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I’m lucky enough to have a couple of groups of gaming friends (just don’t tell them about each other!), which is great for many reasons, not least the social side. It also means I have access to a variety of games that I don’t own, and for that reason I often don’t buy games that they have, thus saving on the old purse strings. So you can imagine it takes something quite special to make me purchase a game that my friends already own, and after playing Century spice road and then Century Eastern Wonders it was almost the latter for me. But then my other half suggested we look at the Century Golem editions, and so as to have a bit of variety from my friends we opted for Century Golem Edition – Eastern Mountains.
Aint no mountain high enough…
In Eastern Mountains the aim of the game is to collect the most amount of victory points, you’ll primarily do this by cashing in correct combinations of crystals for victory point tokens which can be found at the corners of the board. To achieve this you’ll be traveling around the board in your little wooden wagon and either mining for crystals or trading in the crystals you already own for (usually) better combinations of said crystals. These can then be traded in for the much coveted victory point tiles, and once one player has collected 4 of these, the game end is triggered.
Of course it’s not just the precious victory point tiles that cost crystals, moving extra spaces, building outposts and even bumping into your opponents will all cost you. Outposts must be built before you’re allowed to make the trade featured on each space and the cost of these will vary. And of course your little wagon can only hold so many crystals so you’ll need to carefully plan your moves as you don’t want to run out of space and be forced to discard crystals you might need.
As your outposts are built, victory points will start to be revealed on your player board, which can be added to your score at the end of the game and when you clear a column of them they will allow you to take a bonus tile. These bonus tiles will allow you to do such as gain an extra crystal when you mine or extra room in your wagon to store crystals. Some of these tiles are also worth victory points.
The board itself for Eastern Mountains will change for every game as it’s made up of hexagonal tiles that you randomly distribute to create your playing area. A guide to the first shape is given in the instructions but it also suggests a couple of other options to use once you’re used to the set up or you can even create your own.
Rock and Roll Golem
Sadly the monsters of rock don’t feature as heavily as you might imagine in Eastern Mountains, with just a smattering of golem imagery on the player boards and box, they don’t actually appear in the game play either. Theres also only a brief mention of them in the blurb on the rules that talks about your travels through the Cavernia Mountains and exploration of the Soul Valleys, but none of these are mentioned again.
This is a game for 2 to 4 players, and has just one alteration to the rules for 2 players with regard to when you’re building outposts. This game plays just as nicely at two players as it does at the full 4 and as much as we as a family need games that accommodate more people we really love a game that scales down for when it’s just me and the fella playing.
Century Golem – Eastern Mountains is a very clever game with lots of possible routes to victory, where you’re often required to consider which move will be more beneficial to you. You could be eyeballing the victory point tile your opponent is closing in on, but if you discard crystals to get there quicker, will you have enough left to exchange for it? Which bonus tile should you take, the one that will mine you an extra crystal or the one that will provide more space in your already fit to burst wagon? You’ll want to do everything in one turn but that’s not how it works and if you don’t carefully keep an eye on what your rivals have going on, they could be nearing that 4th victory point tile before you know it.
Century after Century
If you’ve played Century Eastern Wonders, as far as I can see this is the same with a new theme and an upgrade to fancy shiny crystals, so if you enjoyed that, chances are you’ll enjoy this too. For me, I think I prefer Eastern Wonders, although the gameplay is the same I much prefer the shape of the victory point tiles and the slightly curved hexagons for the playing board, I think they look much smarter. I also worry that the points on the Eastern Mountains victory point tiles will soon get battered around and they don’t stack as nicely for me. Also I’m not sold on the crystals, the domed four piece box they come in almost doesn’t sit right in the box and I preferred the wooden spice cubes in the original too. I do however think the outposts in this version are nicer even though they’re more basic, when it comes to the aesthetics I’m clearly a simple gal, never did like too much bling!
Included along with the rules, is a separate set of instructions for playing ‘the call for adventure’, this is a game that can be played if you were to combine this with Century Golem edition, which sadly I don’t own so can’t comment on yet.
Overall it’s a great game and the gameplay is excellent, but which version you should get just depends which you like the look of more. If you’re a bit of a magpie and like the shiny things in life, the Century Golem editions are probably the way to go, either way you won’t go far wrong with the cleverness of Eastern Mountains
