First Play: Through The Ages...

Played my first game of TTA a few nights ago and including the rules explanation it took us about 5 hours.  Yes, that's right.  For a 2-player game.  I knew this going in, however, and had read a 37-page quick start guide beforehand (I know, I'm really selling the game, eh?)

The daunting score tracks

And I haven't yet decided what I think.  I knew it would be epic so I had set aside an entire evening.  However, I had read that this was one of the greatest civilization building games ever.  Um, no.  It is in fact an utterly soulless Euro game of action point allowance, card selection, and resource management.  Sure there are leaders and wars and armies and...   blah, blah, blah.  This is about as dry an exercise as they come.  The awful artwork on the cards serve only to add a splash colour to a very tight game of cube-pushing, tableau-building, and accounting, accounting, accounting.

My third wonder

But I enjoyed it.  While it was my turn, that is.  When it was not my turn, I made dinner, did dishes, and folded laundry.  Seriously.  Never will I ever play this with 3 people.  Oh man.  And I wonder truly whether there are other games that do this just as good but in a much shorter timespan.  Resource management: Agricola.  Action points: Tikal.  Tableau-building: Saint Petersburg.  Simple, card-based battle: Tempus.  Excessive amounts of accounting: Black Friday. The big question is whether I should play one game with all these aspects combined when I can play all the shorter games in the same amount of time.  Well, I definitely want to play the game again and find out.  I guess that says something.

My tableau near the end of the game.  Tie game!