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Origins: First Builders
They came to this planet, and they chose you. They uplifted your people and promised great prosperity. They provided the wisdom and the resources to build your cities sky high. They taught you the ways of culture, science, and warfare. They promised knowledge for any willing to learn. Come, Archon, guide your citizens to victory, under the watchful eyes of the Builders, our benefactors from beyond the skies above.
In Origins: First Builders, you are an archon, guiding a population of freemen, influencing the construction of buildings and monuments, climbing the three mighty zodiac temples, and taking part in an arms race — all in an effort to leave the greatest mark on mankind’s ancient history.
You start the game with a city consisting of just two building tiles: the Agora tile and the Palace tile. As the game develops, your city will grow in both size and strength as you add new building tiles, each of which has a special ability that triggers when it is first added to a city and when closing a district. Your placement on the military track indicates the rewards you receive when you attack and your chances of becoming first player.
Origins: First Builders is played over a number of rounds, with a round ending only after each player has passed. If a game end condition has not yet been triggered, the game continues with a new round. On your turn, you perform one of the following actions:
• Visit an encounter site with your workers to gain resources and additional citizen or speaker dice, advance on the zodiac temple tracks (and potentially gain zodiac cards), and advance and attack on the military track.
• Close a district, gaining victory points (VPs) and possibly gold for matching a district card’s building pattern, additional bonuses based on the buildings you activate, and additional VPs at the end of the game based on the value of the citizen die you use to close the district.
• Build a tower level to increase your endgame scoring based on the tower heights and the matching color dice you use to close your districts.
• Grow your population.
• Pass.
The game finishes at the end of the round when one or more of the following conditions has been met:
At most three colors of tower disks are still in stock.
No gold remains above any district card.
No citizen die of the proper color can be added to the citizen offer.
A player has moved all three of their zodiac disks to the top space of each temple track.
The temple area is divided into three tracks: the sea temple, the forest temple, and the mountain temple. You score points only for your two least-valued temples, and once all the points have been summed, whoever has the most VPs wins.
| Ages | 14+ |
|---|---|
| Players | 2 Players, 3 Players, 4 Players |
| Play Time | 60m – 120m |
| Designer | Adam Kwapiński |
| Mechanics | Drafting, Turn Order: Stat-Based, Variable Set-up, Worker Placement with Dice Workers, Tile Placement |
| Theme | City Building, Civilization, Dice, Ancient |
| Publisher | Board&Dice |
Addiction2k
A solid worker placement puzzle but not very thematic. Worth playing but not "bust it out every time" experience. I suspect it takes several plays before you can see the path through the game tho. The best strategy isn’t readily apparent even to a practiced eye like myself.
Innsmouth_Look
A supposed civ building game using dice worker placement. Visit an alien, make it harder for the next worker by spinning up the required value of the next dice until it hits 6, then if cycles back to a 1. Collect chits to allow the dice to be manipulated. Buy city tiles to create colour patterns, gain special power cards, or work around a special power track. Not very interesting, not very grindy, not deep. Dry with a pasted on theme. I actually really dislike the theme as it uses space aliens as the motivation to develop human civilization. This just isn't interesting.
androgeus
Völlig unthematisch, bloße Mechanik. Gebäude, die man baut, haben nur den Zweck, Punkte zu bringen. Wie sie heißen und aussehen, ist gleichgültig, es könnten auch einfach Buchstaben (A, B, C...) drauf stehen. Man baut sie nach Vorgaben von Karten, die z.B. fordern, dass zwei rote und ein gelbes Gebäude im Winkel zueinander gebaut werden müssen. Für den thematisch orientierten Spieler geradezu grausam langweilig. Optimierfreaks mag so etwas eher gefallen. Google translated: Completely unrelated, mere mechanics. Buildings that you build are only there for the purpose of earning you points. It doesn't matter what they are called or what they look like, they could just have letters (A, B, C...) on them. You build them according to the specifications of cards, which require, for example, that two red and one yellow building must be built at an angle to each other. For the thematically oriented player downright boring. Optimization freaks may like something like that.