Cleopatra and the Society of Architects is a long name for a game.

But to be fair, there’s a lot to build.

Strive to become the wealthiest of Cleopatra’s architects by constructing the most magnificent and valuable parts of her palace. Don’t be tempted to deal with shady characters and trade in materials of dubious origins in order to build faster. These corrupt practices might allow an architect to stay a step ahead of the rest, but they come with a high price: cursed Corruption Amulets honouring Sobek.

Cleopatra and the Society of Architects Game Overview

Quick Rules Summary

On a player’s turn, they have two options.

Firstly, take all the cards from one of three stacks, and then each stack has one card added from the deck. Cards from the deck are half face up, half face down so you kinda know what you’re getting.

Secondly, they can use cards to build a part of the Palace by trading in the right number of resource cards. Some of the cards are also people each with different abilities. Each piece of the Palace scores in a different way from straight-up points to the number of other Palace pieces adjacent to the newly built piece.

Some resource cards and (I think) all of the character cards give you corruption tokens scored secretly in a cardboard pyramid.

After each build, 5 dice are rolled and those showing an Ankh symbol are kept aside. When all dice show an Ankh, each player will blind bid a number of points they have earned so far. The player that bid the most will lose a number of corruption tokens. The rest of the players gain them based on their order when comparing bids.

How do you win?

When 5 of the 6 Palace segments are fully complete the game ends.

If a player creates an area in the Garden they can add some of their corruption tokens into each space they created. This is because the players with the most can not win, they are eaten by Sobek.

Of the remaining players, the player with the most points wins.

Main Mechanisms

Set collection for the resources which comes with a bit of hand management. If you have more than 10 cards you’ll gain corruption which is bad of course.

USP

This was released in 2006 with a deluxe edition released in 2020. I can’t look back 18 years and say what was unique at the time. Pillars of the Earth had players cooperatively building something, that also came out in 2006. Is a player being eliminated before scoring unique? Maybe.

Theme

Building stuff in Ancient Egypt is a very common theme.

Setup

Lots of bits out to put in the right place. There is an insert that holds all the plastic in place and you need to turn the box upside down to use as the garden.

Components & Artwork

The plastic bits are nice and look good on the table. The rest of the components are very standard.

I’m not a fan of this style of art. I like things cleaner and happier.

Ease of Teaching

It’s fairly straightforward. You have a crib sheet explaining the character cards, how to build the Palace pieces and how they score. If a player gets that down they should be OK.

Similar Games

Pyramids has you draft cards to build in Ancient Egypt. Of course, you could always go with 7 Wonders or 7 Wonders: Architects.

Cleopatra and the Society of Architects Review

Positives

The card drafting and the semi-upside-down stacks of cards lead to fun choices. You can’t always take the biggest stack, not when a rare resource is face-up in a smaller pile.

Managing corruption is a good challenge, it makes you want to push harder but you can’t keep doing it.

It looks good on the table.

Negatives

A bit dated.

Turns can be slow, especially when trying to build 2 or 3 things as one action which awards bonus points.

Summary

Not a bad game but I’d rather play something a bit more ‘fun’ and less mechanism-based.

Jesta ThaRogue