Designers: Helmut Ohley & Leonhard “Lonny” Orgler

Final Score:  (1.6 out 5 Stars)

When it comes to worker placement games there are lots and lots of options and lots of variations on the mechanic , proven by the countless designs that have flooded the board game market in the last few years. Worker placement games and games with worker placement mechanics have become practically a staple go too mechanic in design today, in fact there are so many that I will be doing a top 10 worker placement game list in the near future.

Russian Railroads definitely caught my interest very early on but I was very wary of the reviews of this game because while it scored high with most reviewers, the common underlining comment was that the game had virtually nothing to do with railroads thematically. Being a big theme guy, this really was a bit of a turn off but thanks to the wonders of digital platforms and the magic of Yucata.de I was able to play many games of Russian Railroads online and it’s now time to review this beast in all its glory.

It’s important to note however that this will be one of the first games I review based on digital (online) play only and while I personally think this makes absolutely no difference with the exception of discussions about component quality, some might differ in opinion about that so in the interest of full disclosure, well, there you have it.

Overview

Russian Railroads puts players in the role of a train company manager using a very classic and very standard worker placement mechanic. In fact, Russian Railroads as a game can be described without any extra wording as a worker placement game as this is what it is, nothing less and nothing more. To win you must score points, the abstracted representation of success and to score points you must wisely use the wide variety of worker placement spots to advance your railroad business. Whether its upgrading your trains, hiring engineers, building tracks or advancing your factories, most elements of a railroad business is represented here. Abstracted to be sure and without a game map commonly found in Railroad games, Russian Railroads is like many worker placement games, a race for victory points through resource management. Your main resource being of course your workers, the lose representation of your workforce and effort as a company. Sounds pretty thematic on paper, but does it hold up in play?

Components

Verdict:
Tilt: 

Pros: Colorful art work, streamlined easy to understand iconography.

Cons: The art work goes to waste on a game which fails to connect its theme and gameplay rendering the thematic art work pointless.

Again, since I did not ever hold the actual copy of the game in my hand, I can’t comment much on the quality of components here other than the art and aesthetics of the game. I have confirmed with several friends and colleagues who told me they were very satisfied with the components, calling them sturdy and built to last. No real surprise as component quality has become less and less of an issue with published games from well-respected companies like Z-man games.

I don’t ever place much emphasis on game components when it comes to worker placement games, typically you’re dealing with cubes and meeples and Russian Railroads is no different. What is absolutely vital for Russian Railroads is the art work, it’s vital because this is the only link to the Railroad theme the game has as many reviewers point out and I can confirm.

The only real connection between game-play and theme in this game is the fact that the pictures on the components, depict, railroad stuff. You have engineer and train tokens, there are pictures of railway tracks and components that look kind of like railroad blocks. Suffice to say however while the art work is good, it’s insufficient to carry the games theme without the thematic connection to the gameplay which I will cover more in the theme section of this review. The important thing to note here is that the art is creative, colorful and the iconography clear and streamlined to relative simple identification once you get the jist of the iconography patterns. It doesn’t take long before you can easily identify the meaning of everything on the board and card and or deduce the meaning. In this regard Russian Railroad does a great job and I certainly give it credit for making this simple.

The components can be said to pass with flying colors and on par with what you can expect from a great company like Z-man games. I put very little weight in this part of the game reviewer and so its impact on the final score is very minimal but I’m very happy to see the days of Euro games with ugly artwork and flimsy components is well behind us.

Theme

Verdict:
Tilt: 

Pros: Railroads are a cool theme that doesn’t scare off casual players.

Cons: The theme is just a ruse; this game has very little if anything at all to do with Russia or Railroads.

While again I would not place theme in the forefront of a worker placement game, when you choose a popularized theme like Railroads you are in essence banking on players choosing this worker placement game over others because of the theme. In a sense there is a bit of trickery here because Russian Railroads has about as much to do with the railroads thematically as a railroad themed deck of poker cards. Sure there are pictures of trains on the cards and game board, but mechanically speaking the game is so far removed from the theme it actually makes it feel a bit scandalous to use it.

Suffice to say this was a huge disappointment for me in particular since I love train stuff and I’m always on the lookout for an interesting take on railroad themed games. Russian Railroads is so focused on being a worker placement victory point puzzle that any element of the railroad theme gets virtually washed away and really even the game board itself from an artistic stand point is quite unclear what exactly the abstractions are supposed to be representing. You place workers on spots like 3 black spaces which allow you to move your black colored track, which I guess mean that you are building a section of the rail and the different colored tokens are different speeds or quality of rails? I don’t know, it’s all quite fuzzy even as an abstraction it makes little connection to the theme and even the manual makes little effort to explain or justify any element of that theme.  Its a all business Euro, you put down meeple workers to score points, what anything represents has little explanation or point to it.

