by Emanuele Ornella

A Second Beginning

Assyria‘s second edition began for me on October 18, 2023, with a simple Geekmail from Shem Phillips asking about my old game Assyria and mentioning that Garphill Games might be interested in bringing it back.

Assyria first appeared in 2009 with Ystari Games, a French publisher then known for complex titles like Caylus, as well as their playful “ys/sy” naming pattern, which is how my original prototype, “Ziggurat”, became Assyria — a change that ultimately fit the game perfectly.

The game later appeared on Board Game Arena, where I tried it a few times, then moved on — only to rediscover it during the Covid lockdowns, after which I started thinking again about how it might evolve in a modern edition.​

When Shem reached out in 2023, I was thrilled and immediately began exploring ideas that had been simmering for years. One of the first concepts was adding a new column of cards, separate from the food cards, to give players more meaningful choices during the card-selection phase. (At that stage, I did not yet know the exact type of cards, only that this extra layer of decision-making felt promising.)

From the outset, it was clear that the central mechanism would remain: expanding huts, feeding them to gain camels and points, then spending camels to trigger powerful actions.

Collaborating and Evolving into Modernity

Although I was familiar with Shem and Sam MacDonald‘s games and reputation, I had never met them before — and I quickly discovered how sharp and imaginative they are as designers and developers. They brought a strong, clear vision for the new edition and immediately started proposing mechanisms that integrated smoothly with the original structure.

Playtesting happened on Tabletop Simulator, connecting my evenings in Italy with their mornings in New Zealand, and despite my clumsy handling of the interface, they patiently handled scoring, card displays, and continuous tweaks to the digital prototype.​

A major breakthrough came when we decided to link each of the four ziggurats to a specific action, allowing many of the original edition’s actions to migrate directly onto the new player boards, which now show all ziggurat levels and a camel track.

Each ziggurat gained its own role — buying cards, buying gold for trading with civilizations, advancing on the offering track, or acquiring boats and farmers — and improving a ziggurat would reduce the cost of its associated action. This created a new tension: whether to build more ziggurats to boost scoring from the offering track or to improve existing ones for maximum efficiency, opening different strategic paths from game to game.

New Elements and Mechanisms

Boats and farmers came later in development as tools to make the map more dynamic and to offer richer choices. Farmers act as a persistent wild food source tied to a specific hex, in contrast to one-shot wild food cards, which makes sustaining huts in that area much easier over time.

Boats, on the other hand, let players leap over river hexes and engage in trade with civilizations, making spatial planning and timing more interactive than before.

The civilizations in the new edition represent a re-imagined version of the nobles from the original Assyria. As before, players must “pay” for influence, and those who invest the most are rewarded during flood phases, but trades now also grant special actions, turning them into a compelling double benefit. Another important shift is that players no longer spend camels directly for these interactions; instead, they spend gold, which must first be purchased with camels, adding a two-step economy that deepens the decision space around when and how to convert resources.

Once the system was stable enough, I moved to physical prototypes and began playtesting with friends.

The additional actions and complexity initially pushed the playtime beyond that of the 2009 edition, and while Sam and Shem were not especially worried, I felt the game would benefit from a tighter arc. Reducing the number of rounds from eight to six, and the number of flood phases to two — once after the third round and once at the end of the sixth — achieved that goal, preserving intensity while making each decision more crucial and each flood less disruptive and time-consuming.

Sharing Credit and Looking Ahead

I could describe many small tweaks and refinements, but the essential truth is that Assyria: Second Edition would not exist in its present form without Sam and Shem’s dedication. The core system is rooted in my original design, yet the new mechanisms, refinement, and variety are the result of our collaboration, which is why sharing design credit felt completely natural. Meeting them in person at the Play! fair in Italy in April 2024, playtesting the near-final version together, and sharing a real table instead of a virtual one made the whole journey feel complete.

I also met Garphill’s Zach Smith, who was preparing to move back to New Zealand from Italy with his family. We shared a great pizza while talking about future projects.

Sam MacDonald (middle row, sixth from left, Shem Phillips (to the right of Sam), and me (front row, second from left)

The only real regret in this whole story is distance. Co-ordinating design and play from opposite sides of the world makes spontaneous meet-ups almost impossible, yet this long-distance collaboration still led to the wonderful outcome of Assyria: Second Edition and the chance to work closely with Sam and Shem.

A final word must go to the other Sam on this project, that is, Sam Phillips. His artwork is exceptional, and transforming a largely desert setting into a vibrant, engaging board is no small feat. He not only brought the landscape to life, but also gave the civilizations and favor cards a visual clarity that supports play as much as it delights the eye.

Emanuele Ornella

PS: You can even see a beard slowly appearing on my face between the last two photos. This wasn’t Shem’s influence, but my wife Juliana’s.

PPS: Please do not comment on what has gone missing from the top of my head between the 2009 photo and the 2025 one…