This week at the shop we played Century: Golem Edition, a re-skin on the original Century: Spice Road, published  by Plan B Games. Century: Golem is a light strategy game and a great introduction to card drafting and hand building mechanics. These mechanics are similar to ones found in more complex games like Architects of the West Kingdom, Blood Rage, and Bunny Kingdom.

In Century: Golem Edition play as merchants traveling along a famed Golem Road to collect and trade crystals. These crystals will be useful in gaining points. You start the game with a handful of yellow crystals, which holds the lowest value in the game. Your starting cards allow you gain more yellow crystals or upgrade them into higher value crystals. Store your crystals on your caravan, which can hold a maximum of ten. If you go over your limit in a turn, then you must resolve this before passing. For example, if you have 11 crystals you must choose one to discard, you may not upgrade them at this time.

In a turn, you choose one of four available actions. You may play a card from your hand, purchase a Golem card, or rest and return all played cards back to your hand. You may also acquire a merchants card, which is where the drafting comes into play, choose one card if you have the crystals to purchase it. Then, this will be replaced with another card to be available for purchase. The game ends after a player has received their final Golem card. Complete the round then add points, and the player with the most is the winner!

Century: Golem Edition is a light strategy game and would be a great addition to family game night or introducing to friends that haven’t played many board games. The components are of nice quality, since the crystals are acrylic and the coins are silver and copper. However, if you play this game a lot, investing in sleeves will help protect the cards from wear and tear. We have this game in the play area if you would like to stop by and check it out!

Join us next week to play Richard Garfield's Bunny Kingdom! This card drafting game to lead your bunny clan to gather resources and build cities to create the greatest kingdom. Keep checking back every week, we have an exceptional lineup of games we'll be learning. We are really excited to show you some up-and-coming releases.