Through the Ages: A four-sided game review

Through the Ages is a civilisation building card game by Vlaada Chvatil that takes players on an epic ride from antiquity to the present day.

While war plays a large and important part in the game* there is no actual map, or dice – interaction is instead played out through card play.

There are three versions of the game in the rulebook, ranging from simple through to full, but the first two are really just warming you up (in terms of understanding the rules) for the main event. Through the Ages is a serious time investment (four-plus hours, even two-player) but if you’re willing to give it a try you’ll find a hugely rewarding tactical and strategic gem waiting for you.

While it’s not the biggest game box in the world, there’s a ton of game packed into it: there are more than 340 small-sized cards, 300 small wooden counters and cubes, plus boards and reference cards. It will set you back £45+, but I think it’s a fair price both in terms of components and play value. The art is pretty poor, but the card stock is great and the graphic design efficient and simple to understand.

It’s not for the feint of heart, but nor is it a war game – you’ll draft leader, wonder, building, government, technology, military and action cards and manage your resources as you advance your civilisation; all the time trying to score points while keeping your opponents in check by staying close to them in the race for military domination. It’s an impossible balancing act, giving the game a marvellous ebb and flow.

Teaching

As mentioned earlier, the game has three versions which slowly introduce different rules and card types as you move forward. This makes it easy to teach experienced gamers, especially as the game concepts are pretty familiar.

Each round (after the first) players may use their political action to play a ‘future event’ for later, triggering a current event which will reward and/or punish players who are doing well/poorly in a particular way – for example the player with the strongest civilisation may get to produce extra goods. They can also use the political action to start an aggression or war, or offer a pact.

Players then use ‘civil’ actions to advance mining, science, farming and religion to increase building materials and technology (allowing building upgrades), population size and happiness (allowing population growth) and military might. Governments give extra actions, while leaders, technologies, ‘action’ cards and wonders give a variety of bonuses.

Civil actions are also used to increase population, lay technology, wonder and leader cards, put your population to work or upgrade them. Military actions – you guessed it – do the same with your military units.

Everything to do with civil and military actions is done openly, so it’s simple to watch and help new players through their turns.

Through the Ages has relatively little hidden information, so its simple for the teacher to explain cards as they come up.

New cards are ‘bought’ (with actions) from a shared conveyor belt-style track, with newly added cards costing more actions (from one to three). Military cards do go straight into your hand blind, but aren’t terribly varied and can be roughly explained before you begin.

Game concepts fit well into the theme, while the central game board lets you keep information on your military strength, science (for advancing technologies) and culture (victory) points. Each player also has a player aid listing all of the actions available in each phase of each round.

Player boards are well set out, and the wording on the cards leads to very few grey areas. The only real problem area is the Territory cards, which tend to contain rather obscure icons which aren’t explained in the rulebook. However there is a good Excel doc available from Board Game Geek which explains them in plain English.

The four sides

These are me, plus three fictitious amalgams drawn from observing my friends, and their respective quirks and play styles.

• The writer: Through the Ages is the board gaming equivalent of spinning plates; just as you get your science points going, you realise you’re running out of food – but by the time you have that back on track you’re falling behind on military – but getting that up to speed means you have to forgo a materials upgrade. It’s a delicious, epic and challenging balancing act that tells a different story every time.
• The thinker: Its rare you find a game that has the perfect mix of tactics and strategy, but this is one of them. You’d think it impossible to create a ‘civ’ game without a board, but Vlada has managed it with aplomb. Specialise at your peril, but spread the wealth at your peril too – your long term plans are constantly being altered by both the actions of your competitors and the run of available cards.
• The trasher: Through the Ages is a bit much for me, but is clearly a great game. I love the future events: you play cards, predicting the later game state and hoping you can be in the right position when they’re triggered. So satisfying when it works, but devastating when your own cards blow up in your face! But overall, the short game doesn’t offer enough military fun and the long game is simply too long for me.
• The dabbler: no way! No no no. I tried it once – you can’t make me play it again! It has great flavour, carries the theme well, but I am not playing a game that takes longer than the entire games evening on its own!

