Antimony

Antimony (2019) is a head-to-head collecting card game where you complete sets of relics. You play by placing cards that allow you to move your magical staff backwards and forwards through time and collect the cards you need. It's about using your cards carefully to out-manoeuvre the puzzle whilst taking care to be ready for a duel with your opponent that can occur at any moment.

---

You start by dealing three cards to each player and creating a row of nine cards in between the players. Each of these Relic cards has a number, a colour and a symbol. Each player takes turns to align their Magical Staff card so that it faces in the direction of the future.

Players take turns to play a card from their hand to move their Magical Staff card backwards or forward to take a new card into their hand, aiming to collect combinations of three similar cards (colour, number or symbol) to score a point. The first to five points wins.

It's super simple but with a few interesting twists. Firstly, if two Magical Staff cards end up in the same position, the player with the highest value cards steals a point from their opponent. Secondly, when a player completes a set of three cards, they swap them with cards in the row.

The result is a fascinating game about time and timing. You need to act decisively to claim the cards that you need, whilst anticipating the moves of your opponent. Fail to be ready for a clash and you lose one of your hard-earned points. So what starts out as a Solitaire-style puzzle, quickly becomes more like duelling a foe.

---

Our examiner, Rob Prior, first checked Antimony 2 years ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated today.