ANCIENT INCAS
Children of the Sun, your time has just begun... well, it was quite a while ago, but the impact of the ancient Incan civilization will still have great impact, on a card game that has violent grandmas and dinosaurs with laser guns. Seriously, we might owe history better... anyway, our Ancient Incas rock! Just like the real Incan empire built massive buildings and long highways with advanced engineering techniques, ours will build up your bases like never before!
Description
The Ancient Incas are one of the 5 factions from the World Tour: Culture Shock set.
They focus on playing and replaying play-on-base actions with most of their cards triggering or getting better the more actions you have or play on the same base.
Other factions from the same set: Anansi Tales, Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Polynesian Voyagers, Russian Fairy Tales.
This faction is called "Ancient Incas" in the rulebook and on the divider included in this set. However, AEG's product page for this set calls this faction "Inca Empire".
Cards
The Ancient Incas have the usual 10 minions and 10 actions. The total minion base power (not counting any abilities) is the usual 30 or an average of 3 per minion.
Actions
Among their actions, there are:
- 0 play-on-minion actions,
- 7 play-on-base actions: Armory (2x), Fortress Walls (2x), Royal Highway, Signs in the Stars, Temple of the Sun,
- 3 standard actions (0 that affects one or more minions, in bold): Ashlar Masonry, Golden Condor, Quipu Strings,
- 2 actions that directly increase a minion's power: Fortress Walls (2x).
Gameplay
Actions
2x Armory - Play on a base. Ongoing: You have +2 power here for each of your other actions on this base.
1x Ashlar Masonry - Special: Play after a base scores. You may return one of your actions on that base to your hand and shuffle the rest of them into your deck instead of the discard pile.
2x Fortress Walls - Play on a base. Place a +1 power counter on one of your minions here. Ongoing: After you play another action on this base, you may place a +1 power counter on one of your minions here.
1x Golden Condor - Return any number of your actions on bases to your hand. You must play each of them as an extra action.
1x Quipu Strings - Choose an action in your discard pile that can be played on a base and play it as an extra action.
1x Royal Highway - Play on a base. You may move one of your minions to or from here. Ongoing: After you play an action on another base, you may move one of your minions from here to there or from there to here.
1x Signs in the Stars - Play on a base. Ongoing: Turn the top card of the base deck face up. While the top base card is face up this base also has its abilities. At the start of each player’s turn they may turn the top base card down until the end of the turn. Talent: Place the top card of the base deck on the bottom of the deck.
1x Temple of the Sun - Play on a base. Draw a card. Ongoing: After you play another action on this base, draw a card.
Characters
1x Sapa Inca - power 5 - Search your deck and/or discard pile for an action that can be played on a base, and add it to your hand. Ongoing: After you play an action on a base, place a +1 power counter on one your minions there.
2x Child of the Sun - power 4 - Ongoing: After the first time you play an action on this base each turn, you may play an extra action.
3x Incan Engineer - power 3 - Reveal cards from the top of your deck until you reveal an action that can be played on a base. Add it to your hand. Shuffle the rest into your deck.
4x Llama - power 2 - You may return one of your actions played on another base to your hand and play it here as an extra action.
Strategy
Draw, play and replay play-on-base actions that activate abilities that trigger each time you play a play-on-base action, especially on the same base.
Synergy
- Steampunks: Steampunks follow a slightly different strategy - they prefer to group minions together on bases with actions played on them - but their respective support for play-on-base actions makes it easy for one to advance the other's gameplan.
- Dragons: Aside from most of their actions also being play-on-base, Dragons are good at stalling opponents while Incas set up. Flank Attack is an immensely useful fetch card for any play-on-base faction deck.
- Kaiju: Kaiju also love to build up actions on one base, and they sport two copies of Kaiju Conflict, which lets you play two extra actions, to boot.
- Knights of the Round Table: Knights can use the +1 power counters generated by Sapa Inca and Fortress Walls to make clearing the Green Knight a lot easier. Temple of the Sun likewise helps with The Fisher King. Quipu Strings can replay one of the Knights' VP actions.
- Action Heroes: Gracie Brones doesn't mind the +1 power counters.
Tips
None.
Additional Info
Mechanics
The Ancient Incas have several abilities that trigger each time you play a play-on-base action. If you have more than one such card on the same base, those abilities will all trigger from a single play-on-base action play. To keep triggering your abilities, they also have several cards that allow you to search for, retrieve or replay your play-on-base actions.
The big power cards of the faction are Child of the Sun, Fortress Walls, and Armory. Child of the Sun allows you to play an extra action after playing an action on its base for the first time in a turn. Fortress Walls places a +1 power counter on one of your minions after you play it and after each subsequent action you play on that base. Armory gives you +2 power on that base for every other action you have played on it. With one Child and both copies of Walls and Armory, you can hit 23 on a single base.
Incan Engineer will draw a play-on-base action off the top of your deck, helping you assemble the pieces of this combo faster. Ashlar Masonry lets you return one of your play-on-base actions to your hand and shuffle the rest into your deck after a base scores, helping you set up this power combo time and again. Quipu Strings lets you play an extra action on a base from your discard pile. Sapa Inca can fetch the play-on-base action you need right out of your deck or discard pile, and produces +1 power counters in a manner similar to Fortress Walls.
Expansion
World Tour: Culture Shock
Playstyle
- Snowball
- Gimmick
- Support