At the end of the day, the theme here is almost completely non-existent, this game is a worker placement puzzle, you will not get to do any fun train stuff you might hope for given the cover and the claim on the box where “Players compete to build the largest and most advanced railway network”.   Given that the extent of competition is that you are denied a spot to put a worker when someone else already put one there, its hardly a competition.  Yeah ok, abstractions are abstractions, but I guess what I’m saying is that there is no sign of the economic, construction or chu-chu part of the railroad theme here. It’s a game about railroads because there are pictures of railroads on the game board and that really is the extent of the connection.

I think the disappointment comes mostly from the missed opportunities to leverage such a great theme.

Gameplay

Verdict:
Tilt: 

Pros: There is considerable variation in how the game plays with different amounts of players remaining as interesting with 2 players as it is with 3 or 4.

Cons: Very bland and basic worker placement mechanic with very few dynamics or surprises.

One would hope that a game that lacks theme makes up for it with great gameplay, in fact as far as worker placement games go, traditionally this is the case. Unfortunately Russian Railroads is banking largely on the popularity of the mechanic so heavily it fails on every other level to innovate or even make use of more updated existing innovations of the mechanic. It basically takes the core concept from its earliest conception, placing workers on spots that score points and takes it no further.

Before I start bitching, the good stuff. This is a solid implementation of the classic worker placement mechanic as far as the options you get. It feels tight and every action you take really counts, so you are put to some fairly difficult choices at times, though this sense of tough choices is short lived. It is a puzzle and a fairly complex one, which offers players plenty to experiment with and explore, which in turn makes the first few games of Russian Railroads pretty interesting for fans of worker placement games in particular. In fact, this may be the most complex and involved victory point mash I have seen yet and while it fails to inspire a theme or innovate in its genre by adding something new to the table, it does what it does very well.

Unfortunately that is not enough to carry the game,  it really landed very flat with me. In fact I think if you have played Voyage of Marco Polo, Lords of Waterdeep, Pillars of the Earth, Stone Age.. even Caverna, you will find the worker placement element of this game fairly bland and uninspired both from gameplay perspective and an objective design perspective. Sure it’s an interesting puzzle as all worker placement games generally are, but there isn’t a whole lot more to it, there is no dynamic or shifting options from game to game,  what you see on the surface in the first game is all there is and all there ever will be. Once that puzzle is solved, there really isn’t much else to draw upon.

The game really does boil down to you placing down workers and collecting victory points, there is almost nothing else going on in this game. Worse yet is that there are obvious patterns of play every round, where one player will grab the first player spot, one player will grab the money spot and one player will grab the available engineer, elements of the puzzle you will catch onto quickly in particular when playing with experienced players that know what they are doing. This pattern repeats itself in a round robin circus as this is the one and only good opening move to make in almost all cases and your order in this sequence determines which of the three choices you will make.

Sure there is some variance, occasionally an engineer is not worth taking, or you might be better of grabbing one of the other spots over going first next round or taking money, but in as a whole there is a sort of sequence of uninteresting events that open most rounds. From there you’re really just grabbing whatever spots are available that enhance the strategy you chose pretty much at the start of the game. Which brings me to the other problem, in almost all games once you figure out what Engineers you will get based on the round robin sequence you can calculate in advance you will know what strategy you will go with to the conclusion of the game and in essence prioritize what spots you will take each round with your workers. The strategy really then becomes about trying to figure out what your opponents strategy is (or will be) and taking beneficial action when you can and taking action to deny your opponent beneficial actions when you can’t take one for yourself.  I guess this is what qualifies as competition in Russian Railroads, but it feels less like a competition between Railroad Barons and more of a competition between two mathematicians.

Sure there is some interesting choices now and again and certainly when playing with experienced players this puzzle can become fairly complex and sometimes even dynamic. It isn’t enough to carry the game though, in particular since any choice you make will have some form of alternative so while you can sometimes slow opponents down you really can’t stop them. Experienced players will generally focus on simply finding the fastest route to their method of scoring and among experienced players the game really becomes more of a race.

This may draw some interest at first as you try to figure out the pattern in the novelty of it all, but after a couple of games you will have unlocked the puzzle and the game really becomes a monotonous game of choosing from many choices with one very obvious best option you must clearly make each time your action comes up. You feel neither like an operator of a railroad or like you’re making decisions and more like you are working according to a pre-ordained plan adjusting only when someone does something unexpected, typically when a less experienced player makes a mistake or a more experienced player catches on to your strategy and diverts his attention to blocking you rather than doing something beneficial for his own strategy.

