Does anyone who got a copy of the new version of Through the Ages care to comment on the production values of the game? I've been a bit hesitant to order it until I've heard how it came out.

Daniel,

I can offer my general impressions. The value of this game is going to be in the way it plays. The components are good - they do the job - but they're not terribly exciting.

There is a main board that scores culture points, and tracks scientific, military, and cultural assets. The board is of good quality, unfolds easily and lays flat.

There are player mats that track food and resources. Very good quality.

There are player aids with a "simple game" turn sequence on one side and a "full game" sequence on the other. Also very good quality.

The cards are reportedly larger than the old version - which is good because they're still quite small. I think the small size is necessary so that the game is playable in a reasonable amount of space.

There are two types of wooden markers:

Small disks of various colors. These are comparable to the colonists in a Puerto Rico set. You get more than you need to play the game.

Small cubes in four colors. These are used to track your score, and various attributes of your civilization. Each player gets a set of...five.

This is my one gripe with the components. The game clearly requires six of these cubes.

1 - Track culture points (these are the VPs of the game.)
2 - Track science points (you need these for advances.)
3 - Track military points (important in conflicts.)
4 & 5 - Track you production *per turn* of culture and science (its basically your income that will be applied to tracks 1 and 2.)

and then

6 - The happiness track on your player mat.

If you look at earlier versions of the game they used cones and there were six of them. It is worth noting that there's no real need for the happiness marker to be coded to your civilization. It is necessary for the five markers on the main board to be color coded to each civ.

But then we have the rules. The quality of the rules is good in terms of printing. They're organized into "Simple" "Advanced" and "Full" versions of the game. There are adequate illustrations. One of these clearly shows a cube that matches the color of your civilization used to track happiness.

I contacted FRED (the distributor) and was told: "There are only five cubes...use an extra round disk"
I think overall the components are fine. Perhaps not worth the $70 most folks are paying, but since I didn't pay that price I'm not going to get too upset about a missing cube.

I'm not pleased at being told to make due, when the production screwed up either with the rules or the cube count, but that says more about FRED distribution (or whoever is ultimately responsible) than it does about the game itself.

EDIT: See below or elsewhere on BGG for the response from the publisher. There is a solution in the works. And that also says something about FRED distribution - when they understand there's really a problem they move quickly to try to get it right.

Great question, Dan, and great answer, Pete.

'much appreciated....

What about marking treaty/agreements/whatever that you share with another player? Don't those require cubes as well? I thought the original version came with 10 cones, as you could potentially enter into 4 agreements (one in front of each player).

Either way, I'm glad to have my own copy of the game.

I hadn't yet read the advanced/full game rules. Your correct the game is not missing 1 cube it's missing 5.

So far the response at FRED has been "sorry your unhappy with the components of the game." But no admission of a problem. That's disappointing.

EDIT: The publisher is now admitting an error here and is looking into solutions.

We will get the corrected components made as soon as possible and get them out to consumers.

Keith

edited due to dated information

Hmfrph!
How difficult can be it be to make a straight reprint of a game?

It is bad enough when publishers cannot figure out to make game right the first time around - but how on Earth can someone decide to reduce the number of components without thinking about the possible reasons as to why they were included in the first place?

I guess they should provide the cubes, for $70 why not, but it's incredible how whingey some people can get about something that is almost completely irrelevant to actually playing the game. Isn't that what we're supposed to be interested in?

And sometimes it´s the other way around

The 10 Pact cards may only be a very small part of the entire game - but as long as they have included the cards, it is not unreasonable to expect that they provide the markers necessary to use them.

This is a strange use of the word "necessary".

Maybe I am just unusually capable, but I would be perfectly capable of playing the game, with pacts, even without the "necessary" markers.

I apologise for the fact that my English is not as perfect my native tongue!
And you are without doubt more capable than me in many ways.

But I agree that it is possible to play the game without the Pact markers - and if they have omitted the rule where it is explained how to mark "A" and "B", then indeed the markers shouldn't be there.

Personally I am perfectly capable of tracking people's scores in most games - but I would still find the Score markers a "necessary" part of the components if they have provided a score track.

Ah the trenchant observations of Mr. DaviddesJ. I am always greatly entertained (and I say this with real admiration), because of course we're in for some biting wit. Still it's interesting to see that a person who is often "whingey" on his own account will pass remarks about the foibles of others when it's not his ox being gored.

Sure the game is foremost. That's why I'm happy to wait however long it takes to get the missing pieces to me as a person who purchased the new incomplete version of the game. I greatly respect that the publisher is willing to acknowledge a mistake and make up for it. Once they understood there was really a problem the response was swift and positive.

In the meantime I can play the game and use M&Ms, coins, or whatever to make up for the missing pieces - and it will even be fun, because the game is a good one.

I think you only need 9 markers total, not 10. At most you have four players and you don't enter pacts with yourself so you'll have at most 3 pacts in play.

