There are games which serve as ur-texts, creating or growing from disconnected roots into a trunk that forms a foundation for dozens of games to come. Chess. Age of Steam. Terra Mystica.
Terra Mystica has spawned numerous pretenders, games that attempt to model its particular blend of deterministic resource management and area control. It even has had babies of its own: Gaia Project, Terra Nova, and several expansions.
Age of Innovation is Terra Mystica: Advanced, but before I can sing its praises, I have to give you an overview of what it is that makes the original great.
Chess puzzle deluxe
Terra Mystica is about carving out space. Each player plays a faction that is tied to a specific terrain type. This faction has two special powers: one they start the game with, and another that is unlocked through the construction of a specific building. Each player’s board has a number of different building types, each of which, when built, gives that player additional income generation at the end of the round. These grant worker income, coin income, priest-track-manipulation-income, ammo to manipulate the BOWLS OF POWER, and additional asymmetric power-up tiles that are first come-first-serve.
You are tied to a terrain type as a player, and you can’t build your oh-so-valuable buildings without first terraforming terrain (using your limited workers) to the type you need to build on. On top of this, each round, a scoring category will trigger, giving you points for accomplishing specific objectives that round.
You also have a cool little energy circulation system in the aforementioned bowls of power, where you cycle around a resource to take powered-up actions.
This results in a very challenging dance, where every move counts. You have to balance building buildings with scoring points, deny other players territory while carving out your own, and putting your own economy in the toilet.
All this is done with zero hidden information or sudden gotchas. The entire game can theoretically be calculated from beginning to end, and the designers and players actually did this with computer simulations that (I think) still live on BoardGameGeek.
This is the crux of Terra Mystica. It is a game where you can lose on the first move of the game, and if played perfectly, the correct initial positioning wins you the game. Of course, most people don’t play at this level, just like chess. It’s fun to play, though it has a similar difficulty as chess, where even a slight difference in player understanding can result in a dramatic rout.
I say “can” because typically that’s not how it goes. People make mistakes, they miscalculate, they make suboptimal moves. But the weighty feeling of making the right decision on the first move is undeniable.
Now, as a sequel/evolution, Age of Innovation doesn’t fix this, because there’s nothing to be fixed. If we’re playing a competitive game, I’m not super interested in trying to handicap, as there are about 2 million other euro games that do that.
Architect of your own demise
Age of Innovation is absolutely still Terra Mystica, as much of what makes the original game competitive and mentally taxing is present. In true infomercial fashion—But wait! There’s more!
In the version of Terra Mystica that is most commonly played amongst competitive groups, you receive your faction and depending on the map, you get a starting points value that’s adjusted to data about how competitive that faction can be on that map. Ultimately, the most important decision is the starting location. Some places on the map are just better for certain factions, and often some positions are enhanced by other factions being in or out of the game.
Age of Innovation also features the same difficult choice for selecting an initial faction PLUS another series of difficult to evaluate decisions. See, you’ve got to build your faction before you actually make any moves on the board.
Factions are composed of three things: a terrain type, a faction power, and a faction special building. During setup, players will draft these components one at a time. You are responsible for choosing the best stuff to make your faction work well against all the stuff that other factions are drafting and what you think they’re going to do.
It’s extremely front-loaded-decision-making and for newbies, it can be a significant challenge within an already very challenging game.
Other new things
Age of Innovation also adds a new way to score: innovation tiles. They’re tied to a new resource, books, which come in four colors. Books allow you to access randomly determined abilities that allow you to access/gain the aforementioned tiles. These tiles often give you a powerful bonus, a permanent ability, or a huge influx of points if you meet their parameters. In a sense, these are the third rail of victory points that was offered in expansion Terra Mystica: Fire & Ice’s additional endgame victory condition. You have to position yourself well to grab them at the right time, which is made difficult by opponents often jockeying for the same ones.
Still the GOAT
For me, Age of Innovation neatly sits in my top 10 games of all time. It’s a tightwire of meaningful decisions, where you must accurately estimate what other players are capable of, correctly evaluate the type of game that is going to occur in a given session, and stay focused and adaptable in the face of opponent decisions. You cannot make errors or expect a neatly arranged catchup mechanism or strategic balancing to come in and shore up your mistakes. It’s exacting, challenging, and beautiful. When I think of games that best exemplify the sorts of social experiences the medium can bring forth, Terra Mystica is at the top of the list, and Age of Innovation joins the party without missing a step.
Age of Innovation details
- Designer: Helge Ostertag
- Artists: Álvaro Calvo Escudero, Lukas Siegmon
- Publishers: Capstone Games, Cranio Creations, Feuerland Spiele, Geekach Games, Gém Klub Kft., IGAMES, Korea Boardgames, Maldito Games, Portal Games, Super Meeple, Swan Panasia Co., Ltd., White Goblin Games, テンデイズゲームズ(TendaysGames)
- Release Date: 2023
- Player count : 1 - 5
- Age range : 14+
- Time range : 40 - 200 minutes
- Mechanism(s): Contracts, End Game Bonuses, Hexagon Grid, Income, Modular Board, Network and Route Building, Turn Order: Pass Order, Variable Player Powers, Variable Set-up, Victory Points as a Resource
- BGG Geek Rating: 8.63826 - converted to Meeple Mountain scale: 4.5.
- More articles about Age of Innovation.
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