Babel

About this board game

Babel is a two-player strategy game with an approximately 60-minute playing time, set among five ancient civilizations. Each player uses cards representing the Medes, Sumerians, Hittites, Persians, and Assyrians to build temples and undermine an opponent’s growing power.

The game board shows five regions, while players are represented by stone figures and receive a hand of tribe cards. Temple cards are available beside the board for construction. On a turn, players may move by discarding a card, place cards in their current region, build temples, transfer tribesmen, or use a tribe’s special skill.

Sets of cards are central to play. When three or more cards of the same tribe are gathered in the player’s current region, one card can be discarded to activate that tribe’s skill. These abilities can force the opponent to discard half their hand, rob an opposing temple, skip a temple level, destroy a temple, and more.

• Build temples by supplying the required number of tribesmen.
• Develop each temple level by having built the previous lower level, unless a skill allows a level to be skipped.
• Use tribe-specific abilities to steal, destroy, or disrupt opposing progress.
• Save any number of unplayed cards for later turns.

Players may perform available actions repeatedly during their turns, creating opportunities to combine movement, card placement, construction, and tribal powers. The objective is to develop the tallest temples while managing the opponent’s workforce and structures.

Victory depends on temple levels. A player who reaches 15 points before the opponent builds at least 10 wins immediately. If the opponent has more than 10 points, Babel continues until one player reaches 20 points or one player later falls below 10 points.