The Tao of Gaming

Last night I played (and taught) a game of Through the Ages. Did it change my opinion of the game? Not really.

One troubling aspect when discussing this game — so many 'official' ways to play. We played the 3 epoch full game (so no wars, no removing population at the end of the age). And since it was a two player game, no pacts. And a few rules were of the "Oh, we should have done that" variety.

Still, I had a fun time. Despite being militarily ahead for the second half of the game (and twice playing the "Steal 7 VP" aggression), I managed to almost go coast-to-coast while losing. (I was ahead for one turn).

So anyway, there's a copy down here, which probably means my next 100 games of Race will take longer than the last hundred.

Update: Oh, may as well mention that the components a) an improvement and b) still annoying. The area for card drafting is too small (that may have been true in the original ... was I playing with a modified set?). The wooden discs are easier to manipulate, but the see=through beads made reading costs easier. And there should just be more player markers. The rules looked cleaned up a bit, too.

The ideal set would use a cribbage style board for scoring (actually a four-player cribbage board would work well) to avoid bumping VPs around.