From Aimless Wandering to Battling in March of the Ants
Fight for survival alongside a budding ant colony as the centipede broodmother lurks in March of the Ants.
If you’re getting tired of ant-related posts, you’re not alone! My love of the cute and cuddly took a backseat to the fun with March of the Ants. This brutal challenge has seen the broodmother win time and time again… The poor ants! With some more confidence from recent small successes, I simply couldn’t part with the meadow. Not just yet. March, ants!
Game Overview
Game Name: March of the Ants
Publication Year: 2015
Designer: Tim Eisner and Ryan Swisher
Artist: Tim Eisner, Ryan Swisher, and Peter Wocken
Publisher: Weird City Games
Solo Mode: Expanded with Minions of the Meadow
Small parts make up entire ants through very unique kinds of evolutions. Combining these can make for intriguing ant populations! The goal is to find and defeat an ancient enemy hiding somewhere in the meadow. Centipedes and nymphs offer many obstacles to resources and growth.
First Play
March 4, 2020
Complexity
3
Latest Play
March 27, 2022
Expansions
2
Setup Time
5 Minutes
Lifetime Plays
25
Play Time
40 Minutes
High Score
26
Game Area
34" x 24"
Low Score
4
Steady Growth
Prepared with the lessons from before, I set out to collect resources and build up my ant colony. Naturally, no one was alone for long. Attack of the nymphs and centipedes!
Actually, having enemies early on provides a way to slowly clear out the meadow and earn victory points.
This wasn’t the best position to be in, particularly since I had a long way to go in exploration, but it was acceptable.
Nymph management was the trickiest part. The aphid hexes are excellent save for the specialized collection sites. The nymphs are guaranteed to show up there!
A Few Too Many Nymphs
Maybe the fact that I ran out of yellow ants to represent the nymphs should have told me something. Spoiler: This is a guaranteed way to lose! Far too many nymphs.
The broodmother passed the point threshold differential for an immediate victory at this point. However, I really only had myself to blame for this mess.
See, I placed almost every hex as an inner hex… With no one to occupy every collection site. So, nymph invasion!
Had I explored in a different way, this might have turned out much differently. Alas, another lesson learned.
Nearly to the Bottom
At least I felt like I mastered the art of the hex tiles! This was all that was left in the 3rd round. I peeked and the Nest of Centipedes was right near the top. So close!
This goes to show, once again, how important it is to keep past lessons in mind and continue to grow. Maybe my constant losses make this look impossible, yet it’s not.
My only real gripe was how the trapdoor spider showed up regardless of my shuffling. Knock it off! How rude.
It was back to the drawing board for me as I prepared the ants for another attempt at ruling the meadow.
An Epic Kind of Plan
As I failed again, my fantastic plan fell apart so early! I planned to use a pair of epic events to work in some useful tradeoffs for food and more larvae. Alas, I was too slow!
It’s not always obvious how integral cards are to winning. Evolutions are the most obvious way to improve ants, yet there are other ways to gain unique benefits.
Cards are also helpful in battle with added ferocity, shown in the upper left. 1 or 2 is tiny, though… But possibly good.
Many a battle has come down to a small value, so choosing how to use a card is vital to surviving.
Do I Know How to Play?
I questioned my abilities over and over. For the first time, I wasn’t reaching the end… The nymphs kept giving the broodmother extra victory points and out I went!
This was an interesting experience. I learned a lot and was probably the closest to winning, but I kept losing by an embarrassing amount as I explored the whole meadow.
My tactics just needed a little adjustment. I could feel how close I was to piecing every strategy together.
I don’t give up easily when I have victory within my grasp! Not that winning is everything… I could sense it, though.
Surprise Attack
My persistence refused to let up. I kept losing and almost feverishly setting everything up again. This broodmother couldn’t win every single time, could she?
So it was with some doubt that I sent my major worker out on an exploration mission. Things were going decently well, but it was about time for it to fall apart.
Amazingly, there was the Nest of Centipedes! I picked up some extra food and stopped her from taking an action.
Then, it was all hands on deck! Or feet? I sent in a small army to start taking her health down. Go, little ants!
The Tawny Crazy Head
The best evolution I could have asked for came along very early on. It almost prevented death… Lost ants in battle basically came back as larvae to be redeployed later on.
Ha! I had this covered! The broodmother only started out at 9 health since she was uncovered in the 3rd round.
The first attack was bolstered with a strong ferocity card. This took her down to just 4 remaining health. Better yet? She drew terrible cards and didn’t kill all of my ants!
I think she drew 5 or 6 cards for this battle and only ended up with a total strength of 12. Nearly got her with 1 card!
Triumph in the Meadow
With another immediate strike before she could take an action, that was it… I won! My ants survived and actually did much better than the first battle. Victory, at last!
