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85%
PROS
Very detailed, colorful, colored rules book.
LOWS
Takes forever to cut out all of the pieces, beginners might feel lost with the rules book.
OVERALL
If you are up to the challenge of cutting out every little piece from its plastic strip, reading the intense manual, and understanding the concept of the game, get ready for some board game fun.
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Eagle Games is famous for making seemingly impossible board games. Some of them are based around our favorite computer games. One of my favorite games, Age of Mythology, has gone from the screen to the table. You can now battle with the Egyptian, Norse, and Greek forces through an incredible board game experience, filled with convoluted twists and intricate game pieces. Get ready, here comes Age of Mythology: the Board Game.
Possibly the most important part of a board game is its instruction manual, especially for games as complicated as this one. The instruction book, now called the “RULES OF ENGAGEMENT” is a fifteen page full colored booklet on how to play the game. It took me awhile to read the whole thing, and it took me even longer to understand it. If you are really good with games like this, you won't find it a problem. If you are new, get ready for some heavy bed time reading. This might take awhile to understand…
Before getting into an in depth look at how the game works, I am going to translate the computer game to the board game. Resources are represented by colored cubes, each resource having a different color: green is for food, blue for favor, brown for wood, and yellow for gold. The different cards each civilization receives determine the actions you partake in. The deck of seven cards called the “permanent action” set consists of the seven main abilities in AoM: attack, trade, explore, gather, go to the next age, recruit, and build. At his turn, the player can decide (if he'd like) any single card out of this deck that he would like to play. There is another deck, which is put face down throughout the entire game. This deck consists of the “random action cards” and can be selected by the player if they don't want to play a permanent action card. The random action deck has cards that have a higher face value, but some actions can be the same as the permanent deck. For instance, the permanent card for build allows one structure to be built. If the player receives a random card for build, they can build possibly 2, 3, 4, or 5 different structures at a time. This random deck also contains favor cards, which allow the player to purchase the god powers indicated with any favor they have generated. Buildings are represented by square cutouts, and cost the number of resources indicated on your playing board. All units (i.e. villagers, heroes, mortal soldiers, and myth units) have a corresponding plastic piece. Each player receives a battle card deck, which contains a picture, description, and cost of each unit they can buy.
The basic game structure is the same, considering you don't have the luxury of a mouse and keyboard. Instead, you will take turns managing your resource income to buy new things, meaning the typical buildings and units found in Age of Mythology. Each building has a specific function that is granted to the player that has purchased the building. You are going to need houses for villagers; every time you build a house, you gain a new villager. Some buildings are specific to a given resource, like the Wood Workshop, Granary, Gold Mint, and Monument. When a player has collected enough resources to purchase one of these buildings, you will receive extra income from the particular resource. Of course, there are different buildings that can perform different functions, like the Siege Engine Workshop which can negate the effect of Walls and Towers, the Market which reduces the costs of trading, the Armory that allows the player an extra unit in battle, etc.
A battle begins when a player decides to play the attack card. When this happens, the number of units allowed to participate is decided by the attack card's number. The opponents secretly decide which units they would like to send into battle. Then, through a few painful sequences of rolling dice, the winner is determined. Exciting? Maybe for super nerds. I thought it was entertaining the first few times I played the game, but other than that, it got to be a bit boring. AoM junkies will love the detail put into each and every unit. The game itself is very colorful, and filled with beautiful pictures to depict the given civilization. The standard game set comes with six player boards, two per civilization.
The Age of Mythology Board Game from Eagle Games is an adventure. If you are up to the challenge of cutting out every little piece from its plastic strip, reading the intense manual, and understanding the concept of the game, get ready for some board game fun.
