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Unleash your imagination with Books of Time, a game that hands you the reins of history. Your task involves crafting three books, each opening the door to a trove of unique special abilities. Humanity’s story, etched over millennia, is a tapestry of our scientific breakthroughs, grand voyages, and our unwavering spirit to thrive. Now, you can contribute your own chapter to this grand narrative. With Books of Time, your adventure unfolds with every turn of the page, painting a rich tableau of your journey through time.
👥 1-4 players, ages 14+
⌛ Playing time: 45-60 minutes
📝 Designer: Filip Głowacz
🎨 Artwork: Zbigniew Umgelter, Aleksander Zawada
🏢 Publisher: Board&Dice
https://boardanddice.com/
A game of Books of Time proceeds over several rounds, each consisting of individual player turns and an event phase. On their turn, players must select one of six available actions and, if they wish, use an ability offered by the Chronicle.
📖 When activating pages, players choose a book and use the abilities on both visible pages. They can perform these abilities in any order or even decide not to perform them at all.
🖋️ Writing pages is about adding new pages to a book. Players choose an available page from above their player board, pay the required cost, and place it in the corresponding book. They can repeat this process as many times as they want in a single turn, gaining an instant benefit each time they add a page.
📕 Closing books lets players gain benefits from their pages. Books can be closed early, and they can also close automatically when players reach the back cover.
🃏 Drawing allows players to select two pages from the offer and add them to their player board.
⬆️ With advancing, players can move their markers on the three tracks by paying the corresponding costs. After a marker advances, players can gain a benefit or choose to move their related objective forward.
📇 Turning pages requires players to select up to three books and turn the page in each. After this, players receive the instant benefit shown on each book’s current page.
⏳ Besides these six possible actions, the Chronicle offers events that players can choose to resolve before or after their main action. The Event Phase occurs after the last player completes their turn, with that player turning the page of the Chronicle to reveal a new set of events.
📜 The game ends when the Chronicle is closed, and additional points are scored. During final scoring, each player evaluates their three objective tiles and scores points accordingly. Players on the topmost position of a track on the civilization board score additional points, and every five leftover resources equals one victory point. The player holding the most points stands tall as the master architect of history!
Books of Time is a game created by Filip Głowacz and published by Board&Dice. It can be played solo or with a group of up to four players, with the gameplay lasting approximately an hour. As a medium-weight eurogame, it successfully introduces a fresh twist on tableau-building.
📖 The game’s rulebook is clear and precise, leaving no room for doubt. Along with this, the game’s iconography is well described in the rulebook’s appendix. This also extends to player aids, featuring brief descriptions of the six potential actions and the most common icons. However, be prepared to invest some time in both game setup and pack away.
📚 The game has six different actions you can undertake on your turn. While this may appear overwhelming initially, a couple of rounds should be enough to familiarize you with all the possibilities. Do note, players who tend to overthink their moves may cause some downtime, as there isn’t much to do during others’ turns. The game experience is largely solitaire, with player interaction being limited to changes in the card offer.
📄 When you acquire new pages, they don’t go directly into your books. Instead, they are added to the leftmost slot on your player board, pushing existing pages to the right. This alters the cost of the pages already present on your board, allowing you to plan accordingly.
📈 Books of Time is a highly flexible game, providing lots of choices and strategic paths. Every turn feels like a puzzle as you seek the most efficient way to meet your objectives, which contribute significantly to your final score. You have three stacks of objectives, each aligning with one of your books. These tiles depict various goals to achieve extra points at the end, such as arranging certain pages in a specific order or having a variety of page types in your book. Throughout the game, certain actions allow you to remove the top tile from a stack, and advancing up a track provides the choice between discarding the top tile or claiming the benefit shown on the track. This choice is crucial, as the top objectives are easier but yield fewer points. However, the game only awards points for the topmost objective tile at the game’s end when you meet its conditions. Therefore, balancing track progression with achieving objectives becomes one of your most important considerations.
🎨 The quality of the components is solid, and the cards are adorned with splendid thematic artwork and clear icons. The bookbinders, although seemingly gimmicky, are a cleverly implemented thematic element. They also ensure the game doesn’t sprawl too much, though a large table is still recommended when playing with four.
💭 Books of Time is a strategic game filled with tons of decision-making opportunities. The innovative book-building offers a refreshing take on the tableau-building mechanism. For those who enjoy tableau-building games and are looking for something new, this game is worth a try!
📝 We would like to extend our gratitude to Board&Dice for providing us with a review copy of Books of Time.
Great review, thanks for the clarity of the actions and how to score the points. Truly makes the game even more interesting. Still getting more excited the more I read about it, to play it one day. Hope you have lots of fun further with playing Books of Time!