Valerie Putman:  Origins Best of Show—Age of Empires III: Age of Discovery

I played a number of new games this weekend at Origins.  There were some, like Tempus, that I’ve played before as a prototype and just had to wait patiently to get my hands on.  Others, like Age of Empires, were a delightful surprise.  Here are some quick first opinions (it is late Saturday night) of the games I played in order of preference.

Age of Empires III: Age of Discovery I’ll start by saying that I never played the computer game and until Railroad Tycoon, I was never really the target market for Eagle Games.  Designer Glen Drover assured me that it was a pure Eurogame and the wooden cubes (later to be replaced by miniatures in production) lured me in to an open chair in his game demonstration.  It turned out to be about 2+ hours of meaty gamer gaming bliss.  Players are colonizing the new world and choosing each round where to send their colonists.  Some can be shipped to areas in the new world to vie for control in order to earn victory points.  They can be used to discover new areas, recruit special colonists for future turns, build capitol buildings (which provide additional colonists, special abilities, and in the last rounds, victory points), earn money and gain turn initiative, collect trade goods, and more.  With each colonist placement you are torn between several placement options that all feel critically important.  This game is a prime example of too many things you want to do with each turn and not enough time to do them.  The turn play moves quickly and there are multiple paths to victory.  I was thrilled to get to play this prototype (due out this fall) twice this weekend and I will now be counting the days until I get to play it again.

Tempus A close runner up for game of the show is Tempus.  I played this for the first time last year and loved it.  But as the months passed, I worried that the actual game could never live up to the memory.  I can gleefully report that this is still a must have in my collection.

Terra Nova The two games offered by Immortal Eyes at Origins (Pecking Order and Conquest of Pangea) are quite a bit lower on my preference list.  But Rick was able to borrow a copy of the third game to be offered by Immortal Eyes, Terra Nova.  This is a an abstract game of maneuvering pawns to fence in and control territory on the board.  I played it 3 times, once each with 2, 3, and 4 players.  The game board is groups of hexagons in 8 different terrain types.  Players take turns placing their pawns on the board for the initial set up and then on each turn they move a pawn in a straight line, then use the rest of their actions to make additional pawn movements and/or place walls.  When an enclosed area has 3 or fewer terrain types, it scores for the player with the most pawns in the area.  If the area was all of one terrain type it scores 3 points per hex.  With 2 terrain types it scores 2 points per hex.  With 3 terrain types it scores 1 point per hex.  The game scaled well from 2 – 4 players and it was a quick but thinky exercise of careful timing to balance offensive and defensive plays.  I had several pawn that were walled in early in small, low scoring areas, but I also maneuvered a few times to have more pawns left in the final, often larger areas at the end of the game.  In fact, some of the strategic decisions about carving out smaller, valuable spaces early in the game or waiting to try to claim large areas that are left towards the end reminded me quite a bit of another favorite game, Domaine.  I hate that I’m going to have to wait a while for this one to be released.

Bison Area control games aren’t my favorite, but this one had quite a few unique twists that increased my overall enjoyment of the game.

Recess Theme usually isn’t enough to sell me on a game, but Morgan Dontaville’s new game was enjoyable because of the theme.  The pneumonic for turn order, “3, 2, 1, nunâ€? (indicating that you move your first child 3 spaces, then your second child 2 spaces, then you third child 1 space, then the nun) was just perfect.  I admit I got into the mood and delighted in beating up other kids in the playground for lunch money while trying to evade the watchful eye of the nun and maneuver one of my boy meeples and one of girl meeples into a private corner for a game winning kiss.  Some of the movement rules are a little fiddly.  Also, the game is played with a timer (guaranteeing that the game can’t last more than 30 minutes), which can be frustrating when you don’t need the full minute for your turn and your spending time waiting for the sand to run out.  But if you like thematic games, it’s a hoot.

Knights of Charlemagne I really only need one or two light, filler, card games in my collection and I probably own about a dozen.  I prefer last year’s release in this category by Playroom Games, Poison.

Dead Man’s Treasure See Knights of Charlemagne.

Hero Card Normally I would have steered away from this booth, but Tyler wanted someone to demo this with him.  While this still isn’t my kind of game and it’s the bottom of my preference list for the show, the game did have enough interesting ideas to be a really great addition to someone else’s game collection.  Each player controls a hero and has a deck of cards with different attacks, defenses, and special abilities.  The combat system is fairly simple and Tyler and I tried it out with a simple hero vs. hero duel.  The neat twist is that the heroes come with a board game that adds additional rules and objectives.  For example, Champion of the New Olympia is a boardgame that comes with two superheroes, their combat decks, a game board, and rules for a game about stopping a crime wave.  But you can use the heroes from that game in any of the other board games in the Hero Card line up (Kiss of the Shogun, Galaxy, and Cyberspace).  Each boardgame comes with two thematically appropriate heroes, but if you want to take your space themed heroes from Galaxy and send them to do favors for the Emperor in Kiss of the Shogun, you can.  You can also combine heroes from different sets (or use heroes from expansion packs) to turn the boardgames into 4 player games.  Very clever.

I also played a number of prototypes that I can’t discuss yet, a few games that I need to play again before I make up my mind about, and many old favorites.  Overall, I’ve had a great time at Origins and look forward to one last day before saying goodbye to friends and taking a break from gaming conventions for a few weeks.

I’d rather be gaming!
Valerie Putman

© 2006 Valerie Putman

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I look forward to eventually getting to try AoE III for myself.  It looked like a tense and interesting game. I was surprised to see you mention HeroCard.  I also thought it sounded interesting, even though it clearly isn’t typical Euro fare.  I didn’t get a chance to actually play one of the games, but I plan to keep my eye on them, just in case.  Champion of the New Olympia might be a fun super hero romp and I will be curious how they implement the system in Kiss of the Shogun, which appears to be an area majority game. Posted by Thomas Pancoast on Jul 3, 2006 at 09:21 AM | #

Tom, The employee at the Hero Card booth said that the Super Hero themed game (Champion of the New Olympia) was the simplest/kid friendliest design.  Players use their decks to combat criminals (with other players using their decks to play the roll of criminal and try to stop you).  There is a slight cooperative element to the game, though.  If enough of the crimes are unstopped, the superheroes are unsuccesful in stopping the crime wave and everyone loses. I know that David Fair played one of the board games, so you might see if he has posted an opinion online--though his comments to me were along the lines of “twenty minutes of my life I’ll never get back.” In the end, I knew I couldn’t be a fair judge of the fun factor in the game.  I’m just not the target audience.  But there’s enough interesting things in the game that I’d like to see what a group of 10 - 14 year olds (or adults who are just young at heart!) thought of the system. Valerie Posted by Valerie Putman on Jul 3, 2006 at 10:56 AM | #

Too bad Eagle wants to make AoE3 with plastic bits.  Though it would be out of character for them, it would help the image of being a “Euro” game if it had nice wooden cubes Posted by Dale Yu on Jul 3, 2006 at 12:40 PM | #

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