In an interview about Amun-Re, Mr. Knizia stated that after the game
was accepted by publisher Hans im Glück they requested him to
develop the Power Card deck to add more spice to the game.
Q: Is it possible to score all 3 positional bonuses (East/West,
Upper/Lower, Nile/Desert)?
R: No. If you only had two provinces it would be. Having three
provinces means at most 2 out of 3 can be scored.
Q: Is it possible for the same player to tie with himself for most
pyramids on a side of the Nile?
R: No. Only when there is a tie between players for having the province
with the most pyramids can more than one player receive the 5 point
bonus. If the tie is between provinces of the same player, he
still may only score the bonus once oer side.
Q: When is the bidding blockade card played in phase 2? With your bid,
or can you keep it in your hand until you need it?
R: There is no definitive answer from the rules as
they're written, and both are interesting variants to play. Some people
play that you can hold onto the card stealthily and only have to expose
the card when a player chooses to overbid you --which means the card
isn't wasted in an auction where it wouldn't be used. Other people play
you can only play the blockade card as part of placing your color's
chicklet on an auction card. These players tend to hold onto the
bidding blockade card until the last turn or two and use it when
bidding 10 or 15 for a province. Play groups that tend to bid low
on provinces and seldom go over 10 find the "play it only when you need
to" variant works for them. Play groups that tend to bid high on
provinces where everyone often bids over 6 for every province find the
"play it when you bid" variant works for their way of playing the
game.
Clarifications:
Phase 2:
The "overbid in same province" power card may be
played along with one of your re-bids. Once played, it persists,
applying to any re-bidding that you do until the phase ends.
The "bidding blockade", once played, persists,
applying to any re-bidding that you do until the phase ends.
Similar to the purchasing chart, the bidding chart
can be (conceptually) extended indefinitely, if for some reason people
want to bid more than 36.
"A player may not bid more than he can pay." For
determining how much you "can pay", you can include 1 gold for each
power card in your hand that could be cashed in if necessary to pay
your bid.
Phase 3:
You must decide on a number of power cards to buy,
and pay for this entire amount, before drawing any power cards.
The number of farmers, bricks, and pyramids
available with the game is not intended to be a hard limit on how many
you can acquire. If you run out of bits and need more, just snaffle
some tokens from some other game.
The "builder" power card may be used even if you
do not buy any bricks. (Assuming you have a 2-stone province to use it
on.)
Phase 4:
If you have more than enough gold for your desired
sacrifice, but you don't have the exact gold cards needed to compose
that precise amount, "make change" before the sacrifice to get the
necessary mix of gold cards. You can make change at any time during the
game.
When getting your post-sacrifice free items, you
must declare how many total power cards you will be taking before you
receive any. You may then look at your newly acquired power
cards, if any, before deciding how many farmers and stones to
take. This is analogous to the way the purchasing in the previous
phase works.
Phase 5:
The "8 gold" power card and the "harvest increase"
power card are placed on the board during this phase merely as
mnemonics. Discard them at the end of the phase, after you have scored.
