How to Play: Awaken the Ancients - A Solitaire Mancala-style Game (Base Game and Four Expansions)

In "Awaken the Ancients," your goal is to awaken all eight Ancients by strategically placing Sacred Seeds on them using a Mancala-style mechanism. Set up by shuffling and dealing eight Ancients in two rows of four, with Keepers at each end. Place two random Sacred Seeds on each Ancient. The game is played in turns with two phases: Warden and Ancients.
In this video, I cover the base game and expansion rules and demonstrate how to play the game.
Timestamps:
0:00:00 - Introduction
0:00:32 - Base Game Components
0:07:02 - Base Game Setup
0:08:47 - Base Game Gameplay
0:20:15 - Foulroot Expansion
0:24:52 - The Raven Expansion
0:30:12 - Ancient Seedlings Expansion
0:35:32 - Heart of Whimwood Expansion
Links:
Awaken the Ancients WIP Thread for the BoardGameGeek 2024 Print and Play Solitaire Design Contest - boardgamegeek.com/thread/3305...

[@ConstantChaosGames]

Wow! This was a great video to show off the beautiful components and all of the expansions. I've been curious about how some of them work but was too lazy to read the rules, AND videos are just great at conveying information that is otherwise more difficult for me to pick up on. So, thanks! For some reason I thought seeds on a Keeper had to be immediately placed, but it looks like the seeds can hang out on a Keeper for a while. Let me know if I'm misunderstanding that clarification. I'm wondering if all the cards (including expansions) could be done in 18 cards? 2 Keepers, 2 Gates, 3 Ravens, 11 Ancients. I'm wondering if having 11 Ancients vs 16 makes a big difference in the replay-ability / variation of setup? You've probably already been down that road of thinking, but it seems like the 18 cards could be an achievable goal. Curious anyway. Looking forward to trying all the expansions at the same time. Maybe with some Gregorian chant or mystical type music in the background.. super cool game.

[@jewellgr]

Yeah, you probably assumed that because in my 1st demo I seemed to immediately pickup the seeds on the Keeper right away. Not a requirement though. 18 cards could work. I started at 18 cards for the base game since that is a common threshold. The other expansion cards were just bonus developments. If at the end of the contest, I haven't expanded any further and the two expansions make sense in the core set, I would consider whittling down the Ancients to 11 to accommodate. Yeah, I’ve listened to 'Forest Fantasy Music' playlist when playing to get in mood.

[@ConstantChaosGames]

@@jewellgr Makes sense. Thanks!