The novalty wears of quickly with Russian Railroads. It’s unfortunate that Russian Railroads did not leverage some of the more interesting worker placement mechanics that came before it like Lords of Waterdeeps quest cards and Lord cards which could easily be adapted in Russian Railroads as Baron cards and mission cards just as an example. Instead Russian Railroads went with the very stuffy and largely uninteresting ultra-simple worker placement mechanic with little else driving it or evolving through the course of play. Other than the very limited engineers you don’t unlock anything interesting, there are no deviations, or randomized elements to mix things up and for the most part there is kind of a packing order of devolving options, getting less interesting with each passing round. Very dry stuff.

One of the big failures of Russian Railroads as well is that it’s really tough to catch up and very unfriendly to beginners, if a player gets ahead on points, in particular on the points earned per round where its cumulative, a game can be effectively over halfway through. This is something that happens quite easily in particular when experienced and inexperienced mix making this a poor choice for mixed groups.

You ultimately want to play with already experienced players, but as you’re showing people how to play they are going to have to drudge through 2 or 3 games before the strategies kind of click into place and they can offer something that resembles competition for you. Worse than that though is that the game is not intuitive despite being very simple, so it takes a couple of games before you have any idea how the engine works and it’s easy to make a mistake that will take several rounds to correct by which time, again, you are so far behind that the game is effectively over.

In the end the conclusion is that pretty much every worker placement game I have played in the last 10 years has better game play than this one and no one is more surprised than me because this game rates so high with so many reviewers and gaming communities. I was really kind of hoping to have found a gem in the rough. In particular something coming out of Z-man games.

Replay ability and Longevity

Verdict:
Tilt: 

Pros: You can play it for free on Yucuta.de with a wide variety of opponents of different skill levels allowing you to explore replay-ability of this game to its fullest extent.

Cons: You discover the game has virtually no replay-ability and thank Yucuta.de for saving you some money.

Another huge fail in my opinion and as a worker placement game this will have the greatest impact on the game’s final score. In short, there is very little longevity here.  After you have played this game 2 or 3 times there really is nothing of interest that will either surprise or delight you. I played this game at least 20 times to be sure, in fact I kept hoping that at some point I would discover some new strategy, some new puzzle piece or string to pull on but in the end it really is kind of a shallow game. I can’t recall a single memorable moment or a close game that wasn’t pre-ordained early on, In fact by round 2 or 3 I knew whether I would win or lose in most games and the final rounds where players largely just going through the motion.

I suppose the one nice element of the games replay-ability is that the game really changes a great deal when you play with different amounts of players. It’s a very different puzzle as the boards themselves are actually different for different player counts with 2, 3 or 4 players, so you could conceivably extend its life and explore the new challenges different amounts of players produce. In the end though, there just isn’t enough variation in the game to sustain multiple replays, given that there are so many wonderful worker placement games with innovative and interesting mechanics, a simplistic and straightforward variant like this really just doesn’t hold up.

Conclusion

Russian Railroads is a highly acclaimed and often well-spoken of game but like many Euro games I have a tough time explaining why that is. Like Settlers of Catan, Agricola, and Puerto Rico it just falls into that category of games where most people seem to love them and I just don’t. I really think as you read this review you have to consider the reviewer. If you love Agricola and Puerto Rico and don’t understand why someone doesn’t, Russian Railroads might turn out to be a great pick for you. I do think it’s worth pointing out however that there is a difference between disliking a game and objectively believing it’s a mediocre design. For example I do believe Agricola and Puerto Rico are or perhaps better to say were innovative designs for their time, If I reviewed them I would expect them, despite my dislike for them, to get good reviews from me. I guess the point I’m making is that I didn’t just look at Russian Railroads and decide I don’t like it and gave it a bad review, I think it really does lack the elements that great board games have. Whether I like it or not.

Russian Railroads is neither innovative, clever or interesting and I believe very objectively that it’s just not a very well designed game.

Sure it has good structure, it’s streamlined and balanced, but that’s not a selling point of a game in today’s world of designer board games, that is an expectation from every game. These are automatic. A great design must be innovative, must add something to the genre, must have some dynamics and cleverness to it. None of those descriptive terms can be applied to Russian Railroads, it is by very definition of the word a very status quo game, relying on the most basic elements of worker placement game design. Worse yet its implementation is so far removed from the theme, there is hardly a point of pretending that its somehow relevant to the game.

