This seems to be one of those games that got overlooked a bit at Essen, but deserves wider recognition. To be honest I nearly passed it by myself until my good friend Tonksey convinced me to give it a go
Love the cascading mechanic and the variety of event cards that as you say make you change your strategy or tactics as you go.
Just one small thing I think you missed (only watched it once so I could be wrong). When cascading and the workers have been cascaded into the final zone, whoever has the majority in the final zone takes half of their workers (rounded down) there back onto their hand tile, thereby possibly giving them at least one active worker to start the next century with, which can be quite useful.
Great review, thanks Ryan. The rules explanation is impressively complete! Two quick comments, in case some would be tempted to skip the rulebook in favor of this video: - You can cascade a maximum of 5 cubes; - As John points out, when scoring the last zone of a century, the majority player cascades half of his cubes into his active reserve. All the other cubes go back to the passive reserves.
In my experience, the 5 cubes maximum is an easily missed rule that can really break the game. We got a few bad reviews over that mistake (because it makes it really hard to block the cascade and the cost for losing the first zone becomes too high).
One last thing: For readability it often helps to turn the tiles to that the architect "points towards" the central action.
