Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization by Vlaada Chvátil is the 2015 refresh of 2006’s Through the Ages: A Story of Civilization. This is a semi-abstracted take on the Civilization building genre of games, and I feel it does a phenomenal job imparting the feeling of progress to players and simulating a civilization building game.
In Through the Ages, players are trying to build the best civilization through resource management, developing new technologies, appointing appropriate leaders, building wonders, maintaining a strong military, and developing a culture. A failure in any of these areas can and will be exploited by your opponents.
Through the Ages takes players right from the age of antiquity all the way up to the modern era. The primary mechanic of Through the Ages is card drafting. Everything in Through the Ages is represented by a card that you have to take. Cards flow through a river, refilling and cycling at the end of each player’s turn. The newest cards to be available cost 3 actions to take, while the cards that have been on the table for a few turns may only cost a single action to take.
Beginning with Despotism as your system of government, philosophy for science, bronze as your best resource, and the barest thoughts of religion and agriculture, you’ll slowly grow and expand your civilization in different ways. There are lots of thematic touches in Through the Ages, such as having a peaceful change of government, or the violent revolution. Corruption siphoning resources out of your stockpiles, and famine causing workers to fall idle, everything in the game just makes sense when put in the context of a civilization game. That said, the theme falls away pretty quickly as you spend your turns min/maxing the options available to you, and how you can maximize your numbers.
All of the systems of Through the Ages are linked together. If you want to build a new building, you’ll need a citizen and some resources to build it. If you need more citizens, you’ll need to spend food to bring them into your civilization (and pay an upkeep, depending on how many workers you have). If you want to discover new technologies, you’ll need to earn science, if you have a large population, you need to keep them happy through religion and entertainment. As I said before, it’s vital to keep everything at a good balance, as any bottleneck will cripple your progress.
Another major aspect to consider is military. While having a strong military presence won’t outright win you any games, having a weak military will almost certainly cause you to lose. I’ve often found the rule of Mutual Assured Destruction can apply here. If no one has a military, no problem. But as soon as one player starts to arm themselves, everyone else must invest in their own military to keep pace. Should you choose to neglect your military, you may find yourself having your resources and/or food stolen, your science points stolen, your leaders killed, your wonders destroyed, or your culture siphoned away. I think it’s important to highlight here that conflict isn’t resolved by rolling dice, or moving units on a map. It’s literally just comparing your strength numbers, which the defender can augment by spending cards. Most of what Through the Ages is at the end of the day, is pushing numbers up and down.
There’s a lot of depth in Through the Ages, which makes each play more and more satisfying. I don’t consider myself particularly enthusiastic about Civilization, mostly because I tend to not enjoy direct conflict in my games. I really like how Through the Ages approaches player interaction. How everyone needs to keep each other in check, and if someone leaves their front gate open, you’re obliged to sack their court.
After dozens of plays on Board Game Arena and the app, I can confidently say that the digital version of Through the Ages is the way to go. Managing tokens, sliding cards, and keeping track of resources and scores in the physical game is clunky. In the digital form, these issues vanish, letting you focus on the puzzle-like strategy that makes Through the Ages such a cerebral delight.
And what a cerebral puzzle Through the Ages is. needing to manage so many aspects of your empire, and the consequences for mismanagement spreading throughout every other aspect, creates a tense and exciting game. The ravages of time will reduce your surplus population and leaders will die, forcing players to pivot and adapt instead of running a single strategy right from the start of the game. You’ll need to decide between building more mines or farms, but if you don’t have resources you can’t build farms, but if you don’t have food, you can’t staff your mines. Everything is pulling for your attention, and how you manage each of these pulls will determine who comes out as the victor.
As I said above, I don’t consider myself a civilization connoisseur. I’m a euro gamer at heart, and Through the Ages is firmly in the euro game category for me. It does feel unintuitive to streamline the whole of history into a card river and the technological advancements from bronze to iron as just numbers on a card. But even with thematics as a weak point, Through the Ages is a great game. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it to anyone who likes to burn their brain a little bit, and I’ve been the direct instigator for a few people to buy the app on their phone (and their productivity at work taking an immediate plunge). I don’t think I would recommend to anyone to pick up and play the physical game. It’s certainly not impossible, but there are pain points that get smoothed away when Through the Ages becomes a video game. If you like big board games and haven’t tried Through the Ages yet, you owe it to yourself to give this a try.