I can’t recommend this game, even to worker placement fans. The list of fantastic worker placement games is long and distinguished, Russian Railroads is just not among them.

Designers:  Antoine Bauza & Bruno Cathala

Final Score:  (2.5 out 5 Stars)

When 7 Wonders the card game originally released it did so to great acclaim and positive reviews. It was the talk of the town and it seemed like it was being played everywhere, all the time. When I finally got around to trying it, it sort of landed flat with me. It had some interesting mechanics and all together not a bad game but it just didn’t stir a whole lot of interest in me or my group. Hence when the opportunity to try 7 Wonders Duel I wasn’t expecting a whole lot out of it. Today we take a quick peek at this alternative two player version of 7 Wonders and see if its anymore interesting then the original.

Overview

In 7 Wonders players will be trying to build 4 Wonders by drafting cards from a structured card pyramid as part of a general effort to score the most points and/or win the game with an immediate victory by completing one of two objectives. It’s effectively a game about gathering resources then applying those resources to building things that either directly score or lead to scoring points. It’s the same premise as the original, but designed specifically for two players with some altered mechanics to make the core concept of 7 wonders work better as a two player game.

There are three different ways to win the game. The first is scoring the most points at the end of the game which is how most games will finish. The second and third is a science or military victory in both cases its effectively just about building sufficient amount of science or military cards to overwhelm your opponent. More difficult, but very possible alternatives.

The game shares many of the mechanics and concept from the original game so 7 Wonder players will take to the iconography and mechanics very quickly and of course being a two player game it’s much, much faster. There are however sufficient changes to the mechanics, most notably the way card drafting works that really make the game significantly different enough that liking its big brother doesn’t necessarily mean you will like this one and of course vice versus as was the case with me.

Components

Verdict:
Tilt: 

Pros: Good components made to last, nice clear art eases and streamlines play, good use of Iconography.

Cons: No complaints, they got it right in 7 Wonders and simply copied the same success to 7 Wonders Duels.

In essence the component quality is almost identical to that of 7 wonders, which is to say it’s built to last, shares the same art and maintains that bright eye candy feel. That said there is nothing particularly spectacular about the components, it’s clear that the design is largely geared towards clear functionality rather than anything else. Which is a good thing, since the game is so abstract it’s far more important to be able to identify and grasp the iconography and colorization of the cards then to be able to identify its thematic meaning.

I always look at component grades and ask myself, what could have been done better and the truth is outside of perhaps more focus on aesthetically appeal, this is effectively a card game with tokens and what is here is well thought out, organized, easy to identify and despite fairly heavy iconography actually very simple to deduce and adapt to. Easily a passing grade, but it’s not going to blow you away.

Theme

Verdict:
Tilt: 

Pros: The theme is mostly irrelevant to the success of the game, but Civilization building aesthetically works well.

Cons: This is an abstract game, the theme is very thin.

It’s an abstract card game about Civilization building but the extent of its abstraction really renders it mostly irrelevant and really as you play the game you are never going to have any sense of a theme. The art is there just to be pretty but the game really could have been about anything. The fact that it is about Civilization building however actually works quite well at least in terms of the aesthetic appeal.

In the end though you are not going to focus on the theme when playing this game, it really is all about the mechanics and play here.

Gameplay

Verdict:
Tilt: 

Pros: Simple to grasp, plenty of tactical decisions, doesn’t over stay its welcome.

Cons: While it has no major flaws that I was able to note the game itself wasn’t good enough for my personal shelf.

This is really where all of the 7 Wonder Duel thunder is. The game is very simple in terms of mechanics and the choices are never terribly hard but as a light card game it has some smarts and gamers and casual gamers alike are going to find plenty to contemplate.

The removal of the round robin card drafting in place of the pyramid drafting mechanic I think is golden, it’s actually the core reason I didn’t really care for the original 7 Wonders. I actually wish the original used this mechanic because it’s really a significant improvement. Memorization games are really not my thing and in the original game it was so vital to be able to keep track of what is in each deck that is passed around, in a 3 or 4 player game this became increasingly difficult to the point where you really almost ignore it and just pick the card you want dissipating any strategic intention of the card draft. In Duels with the pyramid drafting you are making decisions on information you have and that makes this a much smarter game.