Part of that came from nymph management and a very small number of centipedes in the meadow. Not this time!
I worked carefully to keep the inner hexes minimized so the nymphs didn’t continue to give the broodmother so many victory points every round. This was the right path.
Maybe it seemed anticlimactic to defeat her so soon, yet this was an absolutely wonderful way to win at long last.
Session Overview
Play Number: 20-24
Expansion: March of the Ants: Minions of the Meadow
Solo Mode: Expanded with Minions of the Meadow
Play Details: Easy Expansion Difficulty Level
Outcome: 12-30, 13-30, 14-22, 10-29, 10-14 (1 W and 4 L)
It took a lot of effort, and it felt amazing to win after all of the losses. Those didn’t even feel like terrible failures since I could usually identify what I did wrong. This might look like I let the nymphs overrun the meadow, yet the goal was to defeat the broodmother. Without her, this meadow would belong to the ants for many generations!
%
20 Plays
Affordability
Price & Value
8
Functionality
Challenges & Mechanics
9
Originality
Design & Theme
9
Quality
Components & Rules
10
Reusability
Achievement & Enjoyment
9
Variability
Distinctness & Randomness
6
+ Pros (Positives)
- Gameplay is rather quick when it all comes together and makes sense after learning from experience.
- There are some luck and unpredictability, yet the overall outcome can usually be traced back to player decisions.
- The struggle to survive feels very real as every ant counts and there are never enough to do everything.
- Important choices revolve around how to use each card, and whether to collect resources or go to battle.
- Nymphs, centipedes, and the predator add plenty of strategic elements to properly managing the meadow.
- A final showdown with the broodmother is tense and exciting since there is almost no room for error or caution.
– Cons (Negatives)
- An early mistake can be costly enough to lead to a loss later on, and it takes practice to know exactly what to do.
- The large deck of cards is excellent for variety, yet this can sometimes lead to limited available evolutions.
- Some combinations of rules can be a little confusing or ambiguous, leading to uncertain outcomes or situations.
- Upgraded wooden meeples add a lot to the game, but their size can make some hex tiles hard to read.
Victory Conditions
Defeat the Broodmother
- Overall Goal Progress 100%
Goals and Milestones
Win at least 1 expansion game at the easy difficulty level.
Win at least 1 game at the easy difficulty level.
Win at least 1 game at the hard difficulty level.
Win at least 1 game at the normal difficulty level.
Continue the Conversation
Is March of the Ants an interesting challenge for you, too? The difficulty level adjustments are fantastic and make the game quite customizable. Do you have a preferred combination of expansion modules? I never did open up the most recent expansion… Saving that for another day. Or another March. Up next is a return to some more cuteness!
Just here to say: YES! Congrats on the win!
You are inspiring me to finally give the expansion a whirl.
Thank you kindly, Nathan! This was so exciting, I had to triple-check I didn’t make any mistakes. But who am I kidding? Even if I did, this still would have been a win. Ha!
Good luck when you play! The expansion changes the base game a lot, and I still have yet to try out the other smaller expansion eventually. Have fun!
Congrats! I’ve mixed in the Empires of the Earth cards and have been playing with all the modules. I still haven’t beaten the broodmother yet or even fought her. I did find the nest once but it was on a centipede expand action so the nymphs got to moult and I immediately lost due to 8 centipedes being out. My lesson was that I need to find the nest on my explore, not their expand. I’ve put it up for now but I will be back to try again another day.
Thank you! I’m looking forward to the other modules after taking a few minutes to read through the rules. Finding the broodmother does take some experience and strategy. At first, I was stuck losing in the end because I had at least 8 hex tiles still left in the stack. Now I’m finding her most of the time, although victories are very rare. I hope you’re successful the next time you play!
Congratulations!
(How do you feel about winning when the initial setup is variable like this? I’ve been getting some of this with The Crew: sometimes the goals for a particular mission are just much easier than other times, and I don’t always feel we’ve “earned” the win.)
Thanks! Interesting question about a variable setup. There are certainly easier paths to victory with some evolutions and hex tiles. For me, it comes down to accepting that the variability is a part of gameplay. All of the losses happened even with some of the easier combinations, so this felt like I earned this one. My own solo game time is less about overall wins, though, and more about feeling like I’m having fun and learning.
It also comes down to what you personally consider a reasonable winning ratio. On the easy difficulty setting, I struggled to win once. Challenging and fun! Had I ended up winning over and over, though, it would have felt much less satisfying. That’s usually when I’ll increase the difficulty in some way, or even artificially choose certain variables that are harder to make sure I feel challenged. Perhaps that’s not possible in your situation, yet I completely understand where you’re coming from. An unsatisfying or seemingly unearned victory almost feels worse than a loss at times!