We’ve arrived at my favourite 10 games of all time (as of March 2020). I did not anticipate how long this series would go when I started it over a year ago.
It’s been nice reflecting on my favorite games, verbalizing why I like each one so much. A few of the games descriptions were enough to peak my wife’s interest, which always makes me happy.
I’ve played a lot if games over the last two years, and while this list will have changed quite a bit, I know that these top 10 are firm in their spots. It would take something pretty special to come a dislodge any one of these from the pantheon of my top 10 games of all time.
10 – Glen More II: Chronicles
Glen More by Matthias Cramer was one of the few games that I lamented ‘missing’ out on when I first got into the board game hobby. Our local board game cafe had a copy and I loved it. I really enjoy how the scoring is all based on how well you’re doing in certain aspects compared to the other players, and I love the push and pull of selecting tiles to add to your tableau. Leaping ahead to grab the best tiles is tempting, but then players who take their time have a much better chance of growing a strong whiskey engine. Alas, by the time I became a Board Gamer™ Glen More was out of print
Glen More II: Chronicles takes everything that I enjoyed about the original game, adds some gorgeous art, and throws in a boat load of discovery. While the new clan board is not my favourite addition, I love that there are 8 expansion modules in the box that can be mix and matched for a unique game every time we play.
Glen More II is the game we play on Robbie Burns night after feasting on Haggis and drinking scotch. It plays well at 2 and 4, and is a very satisfying experience every time it hits my table. Because Glen More II is the game we play during a special event, it ends up holding a very special place in my heart.
9 – Scythe
If you’ve been paying attention to my list, you’ll notice that there aren’t very many games that offer direct player combat. Scythe by Jamey Stegmaier is one of the few board games where conflict is the main focus that I really enjoy.
I’ve often said that Scythe is a ‘cold war game’, meaning that the threat of combat is often more important than the combat itself. Military posturing and threats go a long way in this game about farmers and mechs.
While my friends enthuasim for Scythe is infectious, what really cemented Scythe for me was playing through the Rise of Fenris campaign. Playing Scythe over and over again each week and finding new statagies and discovering the emergent storytelling from the gameplay brought me so much joy. I look forward to every game I play of Scythe, and I’ll never forget one game where I managed to win the whole game, while losing every single combat levied against me!
8 – Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization
It feels very odd to have a game that I adore so much and have so high on top games of all time list that I’ve never played in person.
That’s right, I’ve never actually played a physical copy of Vlaada Chvátil’s civilization building card game Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization. What I have done is played dozens of games on Board Game Arena, and even more on the excellently designed Android app.
While my win rate is absolutely abysmal (3 victories in 25 games), I enjoy every play. Each game has a feeling of progression and momentum that other games can only hope to emulate. Oddly enough there isn’t a whole lot of discovery in Through the Ages as you’ll see every single card in each game, but there is so much depth to mine. Given enough thought and smarts you absolutely can master this system and prove your superiority over all who dare oppose you.
7 – Race for the Galaxy
Race for the Galaxy by Thomas Lehmann is another Board Game Arena obsession that I’ve almost never played on the table (2 physical plays!). The BGA implementation is slick, fast, and with a very healthy player base it takes no time to find an opponent and games almost never last longer than 10 minutes.
Race for the Galaxy is a tableau building card game, laden with iconography not for the faint of heart. Of course, once you crack the code and understand the logic of the icons, you can ascertain what each card does at a glace, but this can Race for the Galaxy can be intimating for new players.
I find RtfG best at 2 players as it’s quick, exciting, and strategic. If you have a gaming partner who is near the same skill level and enthusaiam as you are, I’d highly recommend picking up Race for the Galaxy and playing a half dozen times in quick succession.