The resource management, combat and science portion of the game works similar though not exactly as it did in 7 Wonders and these mechanics are really just straightforward and intuitive. The military and science victories are difficult to achieve because they are fairly easy to block, but often simply by threatening someone with one or the other victory forces their hand which can disrupt their plans and open up opportunities for you. This is a really clever system and it works well to create tension and tactical choices. In essence you often take cards you don’t need or absolutely have to take to block or slow down an opponent. It can sometimes get a bit mathy but usually decisions are driven by your strategy and/or by trying to block your opponent’s strategy. Same principle as 7 Wonders except you aren’t punished for having the memory of a gold fish, you make decisions based on what’s in front of you.

The game is also quick, I think we finished our first play in under 20 minutes, though I suspect as you become more skilled at the game your speed will actually reduce as you start to understand and ultimately analyze the information you’re presented with. Speed is important for card games, slow card games usually don’t work particularly well for me, especially abstract ones, so Duels really falls into that sweet spot of tactical choices and speed.

I have to admit, I’m at a loss to point out any major faults with the game, it really just comes down to how much I like it rather than a comparison of the good vs. the bad elements. I don’t think Duels is a game going into my collection but I certainly don’t mind playing it. The fact that it’s not going into my collection however is not the result of any portions of gameplay being bad, just that while interesting and fun, doesn’t really reach for the stars and I like to keep my collection tight. The only thing going in there are things that absolutely blow me away and Duels really didn’t ever hit that high. For fans of 7 Wonders though, I think this is going to be well worth the cheap retail price to get into.

Replay ability And Longevity

Verdict:
Tilt: 

Pros: Great dynamic game with plenty of strategies to explore.

Cons: It’s a simple card game, it got boring after just a few replays.

This is the mecha for Euro and abstract games especially, they really have to have solid replay ability and I actually think Duels does quite well here. Each game is going to be quite unique given the mixtures of Wonders, Cards and science tokens. Each game has to be approached with a “let’s see what we got” kind of approach, there is no puzzle to solve here, or at least not as far as the game is concerned as a whole goes. You certainly solve plenty of puzzles for each specific game, but that puzzle is very different every time.

The first time we played it I immediately wanted to play again and then again, so the game  starts out with that addictive Euro game nature, though its simplicity and speed make this a far better candidate for a phone app or online version rather than a game night type game. When we were done however, I feel fairly certain if I never play it again I won’t feel it’s absence which is not to say it doesn’t have replay ability, but definitely lacks longevity.  It just didn’t have anything particularly special about it that you would want to pull it out with any frequency. It’s a pretty decent 2 player filler for those nights when friends show up late.  In the end however we got bored really fast with it, I was tempted to give it 3 stars and I would have if I had any desire to play it again, but the magic is just not there.

Conclusion

7 Wonders Duel is 7 Wonders for 2 players, they have captured the same concept and made clever alterations to the existing 7 Wonders game for two players. I think you can say mission accomplished here because I’m pretty sure that is exactly what they were going for with this design. It’s a simple card game and while that really isn’t my thing, I do think most 7 Wonders fans are going to appreciate it. I did enjoy it a great deal more than 7 Wonders and more than I thought I would, in fact I will go out on a limb here and say that if you didn’t like 7 Wonders mechanically but liked it conceptually, Duels is a far better implementation and you might really enjoy this version of 7 Wonders. I think that’s largely due to the change in the drafting mechanic going from memorization style to the pyramid, decision, style mechanic.

It’s always hard to review simple card games because there isn’t much to say about them other than “yes I like it” or “No I don’t”, in the case of 7 Wonders Duel, it’s definitely a “Yes”, but no so much that I would clear shelf space for it.

 

Nations the board game is a perfect example of what I like to call board game evolution design, not to be confused with expansion or revolution, sometimes not even really innovation design. It takes a board game that is already beloved by many and applies modern, established design methods and mechanics to it, to create a new, more efficient more streamlined board game. This is often reflected in 2nd edition versions of games, for example Descent and Descent 2nd edition are clearly the result of evolution based design. Often however the original license holders never takes it upon themselves to re-invent their games, or in some cases they do but they make too many changes to call in a 2nd edition. This method of board game design we have seen quite a bit of in recent years. Some good examples are games like Agricola which evolved into Caverna, or RISK evolving into RISK legacy. There are countless examples of this and there is no question in my mind that Nations is an evolution design of Through The Ages, another Civilization building game. To write a review without comparing it to Through The Ages would be silly.

The thing about evolution design is that it’s not always a positive step forward, sometimes the newer design methods manage to create a more streamlined experience, but result is a lesser game. We are going to take a look at Nations today, compare it to Through The Ages and see how its evolutionary design fares. It’s not going to be easy, Through the Ages is a beloved game, sitting pretty on BoardGameGeeks top 10 list for a very long time and for good reason. It is a really great game, perhaps a bit niche but for lovers of complex civilization building games, Through The Ages represents the ultimate experience in the genre.

