Ants (EN)

Ants drops you at the heart of an ant colony locked in a fierce struggle to dominate the garden. Under your leadership, the anthill grows: you dig new chambers, explore the surrounding hex-based territory, and mark your path with powerful pheromones. Every expedition reveals food, leaves, or enemies to face, while your queen lays eggs that become larvae and then specialized ants: diggers, explorers, or gatherers.

On your turn, you choose one of six main actions - dig, explore, gather, incubate, play cards, or defeat enemies - and decide how many specialized ants (from one to four) you commit to determine its strength. This strategy game rewards sharp hand management, while your incubation board tracks three life stages (eggs, larvae, ants) split across three specializations, including wild ants that fill any need. Your anthill also grows architecturally: placing rooms strategically rewards you with stars, one of the game's main sources of victory points.

You will likely enjoy Ants if you crave demanding games where every decision matters, if you like optimizing a personal board while exploring shared territory, and if games offering multiple paths to victory (architecture, territory, demographics, or combat) appeal to you. Groups of two to four players looking for a dense, interactive game night will be well served.

With over 150 unique cards and outstanding replayability, Ants quickly won over the BoardGameGeek community, ranking in the site's top 1,000 strategy games.

Ants is the very first published design from Italian designer Renato Ciervo, developed alongside Andrea Robbiani. The artwork that brings the ant colony and garden to life is by Candida Corsi and Sara Valentino.

BOX CONTENTS
1 Puzzle Game Board (one side for 2 players, one side for 3-4 players)
2 Garden tiles
29 Enemy tiles
6 Leaf tiles
8 Special Object tiles
120 Base cards
8 Queen's Room cards
30 Starting cards
55 Food cubes
25 Mushroom cubes
35 Leaf cubes
52 Room tiles (4 different sizes)
25 Aggressive tokens
10 Mutation tokens
5 3x tokens
5 -3VP tokens
1 First Player token
8 Queen tokens
4 Player aids
4 Anthill boards
4 Anthill tiles
9 Queen tiles
12 Incubation tiles (4 sets of 3)
160 discs (40 per color)
44 cubes (11 per color)
36 Star tokens (9 per color)
1 rulebook

Number of players: 2 to 4
Playing time: 90 minutes
Age: 13+

If you want to sleeve your cards, you will need:
58 x 89 mm (158 cards)