Designers: Joseph N. Adams, Madeleine Cole

Artist: Joseph N. Adams

Publisher: Cogito Ergo Meeple

Genre/Mechanisms: auction/bidding, card drafting, miniatures, point-to-point movement, take that, variable player powers

Funding Status: At the time of this posting, Philosophia is already fully-funded.  In fact, pledges currently total 1.3x the initial funding goal with 7 days left to go on the campaign.

Player Count: 1-6

Solo Mode: yes

Complexity: medium-heavy

Risk: medium-high

What It’s About:  A sandbox game that casts players in the roles of great Philosophers and allows them to take 1 of 13 actions on each turn; participation in the end-game final debate requires the collection of 3 Labryinth Tokens from fulfilling various win conditions over the course of play.

How It Works: The goal of Philosophia is to obtain 3 Labyrinth Tokens; players who do will be included in the Final Debate at the end of the game. On their turn, players will Move to a new location, and then Take an Action. This process repeats itself until the end of the game.

Actions include the following:
Tutor, collect 1 coin plus an additional coin for every Wisdom card in the player’s possession;
Create a Following, take a follower cube from your player board and place it on your current location;
Hire a Builder, pay 2 coins to take a Builder token;
Build a School, pay a coin and place a School token on the board, gaining end-game victory points and a coin any time another player enters the location;
Hire a Sophist, paying 1 coin to take a Sophist token from the supply;
Use a Sophist, replacing another player’s follower cube from your current location with one of your own;
Collect Labyrinth Token, after fulfilling one of the game’s 6 Labyrinth criteria or the criteria of an Olympic request card;
Study, paying 4 coins to collect a Study token, or a Study token to collect a Wisdom card;
Collect an Oracle Card, taking an Oracle card that corresponds to your current location;
Observe the Debaters, taking 2 Sophistry cards or 1 Syllogism Card;
Progress the Timeline Action, moving the Hourglass token one space to the right on its track;
Athena Offering Action, start an auction for an Athena disc that all players may be allowed to participate in;
an Initiate Public Debate Action, initiating a debate with 1 other selected player to be waged with Sophistry & Syllogism cards.

The Final Debate functions much like combat, with the player possessing the highest numbered Labyrinth Token initiating a debate against the player with the next-highest Labyrinth Token. The player with the lowest Labyrinth token, as debate combat circles around, will then debate the player with the highest Labyrinth Token. As players run out of cards and pass, they leave the Debating circle, and the debate continues with the remaining players. Once all players have passed, the player with the most cards in their temporary discard pile wins the game.

Comparisons:  What makes the game interesting is how it varies from other games. Have you every played a game with the theme of debating Philosophers? Of course, at the end of the day, debating is essentially a re-theming of combat. And to that end, you could probably make a comparison between Philosophia and any dudes-on-a-map, area control, and open sandbox game.

What Should I Pledge?:
$71 The Full Philosophia Experience: one copy of Philosophia with all unlocked stretch goals.

Add-Ons:
None.

KS Exclusives:
None.

All-In Total: In the continental U.S. you’re looking at $71 for The Full Philosophia Experience and $9 in shipping, for a total of $80.

Philosophia completes its Kickstarter on Thursday, October 10th and tentatively ships in June 2020.