Walker-Harding and artwork is done by Atha Kanaani. The card design is definitely a theme related to ancient artifacts and the Egyptian environment. The game has set collection, Push your Luck, Card drafting mechanisms well combined with the theme to make you feel like an archeologist.

Setup

Keep aside the Map, Sandstorm, Thief, and Tent cards from the deck. Remove the Broken Tablet and Broken Pendant for 2-3 players. And for 4 to 5 players, remove Broken Pendant. Next, shuffle the treasure cards deck and deal 4 face-down cards and a tent card to each player. Create a space for 5 face-up cards in the middle, which will be the Marketplace. Also, choose 1 monument card to be used during the game. Depending on the number of players, insert Sandstorm, Thief, and all maps into the treasure deck by making players aware of their quantity. The start player is selected by the lowest value of the hand.

Gameplay

Start the turn like any other push your luck game, start “digging” the deck for treasure by drawing the top card of the deck. If you get a treasure card, secretly place it in your hand. If a thief card is drawn, one must reveal and discard it and take a random card from any opponents’ hand. If a Sandstorm card is drawn, reveal and discard it and all players must discard half of their hand to the marketplace. – reveal/discard. Tent cards can be used to counter the sandstorm once for that player. And the process continues.

After drawing action is complete players can take any actions like Trade at the Marketplace by Exchanging any number of cards with the values of other cards. Players can explore the Monument once per turn using map cards. Sell your treasure to the Museum by making sets of cards and gaining value for better set collection.

Archaeology: The New expedition takes you on a journey of discovering ancient treasures of Egypt. It is a nice filler game, very easy to teach, quick pick up time for new players, and exciting gameplay for everyone. Grab a copy if you like the theme and the mechanism of this game.