Century: games for the centuries of centuries...

💡 Commerce

⚙ Worker placement / Resource management and exchange

Ah, think again right away! I didn't turn my fun column into a biblical chronicle; I will not tell you about Mass, but I will invite you to commune with the last opus of Emerson Matsuuchi's playful trilogy, Century: A New World , reissued in 2020 under the title Century Golem: A World Without End .

While cavorting with this fun-religious preamble, a question crosses my mind: is there a patron saint of board games? We know that it is Saint Sebastian who watches over the sports games, but as he must be very busy with the Paris Games which are coming (at the race...), I suppose that we cannot count too much on him to pick up the long-awaited abbey in our part of Carcassonne , or to prevent our cauldron from exploding in our faces in the Charlatans of Belcastel . Are we orphans of a patron saint? I just spent way too much time researching how to fix this, and here are some suggestions:

• Saint Eloi, patron saint of watchmakers, for those who want to adjust their strategy quickly;
• Saint Teresa of Avila, patron saint of chess players, for those who really think a lot before playing;
• Saint Michael, patron saint of paratroopers, to avoid sudden falls at the end of the game;
• Saint John Baptist de La Salle, patron saint of teachers, to succeed in explaining a game clearly in less than an hour (there are many who could use his help...)
• Saint Peter, patron saint of locksmiths, to find the key to victory;

There would also be Saint Anthony, the one who sometimes helps us find our lost keys or sunglasses, and who could perhaps do a special to prevent us from losing our games too. But hey, all that doesn't really satisfy me, so I propose to immediately canonize someone from the board game world who will become our new patron saint. Saint Reiner Knizia? Saint Uwe Rosenberg? Saint Roch de l’As? I am open to your suggestions!

Back to our sheep, now, after this really too long preamble. Before presenting my main course today, I think it would be relevant to take a quick overview of the series in which it is part.

To find your way through a seemingly endless number of games...

All the games in the Century series are very related and revolve around the theme of trade. To summarize them for you in a few words: we acquire goods that we exchange (advantageously or not) for other goods, so as to obtain what is necessary to complete objectives worth points at the end of the game.

The very first game in this series, Century: The Spice Route , was released in 2017. The second, Century: Oriental Wonders , followed in 2018, and the trilogy was completed in 2019 with Century: A New World . Three games in three years, that's not a worse batting average, as we say around here. Now, as if that wasn't enough, these three games were re-released around the same time as their original release (yes, it's weird). Thus appeared Century: Golem Edition , Century Golem: Eastern Mountains and Century Golem: A World Without End . In these new versions, we have simply replaced the realistic/historical theme of the originals with a fantastical theme where, rather than exchanging saffron, turmeric and cinnamon, we exchange precious stones with friendly golems. But don't be fooled: they're exactly the same games! Only the theme and the visual are different.

Whether in the original version or in the Golem version, all Century games fundamentally retain their exchange/objective accomplishment mechanics. Each game in the series adds a secondary mechanic which varies the way in which exchanges take place:

The Spice Route / Golem Edition - deckbuilding and hand management: we must acquire cards which, when played, will allow us to exchange goods.

Oriental Wonders / Eastern Mountains - travel/deliveries: we must move our ship between different islands, each island offering a type of exchange of goods. We must then deliver these goods to ports to transform them into victory points.

A New World / A world without end - placement of workers: we place our small merchants on the places on the board allowing us to exchange goods (I will explain all this to you in detail in a few moments!)

Finally, if you own several games from the Century/Century Golem series, it is also possible to combine them to obtain a more complex version combining all the mechanics of the combined games. Not bad is not it ?

Century Golem: A World Without End

Friends had me play Century: The Spice Route and Century: Oriental Wonders a few times, and I enjoyed the experience although, much to my dismay, I have to admit that these are games that I I'm pretty mediocre (or maybe it's my friends who are too good...) I guess I don't have the gift of a trader. But I try, I try very hard!

I didn't have the chance to play the very last one. Placement of workers, you tell me? I'm on board! Along with pickaxe development, it's my favorite mechanic (I'll give you a little top 5-10-15 of worker placement games one of these days).

How it works ?

In A World Without End , we must be the one who accumulates the most victory points at the end of the game, in particular by exchanging the goods in our warehouse for Points cards.

Each player begins the game with six small merchants and a handful of starting goods, which take the form of crunchy yellow, green, blue, and pink gems.

In our turn, it's quite simple, two options are available to us:

1. Place merchants on a location on the board and carry out your action. Each location requires placing a specific number of merchants there (1, 2 or 3). We cannot replay on a location where there are already merchants of our color. If the location is occupied by an opposing player, then he must be expelled by placing the same number of merchants +1. Evicted merchants are recovered by their owner. At the start of the game, certain locations are blocked and are therefore unusable. They will open during the game, allowing more possibilities as the game progresses.
2. To rest . If we no longer have merchants available (or if we do not want to place any), we take a rest turn. We collect all the merchants of our color on the board (thus, we free up places and merchants which can be used again).

The actions that we can do on the board are generally exchanges that allow us to transform our goods (for example, three yellow gems against three green gems, one blue against four yellow, etc.) When we succeed in accumulating the resources requested by a Points card, we can then send our merchants to the location located under this card to collect it. In addition to being worth points at the end of the game, each Points card also offers either an immediate bonus (resources, additional merchants) or a permanent advantage (discount or resource bonus in certain locations).

When a player obtains their eighth Points card, the end of the game is triggered: we finish the current round and count the points!

So… what do we think?

I would have a hard time deciding if someone asked me which Century is the best. It's funny to say, they are all both similar and different. They are all good.

Century Golem: World Without End is a good example of what I would call a "portal game", that is to say a game which allows new players (or non-players) to be introduced to a game mechanics (here, the placement of workers). It brilliantly avoids the frustration caused by some worker placement games where players are constantly blocking each other (I'm looking at you, Agricola!!) Here, you're never really stuck, you only have to pay a small penalty for expelling an opponent (moreover, we quickly understand that this expulsion is very beneficial for the expelled, who recovers merchants without having to rest).

The game is very easy to learn and explain. On the other hand, you should not be fooled by its accessibility : An endless world will exercise your neurons and, if you want to excel, you will have to plan your moves and carefully monitor what your opponents are doing, at the risk of being robbed the Points card you've been working for for four or five turns! Mathematical minds will feel very comfortable there, since we can assign a value to each commodity according to their rarity (yellow 1, green 2, blue 3, pink 4) and thus calculate the efficiency of our exchanges. (for example, exchanging 1 blue for 4 yellows only gives us a net gain of 1, while three yellows for three greens gives us a net gain of 3!) So there is quite a bit of strategy and depth that goes into is hidden beneath this very simple mechanism of exchanges.

Visual/graphic side, it's honest. As it is an overall abstract game (we exchange stones for stones of other colors, then we exchange our stones for points), I find that the theme is quite superficial. This is why I wonder a little about the relevance of the Golem reissue of the three original games. The illustrations of the Golem version are more colorful to reflect the marvelous aspect of the theme, but it is really not an improvement that could be described as major (in any case, nothing which justifies, in my opinion, the fact of repurchasing the Golem version if you already have the originals).

As long as I'm re-editing the game, I would have taken the opportunity to improve what seems to me to be the main flaw: the quality of the game boards! Indeed, the main (modular) board is made up of very thin cardboard squares, sometimes a little curved, and it often moves when we place our workers. Maybe I'm being picky, but I really would have preferred a thicker, sturdier deck. Despite this flaw, the rest of the material is of good quality (I like the cards in tarot format, and the precious stones are pretty and very pleasant to handle).

All in all, Century: An Endless World will suit you if you like simple games, but which still require a certain amount of thought and planning. If you don't own any of the Century , you don't need to get the others, since they are all independent; if you already own the other titles in the series, then it will pleasantly complete your collection, and you can even combine them for additional challenges (be careful, however, not to mix the Golem versions and the original versions, since the iconography is different!)

WE love…

• The simplicity of the rules for a game that still has great depth;
• Interesting (and not too frustrating!) interactions between players;
• The big plump precious stones 😊!
• The possibility of combining titles from the series;

We like less…

• The fragility of game boards and player boards;
• Playing with someone who suffers from “analysis paralysis” and tries to calculate everything 64 turns in advance!

Century Golem: A World Without End

A game by Emerson Matsuuchi, illustrated by Chris Quilliams

Plan B Games

2 to 4 players

8 years and over

30 to 45 minutes per game