Philipp Klarmann
Singapore
Singapore
-
Summary: So far it seems to be Phil´s most accessible game so far and very good it plays, too.
Mind you: The following comments are generalized comments on the gameflow. I did not write a full report about the game´s contents or exact mechanisms.
With Origins we get to play up to 5 different species of mankind, later different ideologies through the stone age to the age of reason. The players have little wooden cubes to represent their population on a world map, as well as their progress in different areas (health, maritime prowess, energy level to name a few) on a so called infrastructure track and their demographics on a separate sheet.
Every turn, the players can use innovation actions to acquire new capabilities, imitate other players (basically stealing a capability) and such. After that, they might go into chaos or not (due to imbalanced population), then catastrophes can happen. Last are the population actions of which one allows the players to move their population cubes around the world map, another one allows to breed more cubes on the map and more.
How does it play?
Very interesting. Players at first scramble to use their social skill (a part of the brain card used to portray the player´s human brain in era I) to imitate other players with good cards or draw cards from the draw pile. The cards are either catastrophes plus repertoire cards or skills. Skills are used for advancing your species on the different "infrastructure tracks" or to uncover brain areas not previously used. Repertoire cards are worth victory points (different victory conditions for each player) plus can contain catastrophes such as a volcano erupting, an asteroid hitting earth or a major disease.
Therefore, your first actions in era I are mostly dominated by racing for good skills.
Then, after having rolled for stability, the players populate the world map looking for good spots. The good spots are those hexes with good plants or animals (like the Elephant), later such with good resources like Gold or Uranium. After having gone to a nice spot, the unit can use an innovation action to build a metropolis. The upside is, that you can hold more elders which are used to bid on repertoire cards or are needed for certain actions or skills plus by domestication of a certain animal or plant, your infrastructure level goes up as well as your footprint (which allows you to stack more units in a hex).
After having achieved some success, players will want to expand into the next era to gain access to the more valuable era II or era III cards.
As we did not play to the end, I cannot judge the victory conditions, let´s say that they seem to be rather balanced.
Overall, it is certainly not an easy game to play, but it really portrays the grandeur of the subject. You really feel like you are nurturing your species to a certain point where you then switch into being an ideology in the human species trying to vie for control on the world map. The flow is astonishingly good for a civilization game of this scale. The production value is outstanding. Try it!
-
|
|
Posted Fri Oct 26, 2007 9:57 am