Saturday Roll Call

I started off with Jon and Scott and the federally mandated game of Race. I'm pretty sure that Scott and my combined score beat Jon. Almost positive, in fact. After that Steve and Chris showed up for our US RDA of cylons. Humanity was looking good, so I figured I'd get dealt a cylon in the middle. Which, of course, happened. And (loyal president) Baltar quickly eliminated Boomer as a cylon, which meant I was practically forced to reveal. Anyway, Chris and I had back-to-back turns. Adama had been shot (good times) and boomer was brigged so we got a round or two of running roughshod on skill checks (including incoming nukes). Then the fleet showed up and we put on some boarders. Mainly for giggles. On the down side, humanity got the bonus point of distance which saved them a full jump. Still, wee managed to force the fleet to make a risky jump for the win, and they failed. It came down to a straight 50/50 shot, but both Chris and I had a decent chance to win on our turn, and almost any skill check would have been great.

I like our Roslin fix (and we need to make the Ambush super-crisis fix standard as well ... it only backs up the jump track one space).

After that we had newcomers Karl & Kathy, and Travis. After a caloric interlude, we split into Vinci and Through the Ages. [Actually, we started on Starcraft before Jon put on his Derek Lowe face and muttered something about "a lot of rules."] I must say that the 3rd editions "boards" (instead of card setup) are nice, although they still aren't clear about happiness. Anyway, after getting off to a slow start I Pillaged Karl and razed his two Cathedrals to the ground to make sure he didn't run away with it (and to show what is best in life). Then me and Captain Cook circumnavigated our way to a huge score.

The Vinci people will have to enlighten us on their day.

Anyway, thanks to all who attended. I still need to play Starcraft. Perhaps I'll read the rules again myself.

The Gentlemanly Art of taking their stuff

Last night Sean, Chris and I were getting ready to start a game of Through the Ages, when Raab showed up. He wasn't ambivalent, but RSVPs were sparse so he joined up. (Later on Al, Ted and Jon did show up, but no other games were played).


Through the Ages is, if you don't know, basically a boardgame version of the computer game version of civilization (loosely based on the Tresham game). Most things are abstracted away into lots and lots of cards, and counters. Each turn you get one political action (propose or break a pact, play an event, or agress against your neighbor), then you get some number of regular actions. Civil actions include taking cards, playing cards, building stuff, increasing your population and working on your wonders. Military actions involve building troops and training them. Your form of government (itself a card) determines the number of actions you get. Then you have some book-keeping for happiness, food and money, then refill any cards taken (and ditch the 'oldest' card or two, if it wasn't taken) then slide cards down the track and refill.

At it's heart, this is just a game where you don't have enough time to do everything. It costs actions to train workers, and you need to increase your agriculture, economy, happiness, military, science, get leaders, colonize new lands, react to events, modernize, and grab good action cards. Oh, and get culture (VP). Action cards get cheaper the longer the stay on the board, so there's always that "Do I pay 3 actions to get X, or wait and hope to get it next turn for 1?" feeling.

Anyway, our game started off with Raab writing the Homeric epics, which let him get some cheap military units and then write up stories about their glories, when really they just got drunk. That put him out to a huge VP lead (something like 30 to 5, 8 and 3). But the VPs only count at the end....I managed to get Carolinas University, which produces science and a bit of culture. Chris got Hammurabi, and (sadly) saw the high point of his empire peak about 6,000 years too soon.

In Age II, things took more concrete shape. I managed to acquire Napoleon and build an overwhelming army, and proceeded to use it to take other people's stuff. A big complaint about Through the Ages is that's it really a military race. That's certainly true to some extent, but I'm not sure if it's a flaw. (I've discussed TtA on my blog). Chris suffered due to a few random events that hit the weakest country, and eventually snapped and declared a Jihad against the rest of us (via the Terrorism event). Sean's Pyramids ran into the typical government delays and were eventually abandoned unfinished, several thousand years over budget.

By the end of Age II I was firmly in the drivers seat with a VP lead, solid military advantage, and strong technologies and wonders. Despite the early setbacks, Sean decided to become an artistic empire and started cranking out culture for 2nd place.

All in all, a fun game although it was long. We spent about 5 hours playing. Partially that was because most of us were new or rusty, but the sweet spot for this is three players. When it's not your turn you don't do much (a "fixed fun" game) so dropping one player will speed the game up by 60-90 minutes. Still, I hope to get this to the table again soon.

So did anyone buy Through the Ages?

(BGG Link here) I'm mainly asking because it appears that the second printing has come and gone. [I'd like to play again, but I didn't pre-order it. I got Agricola ... it's someone else's turn.]