Still, as I have the original, you do need player colored markers for the pacts or you need to orient the card so the a/b sides face the two players. We often do both so we don't forget.

I'm jealous that you have the cards with rounded edges - but would be interested to know what quality the cards are as the originals were not very high quality.

Your English is fine, Mik. No error there.

Hello,

I am sorry there are missing cubes in the game. However, there is an advice how to play the pacts until publisher distributes the promised additional cubes:

If you offer a pact to a player and he accepts it, lay it in front of you and turn it the way so one of the longer sides of the card (marked A and B) points towards you and another towards that player. If the pact is assymetric (with different roles for player A and player B), be sure the letters point towards the corresponding players.

I am sure it works because this is how we were playing it for long time -when testing the prototype, long before the first edition was published. By coincidence, these protoypes had only 5 cubes (we also used one of the other tokens to score number of happy faces). The additional 5 cubes were added for the first release.



I would like to correct this - in fact, you can participate in 4 pacts in 4-player game. The rules say you can have only one pact in front of you - but still it may happen you have a pact with a player that has a pact with you. So if other three players have a pact with you, and you have a pact with one of them, then you participate in 4 pacts (it is very rare situation, but it is possible).

Vlaada,

Thanks for clarifying the number of pacts in play.

The Culture scoretrack goes 80....(85)....100, skipping the 90s. No biggie, but, perhaps something worth noting.

This is pretty funny. Any fix to this, or "oops" ?

Always a defender of the free retail market place, I am (more than anything) convinced that the price for this game is approximately correct, as it is sold out at the distributor level, and I'm sure that another print run will come (how that one and any subsequents sell, however -- we'll have to see, now that everyone knows what theyre gonna get).

How is the production value, in my eyes? Certainly not worth $70.

The value is on the order of Thebes, if you have that, and perhaps less than Taj Mahal, if you have that (but with many many cards and fewer chits, on both accounts). 1 nice thick attractive main board that doesnt lie flat without first manipulating the seams, and has the scoreboard printing error marked above (you're going to have to be careful when calculating culture between 80 and 100, because its a big typo, and ridiculous to have been missed). The reference sheets and player boards are attractive and made of excellent stock.

Missing markers, but that is being addressed after some initial (alleged) snarky remarks from the publisher. The markers are also quite tiny and difficult to manipulate, but perhaps less so than the original tiny glass beads (dunno -- never played the original).

The card stock is thin, and I cant imagine it standing up to a bunch of use. Then again, for the extreme number of cards, the needed display of those cards collected in-game, and storage, perhaps it is the most utilitarian solution. In my opinion, the artwork on the cards is very good for home-brew, and a thumbs-up to the original team that self-produced it, but again -- at this price point I would have hoped that the skill represented would have been higher and more professional.

In my opinion, $ for value, games like this will not be able to compete on the general marketplace at this price point unless they are marquee, highly anticipated, highly buzzed games with terrific mechanics and replayability. If one were to produce, say, Thebes at this price point, it would never have taken off as it did.

In short, my guess is that the margin on this game is very high. But then again, so is coffee at Starbucks, yet the brain-dead hypocaffeinemic masses line up every morning, and so do we

The game play is, of course, what counts for a game that appeals to such a gamer-only audience as this game does. Thats where the game shines, and thats whats giving it throughput at this price. IMHO, of course.

Can you believe this sold for $95million?

I'm pretty sure the components cost, like, $100 at most.

-MMM

Since I am the source on this I want to be clear. The response was not "snarky" per se. The initial response was the "correct number of cubes is five (5)" and that any thing in the rules suggesting otherwise was an artifact. I think this response was understandable based on the problem I posed initially, which was basically "hey there's 1 cube missing."

When I wrote again to pass on the issue of pact markers (so now I was saying "hey you're 5 cubes short, not 1" the response was: "point taken" followed by a suggestion for a solution and a request for any thoughts I might have.

I said personally as long as the publisher was going to make good the missing pieces I for one can be patient.

The next day the announcement about replacement went out.

I'm enjoying my copy of the game. I am happy that my missing pieces will be made good. And I respect the publisher for doing the right thing. If there was any "snarky" quality to the initial communication it was, in my opinion, based on not immediately understanding the problem, which is fair because I didn't communicate the problem accurately at first.

The board error bothers me a lot more than the markers. One of the things you should be getting with a high-priced game is very careful proofreading. So often, what happens is that the final components go out the door almost immediately. :-(

I agree that I can make do with missing markers, especially if the publisher has indicated that additional markers will eventually be supplied. The board error, though (something that I, too, noticed immediately), is simply inexcusable. The only solution to that problem at this point is to ignore the numbers on the track, relying solely upon the relationship of the scoring markers.

Since you made the correct assessment in your opening paragraph, why did you bother with the other irrelevant paragraphs?

Clearly there is a market for this game at the price they have set. That's what its "price value" is. The cost of the components has nothing to do with it.