Nations is a board game of Civilization building using a variety of clever resource management, worker placement and card mechanics. There is no map, so like Through The Ages it is a very abstract experience. It’s really about who can manage their resources and respond to the dynamics of the game the best in the chase for victory points.

In Nations each player takes on the role of a Civilization during the age of Antiquity and manages It through four ages all the way to the Industrial age (roughly world war I). During the game you will purchase improvement cards for your civilization, manage your military strength, stability, heritage (think culture) and your population (your workers). You will build Wonders of The World, fight battles, conquer colonies, construct buildings and acquire great historical figures all through the heavy abstraction of card play. If that sounds familiar it’s because that is the exact same premise as Through the Ages and while many of the mechanics of the game actually differ, conceptually the two games are identical.

What’s Different
First and foremost we must note that as expected given the complexity of Through The Ages mechanics, Nations is a much simpler game, as it intends to be. One of the biggest complaints about Through The Ages is its complexity. Nations is easier to learn and teach, far easier to remember the rules and in as a whole very streamlined by comparison to the often clunky and rules heavy Through the Ages. The real question here is what is lost by this change and the simple answer is not much other than exactly what the intention of the changes are, that sometimes overwhelming complexity that Through The Ages is famous for.

I love Through The Ages don’t get me wrong but no matter how often I play it, I can never fully remember the rules and during a typical game of Through The Ages consulting the very heavy manual is so constant its really almost part of the game.

From a stand point of strategy, tactics and dynamics Nations is as infinite as it is subtle, same as Through The Ages is. If Through The Ages is difficult to learn, impossible to master, Nations is easy to learn but impossible to master. Nations manages to remove the rules complexity, without affecting that deep strategic, often mind melting experience of Civilization management that we got in Through The Ages. From this perspective alone, Nations gets an A+ in terms of achievement of its objective, which was to create a less complex version of Through The Ages.

The next big change is the addition of Asymmetrical play, now Through The Ages also had this but Nations takes it a step further by creating two key mechanics that allow for a wider variation of play. The first is that each Civilization has an A and a B side, the A sides are all the same so it allows for a game where everyone begins the game with the exact same starting conditions. While the B-side is unique to each Civilization representing a sort of historically presumed strength of that nation creating Asymmetrical play. This in itself allows a wider variation of play styles, you can have that “we all start even game” which is great, but offers that asymmetrical style if you so desire.

The other element is the dynamics of the improvement cards themselves. In Through The Ages, while the cards that come up would do so in different order, they would always all come up. This in a sense meant that while there was some dynamics, there was a fixed strategic element you could count on each game. In Nations there are far more cards available than will ever come up, so you cannot reliably align yourself to a single long term strategy, you really have to see what comes up and adapt accordingly. This does wonders for replay ability and creates different types of games where in some Military will be vital, while others stability or money will reign supreme. Sometimes there will be horrible food shortages across the board, other times there will heavy competition for Ore or Heritage. The point here is that you don’t know what to expect and you play the game that is in front of you not one that is theoretical and pre-planned. This change in Nations can be a bit frustrating for those coming from Through The Ages accustomed to building long term pre-planned strategies but for me personally this was a welcome addition to the game. It makes the game more dynamic with a far greater replay value.

It doesn’t stop there and this next part is where I think Nations really shines over Through The Ages. You have to figure that Nations like Through The Ages has a lot of strategic decisions you are constantly making. Over the course of many games you are going to get better and better at making those decisions, which creates a problem when playing against new players. Simply put, the first time you play you’re not going to be as good as the 2nd or 3rd time you play. So what do you do when you have 2 players who have a lot of experience, one that is a self-proclaimed master and one that has never played the game before? Nations answers this question with a mechanic that sets the level of each player, kind of a handy cap built into the game to help level the playing field. I love this addition and while you can certainly house rule such a mechanic into Through The Ages, its addition is an example of the evolution of Through The Ages design. It creates balance not just in the game itself but between the skill levels of the players.

