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Monuments: Wonders of Antiquity Price: £23.99 Board Game; 2-4 Players; Ages 12+ by Mayfair Games Many civilizations have come and gone over the course of human history. Some developed very advanced, inspiring cultures. Others remain unnoticed. Today we seek answers to countless questions left by our ancestors. Historians explore their ancient monuments, structures, and ruins that illuminate hidden stories passed down from antiquity. Here lie the sacred answers of our past. Can you find them? Can you find their tales? Can you reawaken history? Become an ancient visionary. Build great monuments to inspire your people! Can you design a true wonder of the world? Or will you take an existing creation and lift it to greater heights? Then, can you help these monuments achieve eternal fame and glory? With splendid monuments and preserved chronicles, your people will take their place in history! GAME REVIEW BY COUNTER MAGAZINE Mayfair / Abacus 2-4 players, 45-60 minutes designed by Stefan Risthaus reviewed by Alan How At a recent weekend of gaming to play the Essen releases Monuments was the most played game. Partly this was because it plays in an hour with 4 players and partly it is because it is a good game. Players build monuments from a selection of 12 by melding cards in the corresponding colours. The cards also feature a number (1-9) and one of three symbols (trireme, scroll or helmet). In order to build a monument you meld a set of at least two cards in the same colour as the monument. One other player can build the same monument, but they must use at least three cards, so there is a slight advantage in building first. You acquire cards in a similar way to Ticket to Ride: from a face-up selection of three or off the top of a face-down draw deck. As there is no hand limit it is a question of when you build your monuments. Each turn a player has three actions. This includes card drawing, building a monument or adding more cards to a monument. Once melded in front of a player a fourth action is possible, which yields a few victory points. This is achieved by discarding a pair of cards with the same symbol and scores one point for each monument card in front of the player that shows the same symbol. At the beginning of the game each player receives 3 markers representing historians. If these are not played by the end of the game, players lose 12 points per historian which is a major disincentive. Playing a historian is only possible when at least one other player has built a monument. Each historian ``records\'\' history by taking the top card from each monument that has at least two cards remaining and scores a number of points equal to the number of cards taken. This is marked on a historian track. This action also triggers a movement in the scoring values of the monument cards taken. There are six increases possible for each monument and each provides 3 more victory points to the sole builder of a monument or 2 for the first placed builder and 1 for the second. When there are two monument builders, the winner is the person with the most cards displayed at the end of the game, tie broken by the player with the highest individual card. So 9 point monuments are really useful as they guarantee that one tie break condition will be in your favour. But only of course if you build that monument and someone else does not have more cards in their monument at the end of the game. The game finishes when the face-up set of three cards cannot be replenished. We allow the number of cards to be counted when it is down to the last 10 or so as players are calculating whether to get their last historian out (in desperation) or to finish the game so that someone else may not do so. The game has some great checks and balances. Firstly, you need to play cards out in melds to score points, yet it is more efficient to do so with a swathe of cards rather than use precious actions to play them out later. Getting your cards out early means that other players can use their historians to score points, but you will also score points as the value of your monument increases. But if you get your melds out early you might not have high value cards and someone else may take the lead from you. On the other hand, if you wait too long (as I did on a recent game) before playing your melds, then two players may have claimed a monument and your plans for those cards revert back to using them from points scoring. When you play your historians they score points and at the game end the three leading historians score bonus points, so there is a temptation to wait for sufficient monuments to be available before playing historians in order to claim more points. But the risk is that someone else sees this and plays their historian just before you, reducing the points you could score. Other game situations can occur. If many historians are played early on, then you might have the pick of when to play yours, but knowing this the other players try to accelerate the game play. Finally, the designer has put in a rule that you can gain a fourth action by playing a pair of cards with matching symbols. This becomes useful at the end for maximising your position, and using up otherwise worthless cards. There isn\'t so much analysis as to cause delays and the game whips along during its whole course. The game plays effortlessly and yet you are always involved as turns do not take very long. This is another excellent Essen release and one that will hit the tables many times as it presents an ideal gaming framework in which to spend up to and hour. More ...

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