6 – Concordia
Concordia by Mac Gerdts is probably best known for it’s somewhat controversial (read, bad) cover art. While later editions updated the art (although some people still detest it), the game inside has always been a wonder to behold. Concordia was one of the first games to introduce positive player interactions to me. Whenever a player activates a province to produce resources, they activate every building within that province, which could land your opponents with a sudden windfall of goods.
I also really enjoy the action selection mechanic, where you have hand of cards, each one offering you a different action, and as you play the cards to take their action they just sit beside your player board, waiting for their chance to strike again. One of the cards in your hand will be to retreive all your cards, which is almost skipping a turn just to get access to all of your actions again!
We most often play Concordia with the Salsa expansion which includes player powers, one time benefit tiles, and the special wild ‘salt’ resource. There are many maps available as well for those who crave a little variety in their Mediterranean resource trading games.
5 – Istanbul
Istanbul by Rüdiger Dorn is my favourite game that I don’t own. And it’s a bit of a tragedy too because it’s a fast, light, excellent game where players are racing to collect 5 gems from various merchants around the turkish bazaar. Each player begins with their merchant disc and a stack of assistants. As you move around the board you deposit assistants and take actions. Should you return to that location again you can collect your assistant and take the action again. The catch is if you don’t have an assistant to drop off or pick up at a location, you don’t get to take the action!
It always feels odd when the goal of the game is to stop playing as soon as possible, but in the case of Istanbul, the potential for an incredibly short game exists. Filling your cart with 5 rubies first can be done in as little as 18 actions (depending on the tile layout and how much your opponents are getting in your way). I find Istanbul charming and incredibly replayable. I love shuffling the location cards, dealing them out at random, then try to find the most efficient route to claiming those precious rubies.
Two expansions exist for Istanbul, but I don’t find them necessary. Expanding the number of action spaces can make this game tedious to play. The only reason I haven’t priortised getting a copy of Istanbul into my collection is because two of my close friends already own it, and the last thing I want is for our collections to start overlapping. If I ever moved away from this game group however, this is would be one of my first purchases!
4 – Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King
The eagle eyed observer may have noticed some glaring omissions. I don’t know why, but I seem to love when Alexander Pfister and Andreas Pelikan work together. I really enjoyed Broom Service and I love Isle of Skye. There’s not many bidding games on my list, because I keep coming back to this one! I adore the variety in scoring objectives (especially after I got the expansions that included even more), I love how simple the base gameplay is, and I even enjoy cursing my friends when they pitch the perfect tile back into the bag.
7 Wonders Duel by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala is the game that my wife and I played together the most. we bought it early in our board game career, when we were coming off the high of discovering that board games could actually be fun and exciting! We had played the 2 player version of 7 Wonders and found it fell flat as we really didn’t enjoy managing a dummy player.
7 Wonders Duel was one of the first games I chose to review, mostly because I love it so much. It’s small enough that it can fit on a coffee table and deep enough that it can withstand dozens of repeated plays. There’s an android app available, and a wealth of players on BoardGameArena if you’re seeking a variety of opponents.
2 – Galaxy Trucker
Galaxy Trucker by Vlaada Chvatil is the game that divides my group. Myself and Bigfoot absolutely adore the chaos and insanity that Galaxy Trucker revels in. Otter is somewhat luke-warm on it and Bear detests this game. He’s proclaimed that he’d rather take up knitting than play Galaxy Trucker.
In Galaxy Trucker players are racing to build the best ship they can, full of guns, storage containers, engines, batteries, and crew cabins. Once constructed, ships are run through a gauntlet of asteroids, space pirates, epidemics, and wide open space. The players to manage to survive and deliver their goods earn credits and at the end of the game anyone with at least one credit is a winner! Of course, some players will win more than others!
The chaos and randomness will either draw players in, or chase them away. Personally, I find myself laughing uproariously when a single stray asteroid cleaves your ship in half, but for some, that pain is too much to bear. There is also a run-away leader problem where often the players who are struggling get punished for struggling. Even with those criticism in mind, Galaxy Trucker lands in the number 2 slot of my top 100 games of all time.