Now anyone who has ever played Through The Ages knows that if you try to play a 3 or a 4 player game, you are settling in for a very long haul. We are talking 5+ hours minimum, far more if any of the players are new. In fact to make Through the Ages a game playable in a reasonable amount of time you really have to go two player which is a shame, since part of the fun of Civilization building is having lots of Civilizations. Nations again proves that with clever and streamlined mechanics you can create an epic experience without the epic time overhead as even with a 5 player game you aren’t likely to go over 3 hours. This is a HUGE boon for Nations, in particular that its precisely the length of time it takes to play Through The Ages that it almost never hits the table. No game in my collection has ever collected as much dust as Through The Ages does, even though everyone who has ever played the game at my house loved the experience. In fact the most common sentiment about Through The Ages is “I loved it, let’s never play it again”. More than that however Nations is a far more interactive game, there is virtually no downtime for anyone at any time. Each player takes one action, than the game moves forward. In Through The Ages a single players turn can take upwards of 10 minutes if you sprinkle in some Analysis Paralysis, so downtimes in a 3 or 4 player game can be excruciatingly long. In Nations things can move almost too fast sometimes, your constantly watching the board and anticipating your next action. It has a good flow and feels great.

The main result here is that these two games have two very different very distinct forms of re-playability. You have the dynamics of the improvement deck and the order in which they might come up in Nations, but you also have this element where you don’t know what strategies will be viable. You will have to determine that in the course of the play and even potentially change that strategy in response to what is going on, but not just game to game or round to round, but action to action as the actions of the players leading to yours can turn things upside down for you.

The result is a game that forces you to constantly re-evaluate the table, re-think, plan and execute strategies. This is a far cry from the much more predictable and stable Through The Ages and while some might actually not like this aspect of Nations because it can come off as random, it does present a game that is more opportunistic in nature. More importantly it creates a feeling of distinctively memorable ages in the course of the game as Military might be the big thing in the Antiquity age, but by the Medieval age building wonders becomes the THING to do. It’s just a more responsive experience, one that makes the game more thematic but even more importantly less predictable and more dynamic. This leads this very abstract game to feeling less abstract and more thematic.

Again Nations scores an A+ from me in the department of re-playbility, this subtle yet very important change pushes Nations into a more tactical and strategic game. To win you have to adapt your strategies for each game, each round and each action as opposed to adopting a strategy you apply to every game because it’s effective, a problem Through The Ages suffers from terribly.

Conclusion
Overall I think Nations beats Through The Ages in every single category you could use as a comparison. Its more streamlined, easier to learn, it has more strategic depth and far more varied tactical play, there is more interaction between players and that interaction is constant. There is less downtime, there is more replay ability, the game is faster and it can accommodate more players in a far shorter time.

I still think Through The Ages is a great game, very much deserving its praise and a home in your collection. I think however you will have a hard time introducing Through The Ages to a group that has played Nations. Nations is a game that feels right and brings to the forefront that same depth and harmonized Civilization building experience without all the overhead of Through The Ages and is far more thematic to boot.

In the end its about gameplay and experience. Nations is the clear winner here, because as much as I love Through The Ages epicenes, that epicenes sours a great deal when its enormity and complexity coupled with its excessive demands on your time result in a game that you love but never play. Nations fixes this problem and its designer has created a more approachable and viable game for your gaming group. Sure we could nit pick at nations and point out some of the interesting albeit complex mechanics that have been removed that are part of what gave Through The Age’s feel. I certainly understand people who notice and recognize that, but again, if no one wants to play a game in your group because it takes too long and its too complex, even if it’s a great game it doesn’t do anyone any good.

Nations is a winner, one that I think will land on my top 10 games list in the future. I give it my highest recommendation with the caveat that like Through The Ages it is still a very niche game. Its still a heavy Euro and that is something you really need to be into in order to enjoy it.

Designer: Paolo Mori

Libertalia is really a big surprise to me, it’s a game from a designer who’s games have not really hit with me in the past. I found Paolo Mori’s previous games to always come up short in the fun department even though games like Rise of Augustus and Vasco Da Gama featured interesting topics and mechanics, they were a bit of a drag. Libertalia is clearly Paolo Mori’s best game to date and has gained a fair amount of popularity and praise from some respected reviewers. I got an opportunity to finally try this little card game and while I went into it with limited expectations and a “sure let’s try it” attitude, after a single turn of the game it immediately got my attention.

In Libertalia you are a pirate captain who along with other captains (other players) has just captured and plundered a ship. Now it’s time to split up the loot and the game-play is a sort of card driven negotiation of that activity where you try to get the most amount of treasure from the plunder for yourself by playing pirate theme character cards with a wide variety of special powers.

The game-play is broken down into three days, presumably three separate ships that you capture as a group. During each day players will negotiate for treasure on that ship, broken down further into 6 turns, effectively 6 plays of cards. Each player will receive 9 identical cards from a deck of 30 cards numbered from 1 to 30. For each turn random bounty tokens are drawn for that turn of play, these bounty tokens are treasure from the plunder each with its own value, but also includes cursed treasure, treasure maps and a few specialty tokens. This is what your negotiating for. The goal of the game is to claim as many doubloons (victory points) at the end of the day as possible, the player with the most victory points at the end of 3 rounds (3 days of play) wins the game.