Key observations

Of well over 3,000 Board Game Geek comments, Through the Ages has 500+ perfect 10 scores – which should be enough to convince you its a great game. Even by half way through the comments, people are still rating it 8. However, it’s certainly not for everyone. Not by a long chalk!

Game length is clearly an issue for many, but another problem is downtime – especially in a four-player game (which I wouldn’t attempt again). I enjoy a two-player game but three is definitely the sweet spot, which adds quite a bit to the play time. One plus side is the fantastic Through the Ages online version. Initially the layout looks troublesome and weak, but it actually plays really smoothly once you get to grips with it.

Another problem is the importance of the military aspect of the game*. Players who aren’t keen on confrontation need not apply, but its not just them: others think the military aspect is either tacked on as a balancing mechanism or is overpowered. It’s true that if someone falls behind on military and is picked on by the other players, it can be impossible for them to recover – particularly punishing in such a long game.

Finally, some describe Through the Ages as nothing more than  a spread sheet rather than a game – a dry, themeless affair that is way too fiddly for its own good. The fiddly criticism is true, and there is a lot of bookkeeping, but this can be done by a player at the end of their turn while the next player gets on with theirs, so it’s not so bad. But again, if you don’t like fiddly bookkeeping games you may want to avoid it.

Conclusion

Through the Ages is the last game in my all-time top 10 that I’ve tackled for review and I’ve definitely been reluctant to do so.

It feels impossible to do such an epic game justice in 1,500 words – especially when you know many people simply won’t like it.

But if you like civ and/or engine building games – or more specifically ‘engine building and then maintaining aggh god I can’t do everything at once’ games – and are happy to be in for the long haul, this is a must-try.

I definitely lose more games of TtA than I win and I’m not sure I’ll ever be a good player. There’s so much to think about, so much to plan, so many options – and that’s before you’ve even started to think about what your opponents have planned for you. But even in defeat I tend to walk away from the table thoroughly gamed-out and satisfied.

Is downtime an issue? Sure, a bit. Is military overpowered? Probably. Are some combos simply too good to stop? Sometimes. Will this game be staying on my shelves for the foreseeable future, even if I only get to play once or twice a year and I lose every time?

Absolutely.

* There is a ‘peaceful’ variant of the game some people play, but personally I can’t see the point. It’s such a huge part of Through the Ages that to take it out seems ridiculous – if you don’t want any player conflict in your games, I’d highly advise you to look elsewhere.

Deus: A four-sided game review

Deus is a civilisation building board/card game that mixes tableau building with a little bit of tactical play on a modular board.

The game is good for two to four players and only takes about an hour with two (up to two with more) which is impressive for a game that does give you that civ-building feel in a package much shorter than normal.

What it doesn’t do is span the generations. You’ll be firmly set in the classical era, building temples and academies while fighting barbarians. There is also limited player interaction in the form of military units, but they’re used to snipe small numbers of victory points and resources rather than take board position. Combat is certainly not essential.

While the quality of Deus’ art and design style are open to debate (see ‘key observations’ below) the card and board stock are good quality and the graphic design is clean (£35-40 seems a fair price). The modular board makes for a slightly different game experience each time, and while the cards are a little limited in terms of variety (I very much hope card expansions beckon) the way you can combo them still makes each game very interesting.

Teaching

Most gamers will soon pick up what’s going on in Deus, but that’s not to say it lacks originality. It uses familiar mechanisms but in ingenious ways, which seems to be at the heart of most of the best recent games. It’s a bit more than a gateway game, but I’d put it in the light-to-medium complexity range.

It’s very much a ‘cards with words’ game, but Deus has an elegance and simplicity that mean most cards only have about 10 words to read – and better still, I’ve had no one so far questioning the meaning of this text. In terms of teaching, it’s joyfully simple.

On your turn you have two choices: play a card to your tableau and matching building to the board (you have to have the correct building type to be able to play the card), or discard some/all of your cards to gain a special action (which is better the more cards you discard) and refill your hand with cards (usually five).

There are six colours of cards, each with its own light theme (boats tend to be good for trade, workshops for resources etc) – when you play a card into your tableau, you do its action. But what Deus really brings to the party is that when you later lay more cards in the same colour you get to do all of their actions, which rewards clever combo building. But you are limited to five cards per colour, so these clever combos don’t last forever.

