REVIEW

Century: Golem Edition Review

by Daniel Clarke, May 26th, 2018

Fancy out trading your opponents with vibrant markets and colourful golems? Join us as we review Century: Golem Edition by Plan B Games. Gather your crystals, watch the markets, and claim those trade routes. Victory and wealth are ripe for the picking in this economic board game.

Century: Golem Edition is a re-theme edition of Century: Spiced Road, which was released in 2017. It combines trading, hand building, and tactical resource management to dominate the markets of the land called Caravania. By traveling the Golem Road, each player must use their turn wisely to influence and ultimately trade for key points in the world.

How To Play

Game Setup

The game is aimed for 2-5 players and can take roughly 30-45 minutes per game. It comes with 5 Caravan cards, 10 Starting cards, 36 Point cards, 43 Merchant cards, 105 Crystals between 4 colours, 4 Crystal storages, and 20 Metal tokens split between Copper and Silver. You require around 2-foot square to play which is welcoming to many surfaces.

Firstly, shuffle the Point cards, the ones with the Golem back, to form the Point deck. Then draw 5 cards from the top and place them face up to the left in a row. Then place a pile of Copper tokens equal to double the players on above the leftmost card. Do the same with the Silver tokens for the right next card. For the Merchant cards, the ones with the Crystal back, remove the ones with the purple borders. These are you Starting cards. Each player starts with a Create 2 and Upgrade 2 to form the hand. Remaining purple border cards are returned to the box.

Shuffle the remaining Merchant cards to form the Merchant deck. These are the cards that allow you to build up your resources. With these resources, you can go ahead and claim those much sought after Point cards. Draw 6 cards from the pile and place them face up to the left of the deck in a row. After that, place the coloured Crystals in order of value (Yellow, Green, Turquoise, Magenta). These are your trade resources. You can trade for Merchant cards and for Point cards

Next, each player takes a Caravan card, the one with the brown back. This card is where you will store your lovely Crystals to a maximum of 10 at the end of your turn. Make sure one player has the Crystal symbol on the card so you know who starts the game. Lastly, for each player distribute a number of starting Crystals. The first player gets 3 Yellow, 2nd and 3rd get 4 Yellow, and 4th and 5th get 3 Yellow and 1 Green.

Overall, Century doesn’t take long to set up. Even on your first play through it can take around 5 minutes which is excellent. This time frame is perfect for the times you want to just crack out the game in between your day with your friends or family. Or, just a board game you don’t have to spend considerable effort and time to set up. This, in turn, means you can fit in more games within your session. As for space, it doesn’t require much at all. A small coffee table will suffice or even a table on a train for those longer journeys to conventions etc.

Playing the Game

The ultimate aim of the game is to acquire 5 Point cards, or 6 if you are playing a 2-3 player game, and score the highest amount of points between them and the tokens you collect. To claim Point cards you need to fulfill the Crystal requirement on the card. For instance, 2 Yellow and 3 Green. To do this you need to build up your resources. By gaining Merchant cards you can use them to trade your Crystals for other types and strategise your way to claiming the Point cards.

The game is played over a series of rounds. For each round, a player gets a turn of which they much perform one of the following actions: Play, Acquire, Rest, and Claim. The Play actions are used to play any card from your hand in front of you. This might be a Create 2 Yellow Crystal card, or a Merchant card to trade Crystals. The Acquire action allows you to trade for Merchant cards. The Rest actions allow the player to take all cards they have played back to their hand. And finally, Claim allows you to claim a Point card if you can fulfill its requirements.

When starting the game, the general actions that are taken are expanding your resources. Given a couple of turns, this will set up for the next phase, taking those Merchant cards. From this point on it can really ramp up in terms of gameplay. The first two turns can be an easy pace as players are deciding how to work their way up to the Point cards in play in the most efficient and quick way possible. After that, it’s like the test lap is over and the real race begins.

By using the “hand-building” mechanics, each player will quickly begin to build their hand and their Crystals. It doesn’t take long at all before the first Point card is Claims. From that point, the game ramps up yet again. Not wanting to fall behind in this grand caravan race, lots of frantic trading can ensue. The sounds of “oh no” and “aww I was going for that one” can often be heard as each player pushes closer to enact their Merchant and Point claiming strategies.

All in all, the gameplay is very fun. At first, it took a while to grasp the mindset of forward-thinking and setting your goals early, in terms of claiming Points. Also, it was a bit confusing at first that the Copper tokens were worth more than the Silver tokens, which did change how the game progressed. But, other than that, the mechanics are solid and not all that difficult to grasp. That combined with the countless combinations of cards to strategise with on the board, no one game will be the same. Bonus points for easy and enjoyable replayability.

The Flavour

As with the previous versions of the game, Century: Golem Edition brings fun and strategy to trade and economy. Two words that would normally be paired with an activity you would indulge to pass the time and enjoy. With this edition, the artwork is just beautiful and very charming. With just a collection of cards the entire world of Caravania is completely fleshed out and engrossing. In just a few minutes the game world has given you more than enough character and warmth for you to love it.

For this edition, the heavy use and anchor of Golems cement the feel of the world. Each Point to claim has a Golem. These Golems are helping the denizens of Caravania with various activities and commitments. Some of which are fishing, being bridges, acting as lighthouses, and herding sheep. My personal favourite is the grape stomping Golem as it seems to be having a great old time.

As for the rest of the world, the markets are populated with characters as colourful and polished as the Crystals you play with. The artwork and production of the board game as a whole are at a very high standard. This directly follows the previous version of the game and, I dare say, any versions after that will follow. A Space-themed one maybe?

Overall, Century: Golem Edition deserves a spot on any board game advocate’s shelf. The mechanics are fairly simple and easy to grasp with a helpful manual to guide you. The gameplay is progressively fun and exciting, although can be a little slow at the very beginning whilst everyone plans their victory tactics. As for the game world itself and physical product, it is very colourful, eye-catching, and just outright beautiful. It is perfect for an hour downtime or for an evening of friendly competition with your companions. Easily portable too.