Claiming bounty tokens is very simple. Each player selects a card represented by a pirate themed character from his hand of 9 cards and plays it face down. When everyone has chosen a card, the cards are revealed and put in ascending order. Than starting from the player with the highest number, you take 1 treasure of your choice. Simple right!

The catch is that each of these cards are actually characters, each with unique special powers. These powers vary is strength, but in those powers lays the bulk of the strategy. The trick to the game is that powers are executed in reverse order (from lowest numbered card to highest), so while playing the highest numbered card will yield you first pick at the treasure, the lowest card numbers have their abilities triggered first. These abilities can impact characters, victory point earnings and have all manner of special effects so by the time all the powers are executed some of the characters may have been removed, players may have already scored points or taken a variety of special actions that shift things in their favor.

The game is really about trying to guess what cards other players will play and playing your cards in a manner that will benefit you and screw everyone else the most. It’s also knowing which cards to save for later, a lot of this game is about timing. You know what the nine cards everyone has (at least in the first round) so it’s really about just trying to guestimate how your opponents will approach each of the turns in a 1 day round. You can only play any card one time and that card will either be added to your Den (your play area) which coincidently can result in added effects as some cards have effects that take place from the Den or they will be removed. In either case you will only play them once (in most cases) so you must choose wisely.

Now you will only play 6 of the 9 cards in your hand and in the next round (the next day) players will get a new set of 6 identical cards. Hence by the second round of the 9 cards only 6 of those cards in the players hands are identical. This happens again in the 3rd round so things become a bit more chaotic as players not only consider what cards to play in any given turn, but what cards to save for future rounds.

There are many effects that transpire during the course of a round, characters will be eliminated, resurrected, create lasting effects, help players score points, put curses on other players (minus victory points). All of these effects are based on the cards so certainly anyone familiar with the game has a clear advantage but it doesn’t take more than one or two plays of the game to get a grip around what is possible so the game goes from “learning how to play” and “playing with strategy” for any given player after a game or two.

Libertalia is a game that is very simple to learn to play but nearly impossible to master. The complexity of the moving parts and trying to make predictions is very rewarding when you succeed and heartbreaking when you fail, but it’s not a game of guessing, it really is a mind game of prediction and reaction to what has already been played and what can be played in the future. There are a lot of surprises and “oh shit” moments in the game, it has that spark a lot of great strategy games I love have like Dirk Henn’s shogun where there is a period of quiet contemplation with a sudden burst of energy and chaos after a revelation. The more players the more chaotic and difficult it is to make predictions, but to me this really makes the game more fun. The game plays 2 to 6 players, but I think the sweet spot is 4 to 6 players.

It’s a fast, relatively short game, the box says 45 minutes and that is quite accurate and once everyone knows how to play I think it can be even faster than that. (the first game might take a little longer).

Libertalia is a game that scratches that hard core gamer in me, it’s got the depth of a very solid and thinky strategy game, but is so simple and social enough with a familiar theme (pirates) to be welcomed as a after dinner party game you can pull out with none gamers. It has energy and excitement built into that moment of revelation of the cards and I think this does wonders for the atmosphere it creates. It really has those longevity legs as well, it’s a game that gets better with repeated plays and is just short enough that in can almost be used as a filler. I was really surprised on how quickly I became enamored with it, in particular given that this designer’s games have landed so flat with me in the past. Now some might say this game is a kind of watered down Caylus, which I suppose one could make that argument but I personally never cared for Caylus so the fact that I really like this one says to me that the games are distinctively different enough.

I’m not sure one could say the game is thematic, it has a solid theme which really comes through in the art work which is nothing short of amazing, but you’re not really doing much piracy stuff. It really is just a kind of estimation, logic card game which could easily be layered with any sort of theme you like. I think choosing a pirate theme for this game was a smart idea though because pirates are kind of that universal theme that gamer or not you can get behind. Fantasy themes and science fiction themes typically don’t land well with none gamers, but pirate themes in my personal experience don’t have that “we are nerds playing a board game” social stigma.

I highly recommend Libertalia in particular for any gamers out there trying to get non-gamers into the fold. It’s a really clever yet simple game that can function really well as a gateway game, but it has the muscle and depth of a solid game for hardcore gamers. I honestly believe this to be one of the best games to be released in 2012, a solid contender for my top 10 entry level games, I’m certain if I did the list today it would find placement there. It might even breach my top 10 best games in the future, I really like it that much.