Placing buildings is also simple in execution: you start from the edge of the board and subsequent placements move out from there (think Terra Mystica, not Small Worlds). You can place multiple of your own pieces in one space, but they must be of different types.

Scoring and resource/money gathering cards tend to reward you for having multiple buildings on the same tile, but spreading out is equally tempting tactically – to block opponents and destroy barbarian villages.

Far from being a booby prize for a bad hand, special actions can be essential and planning them well can win you the game. They are again simple to explain: a player simply discards as many cards as they wish and choose one of these cards to trigger its colour’s special action (taking either extra resources, victory points, money, cards or buildings).

The game ends when either all the barbarian villages are destroyed (done by surrounding them on the map) or all temples are placed (these are special buildings that reward you with end-game victory points).

The four sides

These are me, plus three fictitious amalgams drawn from observing my friends, and their respective quirks and play styles.

• The writer: I love a good tableau-builder, as evidenced by 200+ plays of Race for the Galaxy, and after playing Deus once it was an insta-buy. While it lacks the vast range of cards that sets Race apart it makes up for it with the combos and board play – exactly the kind of extra elements San Juan was sadly lacking in.
• The thinker: There was definitely enough here to have me both strategically and tactically engaged, while the option to discard a bad hand but also benefit soundly from it was a master stroke. However I’m unsure of its potential long term without expansions, as while fine so far I can see strategic options wearing thin over time.
• The trasher: While it’s no Race, Deus is a solid game I’m happy to play. Much like Race, going military can make for a short tactical game that can surprise people, while who doesn’t like the satisfaction of a smart card combo going off – and then going off again a few more times for good measure?
• The dabbler: While the game is a bit ‘heads down’ for me, as there’s lots of reading to do and plans to be hatched, I did enjoy my plays. Its simple, bright and colourful with a low barrier to entry, but offers something to the more wizened gamer. I won on my second play against experienced opponents, showing the game isn’t all about ‘best player wins’ – but as its only an hour-ish, you can just go again!

Key observations

Several people have pointed out Deus’ solitary nature, describing it as a heads-down game with little interaction. This is largely fair comment and those looking for player versus player action need not apply. However you do need your head in the game as it doesn’t have a fixed end point – while board position can very much make a difference.

Another fair-ish comment is there’s too high a dependency on getting the right card combos, making the game too random. While I’ve certainly seen people get very lucky with their draws while others have floundered, this is not a long game and can very much be played back-to-back in a session – and its no more a problem than in your average card game. Also, I find the discard action does help mitigate this issue nicely.

Some claim the game is downright ugly, while others have complained about a component error. To clear the latter up, the game comes with brown discs for ‘wood’ while the wood symbol is green on the cards. This is apparently a good thing for the colour blind and for the rest of us its a mild inconvenience. As for the ugliness, I think its harsh. Be your own judge, but if its enough to make you walk away from a very good game then more fool you.

The final point, and in my mind the most serious one, is variability. Interesting that a game accused of being too random is also accused of lacking variable strategies, but there you go. Anyway, I too am concerned that over time the game may get repetitive. I intend to deal with this by not overplaying it, but if you’re someone with a small collection who plays each of their games a lot it may be worth waiting for expansion news – unless this sort of game is right in your ballpark, then I’d say go for it anyway.

Conclusion

Deus is an elegant, streamlined tableau building game that for me fires on all cylinders. It’s the best new game I played in 2014, feeling like a lighter Terra Mystica with added card combo action – which just about ticks all of my favourite boxes.

Having been pretty disappointed with the ‘alien orb’ part of the recent Race for the Galaxy expansion, it’s interesting to see a much better implementation of a board here.

And having got bored fast with San Juan, it’s also nice to see how this extension can add just enough to a simple card game to give it the extra legs it needs to hold my interest.

I’ll be waiting with baited breath for expansion news, but as Deus is already knocking on the door of the BGG top 500 I’m sure it will sell well enough to merit one. Until then I’ll do my best not to play it to death… but just one more game tonight can’t hurt, can it?