Those who've played Blood Rage (where you're a viking trying to out viking the other vikings) or Rising Sun (where you're a daimyo trying to out daimyo the other daimyos) will notice a lot of the same basic gameplay elements in Ankh, where you're trying to out god the other Egyptian gods. It's still a lot about positioning your figures strategically within regions to set yourself up for the inevitable battles, which are largely determined by the combined strength of your forces in that region, and it's victory in battle that paves the way to victory overall.
However, make no mistake, this is not a pallet swap of Blood Rage or Rising Sun; Ankh is its own beast, and it adds some pretty cool twists.
First, it improves on the asymmetry employed in Rising Sun, giving each Egyptian god unique special abilities, which greatly affects how they play, their path to victory - and how other players try to beat them. For example, the big green guy in the photo above is crocodile god Sobek (aka "Big Hunka-Chunka"). He is the only god that can occupy water spaces, which ostensibly means he can occupy (and can therefor join the battles of) any region bordering those spaces. And if he manages to upgrade his abilities by building/controlling enough temples, he's gonna be unstoppable in battle, and all the other gods are screwed. So he's gonna try and do just that, while everybody else is gonna try to keep that from happening.
Another cool twist is how the battles go. As mentioned before, the winner of a battle is the person with the highest collective force in that region, which generally comes down to the total number of figures they have in the region, plus some value potentially added by a combat card they play.
And it is the playing of that card where the fun happens. You see, everyone has the same set of six cards, all revealed simultaneously, and the battle cards you have played in battles before remain visible to all other players through all the remaining battles until you play a specific card (with no additional power bonus) to refresh your hand. So, each battle becomes a guessing game - what is your opponent gonna play? What do you think they think you will play? What have they played already? I have found I am profoundly shitty at this guessing game, but I enjoy it all the same.
However, far and away the most interesting (and if BoardGameGeek is to believed, controversial) curveball is what happens about 3/4 the way through a three or more player game. At this point, the two players furthest down on the devotion track merge into a single god, combining the powers of both gods, and become teammates, each with one action per turn (whereas the unmerged gods get up to two actions per turn each).
You can see it in the picture above with the orange god on the pedestal. That is Ptah the Creator God, played by my buddy Ski, combined with Ra the Sun God, played by me, to become Ptah-Ra, who sounds like the god of cheerleaders, now that I say it out loud.
To be truthful, at first, I kinda hated it. The problem was, the higher-up god gets kinda screwed, as he gets dragged down the devotion track to where the lower god was. This can be particularly problematic in those circumstances like the first time I played when I, playing Seth (The God of Evil) was forced to merge with Hathor (The God of Love), who was a good 10 points down the devotion track, putting us both WAAAAAY behind, despite the idea of an evil love god being pretty fucking metal. But still, all this work I did to position myself well for an end run was blown away in an instant through no fault of my own, and I was one displeased god of evil.
But then, something cool started happening: my new teammate and I started putting our heads together to find cool ways to combine our powers to pretty good effect, and we made a pretty damned good run of it, closing the gap pretty quickly. Hell, for a little while, it looked like we would actually win the thing before our friend Jack, who is a boardgame savant of sorts, did what he always does and pulled a victory out of his ass. But up until then, it was pretty damned thrilling making that rally.
So, yeah, as I said before, I'm digging this game, a lot, and I can't wait to get it to the table again. It's pretty quick (I think it took us about an hour and a half to play) and fast paced. You're always engaged as you are needing to constantly adjust your plans based on the actions of others, and there is the angst of trying to anticipate how battles are gonna turn out.
And the minis! The production values are absolutely off the charts. CMON banks their brand on high miniature production values, and they outdid themselves this time. You can pore over them with a microscope and see details you didn't see with the naked eye.
The only ding I would give this game is the comparatively long setup time, which comes out to about 15-20 minutes, making it more of an event game than a pick up and play affair, but once it's on the table, it's fairly easy to teach, so that takes the bite off a little, I suppose. Also, I should point out I got the kickstarter edition, which has a shitton of stuff spread out across several boxes rather than the retail version which has all you need in a single box, so I assume those grabbing this off the shelf of their Friendly Local Game Store will see significantly shorter setup times.
In the final analysis, though, Ankh is another home run for Eric Lang, who is really a master of making these big, gorgeous, thematic, deep yet accessible games that are just, plain old fun to play. I counted it: I have seven of his games on my shelves, and it's between this and Cthulhu: Death My Die for my favorite of his (which would put this game pretty high overall).