Legacy of Man
Legacy of Man is a strategy game for 2 to 4 players where the board is rebuilt every session. You lay a brand-new world tile by tile, command a nation with its own asymmetric powers, and outmaneuver your rivals for control of the map.
To begin, set the seven neutral tiles around the central World Capitol, choose your empire, and place your ten tiles one at a time. You start with a small force: two workers on your Hiring Pool and one soldier on your Barracks. Everyone else, from more soldiers to your champion, is hired into play as the game unfolds. Then play passes around the table, each turn flowing through the same five phases.
Your Turn, Phase by Phase
Collect Resources
At the start of your turn, gain one resource for every worker standing on a resource tile: wood, food, or gold.
Build or Destroy
Raise or tear down structures like walls and docks. You can only destroy something you are standing on or next to.
Hire Units
Spend resources to bring new workers and soldiers into play, placing them on their starting tiles.
Move
Move any of your units, including the ones you just hired. Workers move one space; soldiers and champions move two.
Take Action
This is where your units go to work. Over the action phase they can strike at rivals, put the three neutral buildings to use, complete objectives, and cross the map by sea or teleport. Placing a star isn't an action; you place one the moment an action carries you past a milestone on the star tracker below.
How Combat Works
Every unit in a fight rolls its die, then both sides line their dice up highest to lowest and compare. The higher roll wins each pairing, and the loser is removed. A bigger die means better odds, but any roll can turn a battle.
Ways to Earn a Star
Nine milestones feed the star tracker. Reach seven to trigger the end of the game. The tracker only climbs, with one exception: capitol stars can be lost.
Fill all seven and the game ends at once. The seventh star only pulls the trigger; points decide the winner.
How the Game Ends
The game ends the instant a player places their seventh star on the tracker, but placing it does not win the game. Every player then tallies points from the tiles they still control, their surviving workers, soldiers, and champion, the walls and docks they've built, the stars on their tracker, and any unused cards. The highest total wins.
The Ancients Expansion
The Ancients Expansion adds four new empires: Maya, Egypt, Sparta, and Persia. Each arrives with the full base-game complement plus its own asymmetric ability powers, along with extra Ability, Knowledge, and Objective cards. Together with the base nations, a single game can now seat up to eight players.
Its biggest addition is the new alliance mechanic. On your turn you can ask another player to join forces, and if they accept you share control: each of you can move and even attack with the other's units, and use their tiles, capitols, shipyards, and docks. You can't hire each other's units or gather resources for their workers, but everything else is fair game.
Alliances are fragile. Break one and you forfeit its end-game points and can never ally again, while the player you betrayed keeps their points, is free to ally anew, and scores a bonus for the betrayal. Stay loyal to the end and you each earn extra points when the game is scored.