1 – Food Chain Magnate
Food Chain Magnate is the game that excites me the most. Almost the anthesis of Galaxy Trucker in that there is nearly no randomness. I’ve talked in depth about Food Chain Magnate recently, but it’s one that generates the most excitement when sitting down to play.
Every game of Food Chain Magnate feels unique. I can pursue the same strategy over and over and have wildly different results every time. Because Food Chain Magnate is highly interactive and so much of doing well in this game relies on anticipating what your opponents are planning and capitalizing on their actions, simply following the same pattern in every game will quickly lead your opponents to knowing exactly where your weaknesses lie.
I could literally talk about Food Chain Magnate for hours, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll just thank you for reading to the end of my top 100 games of all time as of March 2020! It’s been quite a journey actually sitting down and writing my impressions of each of these games. Some I haven’t actually played for a couple years but writing about them renewed my desire to get them back to the table! I hope you had as much fun as I did!
Soon I’ll make a post about some of the more radical changes that have happened in my top 100 list, like how Bullet<3 debuted at number 7!
Race for the Galaxy is a tableau building game for 2-4 people designed by Thomas Lehmann. In Race for the Galaxy each player secretly chooses one of the actions they want to perform (2 actions if playing a 2 player game). The chosen actions are revealed simultaneously, and each player gets to perform each of the actions chosen by all players, with the person who chose the action getting a small benefit.
There is a interesting history of this game and how it relates to Puerto Rico, but I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to tell you that Race for the Galaxy is a masterclass in engine building game design, and a 2 player game of Race for the Galaxy only takes 9 minutes on Boardgamearena.com. It’s amazing the quality of game design that has been achieved by Thoman Lehmann in such a small playtime. Factors such as tense decisions and satisfying resolutions contribute greatly to the game’s success. Most engine building or civilization building games take a lot of time to play (usually a couple of hours per game), so the fact that Race for the Galaxy can award its players with feelings of growth and achievement while boasting a shorter playtime is attractive to someone who doesn’t always have as much time to play games as he would like.
The BGA implementation of Race for the Galaxy also includes several expansions; The Gathering Storm, Alien Artifacts, and Xeno Invasion are some of the ones that I’ve tried, and the community is very healthy. I’ve never had to wait longer than a couple minutes for a game. I will say it is intimidating when playing against someone with over 3,000 plays, but when a game ends in 9 minutes, you can get crushed and just start again from scratch without any hard feelings.
Can’t Stop – 59 games
Can’t Stop is a push your luck game about rolling dice and moving up tracks. On your turn you roll 4 die, pair them up in any way you’d like, and progress on those tracks that match the numbers you have chosen. During your turn, you move black pieces that represent temporary progress. Once you’ve moved the black pieces up the track, you can choose to stop and save your progress, or you may roll again and continue moving up the tracks. Roller beware! If you happen to roll something that does not match your chosen numbers for that turn, all of your progress for that turn is lost and play passes to the next player. When you successfully reach the top of a column, you win that column (so long as you stop and save your progress), and no other players may continue climbing that number. The first player to win 3 columns is the winner!
Can’t Stop tends to be the game we play while we’re waiting for someone to join the group. It’s fast to play, and I enjoy chanting the name of the game as someone makes 12 rolls in a row, climbing higher and higher, only to bust and waste all of their progress. It creates some excellent moments.
Jaipur – 30 games
Jaipur, designed by Sébastien Pauchon, is a card drafting hand management game for 2 players. You each take turns collecting resources from the card row, either trading your existing cards or taking 1 card on its own. Eventually you sell your cards in sets, gaining tokens that represent victory points. The game ends when 3 of the 6 resources have been depleted.
I’ve always loved well-designed 2 player games, and Jaipur absolutely fits that bill. Jaipur is the kind of game where you and a friend can play dozens of games with each other and still find ways to upset the developing meta. There is plenty of luck in the game, so if a game doesn’t go your way you don’t feel too bad about the loss. Having said that, there is enough strategy that I have a 60% win rate (that sounded a lot more impressive in my head).
