Have you heard of a card game called Ambition? It is now waiting for you as a really great app on the Play store!

i should perhaps start with a disclaimer – i messaged Robert Acton, a friend of mine, who designed this game, to tell him i wanted to write a blog post. This is not for any benefit or gift or payment, i just thoroughly LOVE the game and want to see more people playing it. Also, i need the competition on the leaderboard! 

A few years ago i was introduced to Rob quite possibly at one of the launches for Ambition and we connected and have become friends. We have played a bunch of games together and i even helped out at the Ambition table teaching newbies how to play at one of the Comic Con events a couple of years ago.

Rob is a lawyer by day and a Batman-type board game player and designer by night. Beyond anything else i can say about him, Rob is just a really great guy. Humble, fun, generous and friendly. And a great designer of games.

Ambition: The Game

For those of you who may not know, Ambition is a card game similar to games like Coup and Citadel that rely on a great measure of strategy and bluffing. The purpose of the game is to accumulate ten gold coins and whoever does it first immediately wins. It is that simple. But where it becomes more complex and where the heart of the game is, is that each turn you both play a character and get to block a character.

One of the biggest selling points for me with Ambition is that you can never master the game. A lot of board or card games, the more you play the more you learn the secrets or biases of the game and if you do certain things you will likely win and you learn to avoid other actions. But Ambition absolutely 100% depends who you are playing with, and if the players sitting with you block your character with 100% accuracy throughout the game then you cannot do anything about it.

So strategy has to morph and evolve, depending who you are playing with and how they play and what they might be learning about how you play. There is a certain level of strategy based on the information you receive about what cards are in play each game. But each turn, the round begins with each player, one at a time, secretly passing on one of their cards to the next player. So a single card might be passed right around the circle [and if one character, the Seeress, is successfully passed around the whole circle, whoever launched her scores hugely].

What is a fairly simple game in terms of gameplay – pass a card, play a card, block a card – has the feel of a middle to light-heavy game once you take the individual card’s powers into effect and start adding strategy and bluff into the mix.

Highly recommended as a live card game and have had a whole lot of fun and anxiety taking on my friends and competing in some mini tournaments.

Ambition: The App

i was excited to hear that Ambition has received its own app which you can purchase and play from the Play Store. Which i think there is a free version of, so if you are just wanting to check out the game, i think the original 16 cards version is absolutely FREE to play.

What was more exciting is that the expansion cards have been added and you can gain access to those in the paid version – which at a once-off R60 is a steal that i was more than happy to pay. And so should you!

You can choose to play against AI players of varying difficulty as well as adapt the time it takes to move [beginners will want slow until you have figured out all the cards and how they play] and you can also play against real live people who have the app and so i am looking forward to some of my friends grabbing this game and challenging the leaderboard with me. [Add me as Brettfish and let’s do battle!]

For anyone who is looking for a fairly short game as an in-between distraction in life, i highly recommend Ambition. A lot of games suck the time out of your day and before you know it, an hour has disappeared. But you can sneak a game of Ambition in between Zoom meetings, or while waiting for a friend to show up for coffee, and it is a great end of evening de-stresser to help you wind down after a long day just before bed.

Jump on right now and purchase your copy, leave a great review for Rob, and then come and find me and let’s do battle! 

But first take a few minutes to watch another great legendary board-gaming friend of mine, Adhil, chat to Rob about the game: