Review of the board game “Monuments of the Ages”

There are quite a few board games on the market in which construction is one of the main components. Sometimes, however, a work appears among them that can impress with its processing and gameplay. And it is precisely such works that are “Monuments of the Ages”, which we will consider in the following paragraphs.

• Number of players: 1 – 5
• Play time: 70 minutes
• Price: 945 crowns (Tlama Games)
• Age: 14+

The monuments of centuries are an empty space in front of you that needs to be built up.

Building is a fun pastime that many of us spend our time with. However, in most board games, building settlements is not exactly simple, as it often involves a bunch of tokens and a seemingly endless number of actions. However, this description does not apply to Monuments of Ages, where each round is more or less the same.

You start with seven coins to work with until you run out, which may or may not actually end your turn, as there is still the option to borrow and thus burden yourself for the future. But when you play without debt, you always have a number of options. The main option is to buy tickets. These come in two varieties. You are given one long cube or three smaller ones, which are easier to work with.

The roads here must be connected to towers or other paths, which in practice means that you can’t just start building them in a vacant lot. Guardians are another option in the build. However, you will spend most of your time here implementing buildings. They can be found here in various forms, at first glance reminiscent of Tetris. On the playing field, there must be a building next to a road.

Another option for building it is to attach the building to an existing structure. However, the condition is that it must be the same color as the already built building. In this way, you will build blocks representing residential areas, breeding grounds or libraries. However, it is always necessary to close the block with paths or by placing its last piece in the Monuments of the Ages at the edge of the map. Immediately after laying out the pieces, the game will reward you with a certain amount of raw materials associated with the given structure. Then they gradually form the city’s population.

And what can actually be built as legendary buildings in the “Monuments of the Ages”? In the offer of buildings, you can find Egyptian pyramids, the Colosseum, impressive statues from the Easter Islands and a number of other structures, the implementation of which we admire even today. The construction of monuments is always associated with the fact that it is necessary to find a suitable place for them and, above all, to meet the requirements imposed on them. Here they ask for a connection to water, sometimes a connection to a road or a connection to buildings of a certain format.

If you manage to fulfill the conditions, you will perform a miracle and thereby gain victory points. The end of the game is then tied to the recounting of rings gained from population growth. Victory points can also be gained from the least represented raw materials. The winner is the one with the most. Additional cards can be a kind of extension of the gameplay, giving players new goals, forcing them to think more about how they will build what. When you place them in the game, they slightly increase the difficulty of Monuments of the Ages.

Accessibility is the strong point of Monuments of the Ages.

A common problem when developing strategies is that they are too complex. Sure, some players like it, but if you want as many people as possible to play the game, you need to make it “significantly” simple. In the case of “Monuments of the Ages”, the authors of this board managed to create an accessible work in which you can always implement some construction with seven kopecks.

Under your hands during the rounds, an interesting-looking city will emerge, consisting of diverse districts and here and there, somehow, miraculously, entered history with its size. The idea is interesting and works, so I would recommend it to anyone who likes to build, but does not want to think too much about the huge rules of “Monuments of the Ages”. For me, it is a great game with very beautifully designed components that give the impression that you are implementing something truly magnificent.

For providing a copy of “Monuments of the Ages” We would like to thank the Czech distributor Tlama Games.