Martin Wallace’s academic background in historical past has naturally lent in the direction of his creation of some stereotypically “masculine” board recreation themes together with that of warfare, trains, and industrialization. His newest design tackles what some could view as probably the most stereotypically masculine theme of all of them: the Roman Empire. So for any males searching for to succeed in their day by day quota of Roman historical past pondering—or historical past buffs of any gender—Aeterna would be the recreation for them.
Aeterna is a medium-weight space management recreation the place 2-4 gamers embody Roman households making an attempt to extend their status by way of 1000 years of historical past (conveniently condensed right here to 60-200 minutes) by ruling over territories, establishing buildings, and managing the unrest of residents. To additional appease historical past fanatics and obviate the necessity for a Wikipedia search, Aeterna’s appendix incorporates descriptions of each location, monument, and individual within the recreation.
Gameplay Overview:
Aeterna takes place over three eras (rounds), and every period incorporates three phases: card drafting, actions, and scoring. Card drafting ensures every participant begins with a hand of 4 playing cards plus a typical pool of leftovers. Most important actions usually value residents or different sources and embrace the next:
- Affect a hill of Rome by inserting a citizen there, contributing in the direction of its space management, and gaining an immediate location-specific reward
- Play a card out of your hand or the widespread pool, paying prices. Every card represents both:
- (A) Provinces that you simply’ve helped conquer.
- (B) Monuments constructed by your loved ones. Monument playing cards often present an immediate, ongoing, or once-per-round impact
- Pay a historic persona a excessive payment for a particular one-time favor.
- Assemble a constructing on a particular hill, influencing its output of factors, meals, and/or unrest for the rest of the sport.
- Go for the spherical—achieve factors and precedence for flip order desire for the subsequent spherical, the sooner you accomplish that
Scoring for every spherical begins by ascertaining space majorities on every hill. Gamers who management the assorted hills are awarded factors in addition to different rewards, as dictated by constructed buildings. In addition they incur unrest for controlling any hill experiencing overcrowding.
Gamers should then re-collect and feed all of their residents on the board, incurring unrest if any go hungry. Anytime a participant’s unrest reaches sure benchmarks at end-round, they have to pay hefty useful resource penalties and/or purchase doom tokens. At game-end, every participant’s closing place on the unrest monitor, modified by doom tokens, leads to a deduction of anyplace from 0-17 factors. Highest rating wins.
Sport Expertise:
Aeterna is an elegantly designed Eurogame with a fast educate and extremely interactive gameplay the place the timing and price of each motion matter. Every hill is value various quantities of factors and is related to three distinctive immediate rewards. It’s tempting to hurry to put declare to a hill with a helpful reward, or value excessive point-value to each block others from that reward, and in addition as a result of stealing management would require two of an opponent’s residents.
Stalling to put residents later can be a viable technique to dictate the ultimate management and over-crowding standing of hills with out opponents having the ability to reply. It is usually tempting to hurry to assemble buildings on hills you assume you’ll management by spherical finish, as they increase hill management rewards (factors, meals, and/or unrest discount), and just one constructing of every kind may be constructed per spherical. However assemble a constructing too early, and you will have simply incentivized your opponents to steal management. On the identical time, gamers are incentivized to cross for the spherical early, as this begets factors and precedence in selecting flip order for the subsequent spherical.
The cardboard play can be thrilling and interactive. There are 1-2 persona playing cards and 2-4 monument/province playing cards (relying on participant rely) in a typical pool accessible on a primary dibs foundation. Persona playing cards are costly however may be value large rewards if timed accurately; most of their rewards are primarily based on the board state or card tableau standing. You’ll wish to delay buying them till you may maximize the reward, with out ready too lengthy and shedding out to another person. The monument/province playing cards in your private hand should usually be timed appropriately owing to their synergistic value/impact. Province playing cards value residents however often present cash, stone, and unrest. Monument playing cards value cash and/or stone however often present new residents and destructive unrest. You’ll usually wish to play these playing cards in pairs, preserving in thoughts to avoid wasting at the least some sources to additionally take part in these time-sensitive area-control battles and development of buildings.
Unrest is a novel recreation aspect that additionally components closely into selections. On the finish of every spherical, the highest few hills most crowded with residents will lead to 2 unrest for the controlling participant, in addition to a discount in level worth of that hill for subsequent rounds. Unrest on the identical hill twice means it could solely be value 1 level within the closing spherical, and second-place management will get no factors. The mix of buildings getting added and hill level values reducing over time creates an attention-grabbing recreation arc. In the end, accumulating an excessive amount of unrest may end up in heavy useful resource and/or factors penalties, so that you’ll have to hold it in verify. As a comparatively risk-averse participant, that is certainly one of my least favourite parts of Aeterna; when you can predictably management unrest that happens by way of cardplay and guaranteeing you’ve ample meals in your folks, the actions of different gamers can simply lead to you unexpectedly gaining unrest or shedding out on a possibility to mitigate it.
As for participant rely, Aeterna shines at 3-4 gamers, however notably, each monument/province card will get used at 4 gamers in each recreation, which may restrict replay worth. The sport nonetheless works very effectively at 2 gamers, though it tends to be a meaner zero-sum expertise. The pricey persona playing cards may additionally be much less worthwhile, since most rely on a game-state that gives higher rewards at greater player-counts.
My closing notice is that Aeterna can really feel punishing. Whereas gamers could construct card tableaus that grant earnings and different useful rewards, the prices of taking part in playing cards (each cash and residents) drastically enhance in every period. Between that, having to feed your folks, and worrying about unrest, the sport could really feel much less emotionally satisfying to those that would somewhat give attention to constructing versus mitigating penalties.
Last Ideas:
Aeterna has rather a lot to like: elegant design, nice manufacturing, intense participant interplay, and a fragile steadiness of sources and timing. It really works very effectively at 2 gamers however actually shines on the greater participant counts. The sport possesses a sturdy arc because the valuation for controlling varied hills adjustments with every spherical, relying on overpopulation and constructing constructions. For these searching for a combotastic engine-building expertise, nonetheless, this isn’t it.
Aeterna is principally space management with card drafting and useful resource administration, in addition to some punishing parts like feeding your residents and mitigating unrest that’s not completely in your management. The steadiness of constructing affect versus mitigating penalties—all whereas making an attempt to drive penalties in your opponents—is an attention-grabbing problem, however might not be an ideal match for all. It’s nonetheless a superbly illustrated and artfully designed recreation that can attraction to many historical past aficionados.
Last Rating: 3.5 Stars – an elegantly designed medium-weight space management Eurogame that requires a steadiness of constructing, crowd-control, and brutality which will have some gamers questioning, “Am I not entertained?”
Hits:
• Elegant design
• Extremely player-interactive
• Lovely manufacturing full of historic details
Misses:
• Some could discover it too punishing
• Persona playing cards are typically much less highly effective at 2-player
• Restricted card variability at 4 gamers
