You know how sometimes you open a game box for the first time and you just know that it’s going to be amazing? You pull out all the components for inspection and admiration. You flip through the cards. You notice that the gems are all individual, unique models and not just a painted wooden cube. Nor even a translucent acrylic cube. And you count out the metal coins. METAL COINS?? OMG I got someone’s blinged out Kickstarter copy! They are going to be so mad. Wait, all this is standard component quality for this edition of the game? We need to play NOW.
| Century: Golem Edition (2017) | Plan B Games |
| 2-5 Players | 30-45 minutes |
| Ages 8+ | BGG Weight – 1.62 / 5 |
In Century: Golem Edition you are part of a trading caravan. A procurer and trader of beautiful crystals, which seems like a way more exciting job than a trader of spices. You are collecting crystals not to trade to other players, but to summon forth great golems from the earth to aid you in your toils, protect your crystal hauls, and place you heads above your opponents. Kinda.
So you are using cards from your hand to exchange crystal types for other crystal types, grabbing crystals for the exchanges, resting to gather your action cards back to your hand, and summoning the crystal golems. As the whole point of the game is to have the most Victory Points from these golem cards, they are the most important goals to achieve. Some golems require you to have three pink crystals. But you only have five green ones! You better get to exchanging and upgrading, my friend. Oh, and your opponents see what you are trying to gather and are trying to summon the same golems. It’s a race!
Sticking with that, this game is learned very quickly; the rulebook is one printed page, and also played very quickly. Yes, it says on the box that the game will last 30-45 minutes, but between players who know the game well, this can be a 15-20 minute game. Turns are fast, if you aren’t playing with opponents who are AP-prone, and the game just zooms along until someone summons their fifth golem. Count up the points (remember those metal coins? They are your bonus VPs) and see who is the golem master! (That’s not what the winner is called, but I was on a roll.)
This game is amazing. The game play is fast and stressful and fun. The components are some of the best we have seen. Heck, even the insert is great! I really have nothing bad to say about this at all other than I wish we played it more often. That said, Purple Phoenix Games gives this one a golemtastic 23 / 24.
