In Anachronism, cards are categorized by three primary keywords: Culture, Type, and Traits. Culture represents the historical group from which the warrior and his/her support cards originate.
The Controversy of Culture
While most Anachronism warriors fit neatly into a culture designation (few will argue that Takeda Shingen belongs to a culture besides Japanese), not all do. Spartacus, a Thracian who was captured and rebelled against the Romans, is designated as Roman. Carolus Magnus / Karl der Grosse is represented as a French warrior, Charlemagne. And that's without getting into the various Gauls and Celts who are spread out over successor cultures.
TriKing is well aware of this sticky point. As Justin Walsh, Design and Development Director, wrote on the forums:
This should immediately make apparent the difficulties faced where genetic, cultural and political boundaries overlap or overstep each other. Attributing primacy to one of these categories is categorically consistent, but will produce inconsistent results as different groups look back at recreated history. As our take on history is recreated, attached to it is all manner of assumptions, cultural biases and the weight of decades, even centuries of reinforcement.
Walsh's statement brings to light the process of historiography, the study of how history is written. For TriKing, theoretical concerns are also matched by marketing and financial concerns:
Beyond that, even if we were to do the Gauls, if you produced a list of five Gaulish warriors, the only warrior that people might recognise by name is Vercingetorix. This does not make for sound marketing. That is why we have purposely ignored several prominent warriors from various cultures. The 'big-name' warriors have to carry the lesser-known ones to a certain extent. If we ever want to revisit those cultures, we will need those big names. Because of this, we are put in a position where it is better for the game to lump warriors who come from very 'fringe' cultures into very closely related cultures that people are well familiar with, both because those warriors are well known, and more importantly, because those warriors would never see the light of day if we didn't. The amount of work involved in creating each set of cultural templates for the cards pretty much ensures that doing 10 new cultures in one set is never going to happen either.
In addition to these concerns, Walsh expressed the educational nature of designating a culture. That is, by giving primacy to one culture over another, TriKing is intentionally setting up a historiographical debate among players:
Where there is something interesting that many people might not consider, we do try to throw the occasional curveball to grab people's interest. Being partly wrong is implicit in doing this, but if it encourages people to acquire a better understanding of why we are partly wrong, that's great. As ever, raw knowledge can almost never be progressive without understanding the why.
Cultures by Set
Each set contains four cultures. Starting with Set 5, TriKing began rivisiting previously-released cultures. In Set 6, an occupational culture, the Pirates, were released. These cards are designated by their original culture, as well as the Pirate designation.
Set 1 (April 2005)
Set 2 (June 2005)
Set 3 (September 2005)
Set 4 (December 2005)
Set 5 (February 2006)
Set 6 (August 2006)
Set 7 (November 2006)
Future Cultures
TriKing has announced that Set 8 will contain revisits of The Romans and The Britons, as well as Carthaginian and African Kingdoms. The Italians will show up in Set 9.
Links
- Original post by Justin Walsh on culture designations in Anachronism
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