Board games
fromBoard Game Quest
2 days agoAeterna Review
Aeterna is a medium-weight area-control game where players lead Roman families across three eras to gain prestige through territory control, construction, and citizen management.
7 Empires released this year to little fanfare. On the surface, it presents as just another stuffy Euro. But it was the name Mac Gerdts, infamous designer of Concordia (among many other unique designs), that drew me in. While new, 7 Empires revisits the older release Imperial (2006) and promises to streamline by way of mechanisms and playtime. Publisher Rio Grande Games was kind enough to send this our way to test the limits of expansion on the old continent.
Full disclosure: I have never played a game produced by the Game Crafter until now. For the uninitiated, the Game Crafter is a print-on-demand game publishing company i.e., they will produce whatever game designers send them, for a fee, without questioning game quality. Their components have a solid reputation, but as for the games themselves, well, there's always a chance you find a gem, akin to Andy Weir's self-published novel The Martian. Or you might be disappointed by a mess that clearly needed further playtesting.