Empires: Age of Discovery
Had some time before the RPG tonight so I busted out the gigantic box. Everything is just so…big. The tiles are thick enough to actually hurt someone if you were to throw them; they’d provide warmth for hours in a fire. Tons of plastic dudes but tbh I’m not sure you need them all. Honking huge ships.
So it’s definitely a worker placement game (with an area control twist): place your little people on positions and then resolve positions. The list of placements, and the order in which they’re resolved, is the secret sauce to what looks like a game that’s so simple that I really feared it was simplistic. Very happily, there’s plenty to think about and no fussy edge cases. I’m still recovering from FFG damage after the last several weeks of Forbidden Stars and Imperial Assault.
We didn’t get through the whole game, just the first of three “ages,” but it looks really solid. Can’t wait to finish a game and maybe with more players.
a good worker placement game 😉
joking aside, good worker placement game
That is indeed the secret sauce. I love it to pieces because of that. Not only does it provoke hard decisions, but it also forces you to prioritize really heavily: do you try and snag that capital building now…or do you set up immigrants because you need to acquire a trade resource from a new territory…or do you claim an early place in the pick order…?
It also keeps getting better with more players, because all of those decisions become more difficult. Especially the capital buildings.