“A great game with lots of pressure and fun tile placement that looks excellent on the table.”
Box Stats
- Year: 2023
- Design: Ze Mendes
- Art: Odysseas Stamoglou, Tom Ventre
- Publisher: Arcane Wonders
- Players: 1 – 5
- Weight: 2.24
- Age: 12+
- Time: 50 – 70 minutes
Components
- Player pieces in baggies. Each shape in a separate bag. There is a little bit of setup, but it seems to match the length of the game.
- Favorite component: Monuments.
Setup
Overview
- Goal/win condition: Have the most Victory Points from building the most prestigious civilization board and meeting common objective cards. Points from 6 things. Natural resources, buildings that are completely surrounded, population track, lowest of the three resource tracks, building the wonders/monuments, and completing the public objective cards, if you included them in your game.
- What triggers end: The game ends at the end of the 10th round or the end of the round when a player reaches the end of their population track.
- Board & player board: Central drafting board & player board.
- Round structure: Each round, every player has 7 gold to spend on buildings, roads, the tower, paying off a loan, building monuments, or the turn order pedestals.
- Turn example: Starting with the first player, each player selects one item to buy, pays the cost, and places it on their player board following the placement rules. Apart from monuments, nothing is replaced until the beginning of the next round. Because of this, there is a lot of pressure to take what you want early, before the other players take them. The pedestals to go first or second in the following round are much more sought-after than in other games where you can bid for turn order. Making this pressure even more intense are the monuments. When you meet the placement conditions and purchase one, it costs ALL of your remaining gold, no matter how much that is.
- Favorite part: Carefully spending your coins to get a ton of valuable pieces for your civilization and ending your round with a 1-coin monument.
Review
- Smoothness / Complexity Ratio: Pretty darn smooth. The placement rules take a minute to teach, but the player aids help a lot there.
- Decision Space: The decisions are simple enough that you could teach the game to almost anyone that has played a modern board game. They are grueling though. Do I spend 4 gold on that monument now, or try to get a small road and building first. Is Susan going to take it before I can?
- Length: A good 60-90 minute game at 2-3 players, but it can start to get just a tad long at 4 and 5. I had a four-player game with two new players take about 2 hours and 10 minutes. I like the length for the game, but could see it feeling 20 minutes long at higher player counts.
- Variability: The public objective cards give each game a bit of variety, but I’m very much looking forward to the upcoming monument expansion to add some more variability.
- Who is it for? Anyone that likes polyonimo games and likes player interaction. If you don’t like other people spoiling your perfect plans, this game might not be for you. Even when that happens, there is almost always something else you can do, so your turn isn’t completely wasted
- Similar games: Patchwork, Kingdomino, Isle of Cats
- My Score: 8.5 / 10. A great game with lots of pressure and fun tile placement that looks excellent on the table.