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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 |
beachgirlpcola
Really enjoy this game! Surprised at the mediocre rating on BGG. Very unique dice placement, and the strategy to win is not readily apparent. The fun factor is high. Liked enough to order the expansion. We only play 2p, and I tried solo. Had to stop to translate the Ubot cheat sheet, which I uploaded to the BGG file section, to give solo another go. Also, absolutely must use a Sharpie to color the Encounter site die pips to be able to see them.
AdelinDumitru
This is a tough game to rate and review. We enjoyed it quite a lot, it's definitely a nice mixture of mechanisms, and presents players with very interesting choices (will you use this die as a Seat of Power, or do you want to use it one more turn? But if you do, it will go towards the Advisory track..and you'll have to keep investing in other dice; also, will you use as a Seat of Power a die color that triggers the tiles that you placed, or one that will be more rewarding towards the end of the game when Seats of Power are scored?) The way dice drafting works, and how it's combined with tile placement is definitely interesting. I also like how only the lowest positions on the temple tracks are taken into account when determining how much points you score for them. The way the Motherships rotate each time they are used, and you require increasingly more experienced workers, is also fascinating, and so is the way your Archon gains more powers the more Advisors you have. However, I would have wanted to see more personality for the temples. Letting aside the Zodiac cards that are randomly placed on top of the temple tracks at the beginning of the game, there is nothing to distinguish the Sea Temple from the Mountain Temple or from the Third Temple. I would have loved for instance to see some different requirements for advancing on one of the tracks, or some small rewards given by one of them, as well as an easier way to tell them apart at first glance (because some of the tiles reference them). Components-wise, Origins is a mixed bag. You've got some perfectly serviceable dice, some very nice miniatures (only 4 of them, different only in color), and some cool-looking motherships. However, tiles are very small and there's a lot of text on them. The main board is...ok, but the arena on the bottom half of the board is huge given the information conveyed there. The resource tokens are quite bad, and not easy to tell apart - given that you handle them for most part of the game, you really wish that they would have looked and felt better. Lastly, you have to stack small tokens on top of each other on one of your tiles, which is not ideal. That aside, I want to emphasize that we enjoyed the gameplay quite a lot. Besides these small gripes concerning production (and the fact that the tracks should have been a bit more interesting in our opinion), this is a very solid title. I prefer the T-series by Board and Dice to Origins, but this one is also easier to understand, easier to play, and quite fast (1 hour and a half in 2 players, with rules explanations). Review copy by Board and Dice.
Ajax
I'm torn on this one. Some really interesting decisions here. And the combos builds very nicely. But I'm just not sure all of the elements work well together. It's almost like the mechanics are separate mini-games, all executed with varying success: the military track is under-powered, the temples are way over-powered, the buildings are something else entirely. There are plenty of turns and interesting end game conditions. I'd play again.