Through the Ages – 25 games (plus 8 games of through the ages: A new Story of Civilization)
Through the Ages is another one of those games that makes me question the distinction between board games and card games (although I also question whether the distinction is necessary). Through the Ages is a card drafting civilization game that takes you and up to 3 opponents from the age of antiquity all the way through to the modern ages. Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization is a remake of the game that rebalances a lot of the cards, adjusts a few of the mechanics, and adds some nice new art.
I’ve only played a physical game of this once, and it took hours to play. There are 30 tiny wooden cylinders to represent your citizens and resources, and tracks that need to be managed for each player to represent culture (points), military strength, and knowledge. Also, some of the turns can be quite involved, with lots of things chaining off one another. It’s awful when you get to the end of a 7-action turn only to realize you’re one stone short and need to start over from the beginning. The BGA implementation has completely replaced the tabletop version of this game for me, as I find that not needing to deal with the fiddly little bits and counting up all the various places that you get resources from makes the game much more enjoyable. On BGA, Through the Ages takes about 45 minutes to play, although it does play asynchronously very well and I would highly recommend it.
7 Wonders – 29 games
7 Wonders is a card drafting civilization building game where each player is trying to make their civilization the best in the world. The game consists of three decks of cards, each representing its own age. Each deck is divided into the number of players present. During play, each player will choose a card from their hand, then pass the rest of the cards to the next player. Choose wisely! You may see the cards you pass away again, but only after everyone else has had the opportunity to pick through and take what they want.
BGA has an excellent implementation of 7 Wonders that I’ve been using to bring my family together over the last year. The interface is easy to navigate and all the necessary information is readily available. The real strength of BGA is that it manages all of the rules for you. There’s no worry of someone accidently cheating by building the same card twice or ‘forgetting’ to pass the necessary coins to their neighbour. And when an easy-to-play game supports up to 7 players, I can get my entire family involved!
7 Wonders Duel – 21 plays
I’ve already gushed about 7 Wonders Dueland how much I enjoy it. It’s a fantastic 2-player card drafting game where you’re building your civilization head-to-head against your opponent. This is another instance where playing on BGA is fast and easy. A very active game, you’ll have no problem finding players to face off against, and a entire game should only last 10 – 15 minutes, assuming neither player goes AFK for some reason.
This is one of the few games where I dabbled BGA’s Arena mode. Arena mode is a competitive mode where you can earn points on each game you play and achieve higher ranks, proudly displaying your achievement to the world. Having a higher rank does nothing tangible, other than letting you show off how big your dick hat is.
BGA has the Agora expansion available to play right now, and the Pantheon expansion (which is a must play for experienced players) is currently in Alpha.
Targi – 16 games
Oh look, another 2-player only game on my list. Can you tell that I have a type?
Targi, designed by Andreas Steiger, is a cut-throat worker placement/set collection game. On your turn you place your 3 workers on spaces along the outside of the board. When all 6 workers have been placed, you draw a line from each of your workers and place a wooden cylinder where those lines would intersect. You then take all 5 of those actions in the order of your choosing. As an added twist, the game has a robber piece that moves around the board, and players may not place a worker on the same card that the robber occupies.
In Targi you’re trying to collect resources and spend them on tribe cards to place them into 3 rows in front of you. At the end of the game you get bonus points if all the cards in a row are the same suit, or if they’re all different suits (some of the cards will give you bonus points based on the cards and their positions in your row).
The cut-throat aspect of the game comes from maneuvering your workers to block the spaces your opponent so desperately needs, as you can’t place a worker directly across from another worker (after all, how would those lines intersect?). You’re constantly weighing the costs and benefits of spending your precious few workers. Should you claim a card that you desperately want? Or should your first action be to deny your opponent their needs? Targi is finely crafted and a joy to play, especially if your friend is willing to engage in some light trash talk, and won’t take it personally when you ice them out from a specific card for three turns in a row.
