Reiner Knizia’s Age of War.

I have a draft blog post on Richie Martin, Walker Buehler, and Mike Matuella. This morning’s Klawchat transcript is also up. Definitely a different mix of questions when I hold a chat that early.

Reiner Knizia’s tiny boardgame Age of War is one of the smallest and simplest games I’ve encountered yet; the whole game comprises seven custom dice and fourteen square cards. Its rules are similarly short and elegant, fitting on both sides of one small page, even with room for some images and explanations to avoid potential confusion. It’s lightweight due to the moderate randomness involved in gameplay, but there are also clear strategic decisions for players to make, ones that my eight-year-old daughter could grasp and that give the game good replay value.

Age of War plays two to eight, although we’ve only played it with two and three so far. The fourteen cards are all laid face-up on the table and show one to four “battle lines,” rows of images that match the symbols on the dice. Each die has six different sides: one sword, two swords, three swords (those are all infantry units), a horseman, a bow and arrow, and a “daimyo” unit. On a turn, a player rolls all seven dice, then tries to match one complete battle line row on any card. The player places the matching dice on the card, after which s/he is committed to trying to finish that card for the remainder of his/her term, rolling all remaining dice, matching a battle line, then continuing to roll and attempt to match until either all lines are filled or s/he fails trying. The catch: If the player rolls the remaining dice and can’t match any line left on the card, s/he has to discard one die for the rest of the turn before rolling the remainder. Thus the player eventually will match all lines or be left with fewer dice than open spaces on the card.

When a player completes a card by matching all battle lines on its face, the player takes that card and places it in front of him, still face-up. Each card has a point value, and the cards are part of sets that include one to four cards each, with a higher bonus for collecting an entire set. However, another player can steal that card by rolling to match all battle lines plus the one extra battle line that shows a single daimyo character on it – making it more difficult but not impossible to steal. Once a player completes a set, s/he flips all cards in that set over, making them impervious to attacks from another player.

Reiner Knizia's Age of War, a new light strategy dice game from Fantasy Flight.

A photo posted by Keith Law (@mrkeithlaw) on Mar 5, 2015 at 8:44am PST

The game ends once all fourteen cards are claimed, after which players simply add up points from complete sets and points from other cards in front of them, with the highest point total the winner. The game took us 15-20 minutes with two or three players; with more than four players you’d almost have to try to steal cards from opponents, which would likely stretch the game out further, although there’s still the gating factor of the game-end condition to limit how long you’ll be rolling.

The decisions you have to make are fairly simple – choosing which set of cards to try to collect, and then choosing once you’ve made your first roll on a turn which card and which lines to fill. The yellow set contains four cards, the hardest to finish but the most valuable (ten points, three more than the sum of the cards’ individual values). There’s just one green card, so you can’t lose it once you win it, but the bonus for taking it is smaller. And watching what your opponents are collecting is important from the second turn onwards.

It’s a light game, both in mass and in rules, very easy to pick up and a great travel game like Love Letter, Jaipur, or Coup (which I own but need to play more to review). It’s also very reasonably priced, which I think is a new(ish) trend in boardgaming – gateway games $25 and under that can grab people who see the $40-plus price tags on the best German-style games and won’t take the plunge, which I can’t blame one bit. I’m hoping Age of War can be another gateway game to get more folks into the hobby.