Century: Spice Road Review - JonGetsGames

[@bengrasher6567]

The house rule I have created to try to fix Negative #1 is: Once anyone buys a VP card, destroy/discard the first card in the actions/exchange row (and fill in from the top). Often once the engines get rolling, the person executing their engine just never buys cards any more, and this can cause the people without engines set up to be basically stuck with nothing to do. Rotating out the early cards (which were less useful to everyone apparently) can cause good new cards to show up and potentially enable the people who are behind to catch up engine-wise. This also mitigates some of the advantage the first player gets by having first access to the cards (critical) and just moving directly into their engine.

[@bengrasher6567]

Additionally you may not have identified the pattern on the VP cards, the more individual colors you have on a VP card, the more VP it is worth. So that's the answer to that puzzle, but I agree that it is very mathematical. It is harder to get cubes of different colors, so that's good.

[@JonGetsGames]

Sounds like an interesting house rule, I like it :)

[@elsasslotharingen7507]

Very interesting! I'll give that a try.

[@spiderfingers86]

Is it odd that I've been watching your reviews for a little while now but am just now noticing that the conductor wire in the lightbulb spells out your channel initials? Lol

[@Soulflame27]

Hi Jon, I've played the game 6 times now and it instantly became a favorite in our groups (3 players and 4 players). I do agree with the point you make about the trade row, but there is also another thing we noticed in games: it is very likely (especially at start) that some of the cards have 2+ more cubes on them than they cost, making them better than the starting card of 2 yellows. I have bought cards with red cubes, because some cards really ARE better than others. The production cards (especially the 'make one brown' and 'make one green and one brown') are super good. There are a lot of cards in the deck that require trading up to get a brown, so getting one just from a card (without costing you cubes) is super good. The green/yellow one might even be better as it is easier to trade up than to trade down. Both mentioned cards have a net value of +4 worth of cubes. The 3 upgrade card is also very good. I can't understand why they didn't include more of those, or included cards like: get a red and one upgrade. or a yellow and 2 upgrades. So much design space there. One other thing I noticed that in all games so far, it really came down to whomever could get to 5 cards. Since all point cards are costed fairly (yellow generates 1 point, green 2, red 3, brown 4), the only thing that adjust this, is the gold/silver coins, and if you focus on those, you usually end up with only 2/3 more than someone else who didn't go for gold (and that is not enough to offset a card in total). Because in essence, if all cards generate +2, and all the point cards are equally costed, as long as you don't 'waste' cubes by overfilling your supply, you should always get the optimal value out of them. Overall I think the game is great. the most important thing is that you almost always have 'nice stuff to do', because each card has a net value of +2/+3/+4. Only 'resting' seems boring, but that is so fast and you actually gain options again, also a positive feeling. I think the game could maybe benefit from 2 houserules (non-tested): 1. Hide the cubes from other players with a player screen 2. The first card in the row is scrapped (including cubes!) when it has not been purchased for an entire round. Refill the row with a new card at the end. This also makes it less frequent that players get a ton of free cubes from buying something. - you could also opt to put the cubes on the next card to incentivize buying more, but I think that might push it more to 'luck' since it can tip a card so fast (from 0 cards and uninteresting to 4 cubes and super interesting is a big leap) Sorry for the long reply, thanks for the great review and game on!

[@elizabethryan2695]

I played this last as a three player game and we were all disappointed for all the same reasons Jon stated. However, I agree with some of your suggestions and think that those changes will make this game significantly more interesting. Thanks for the suggestions.

[@РоманЛапшин-д6з]

For those who compare it with Splendor: Play Century on odd days and Splendor on even ))) In Splendor you are exploiting a given engine, it's like driving a car with automatic transmission, so it's about how well you are steering. In Century on the other hand you are provided with a pile of different parts which you manually run constantly trying to adjust it according to the permanently changing situation with goals and it's about inventing and testing a new engine.

[@notmyeyeballgames7798]

Century golem edition coming soon.

[@Physiology-E-Paathshala]

By far the best review for this game

[@ginsbu]

The designer talked about the trade row stalling out here: boardgamegeek.com/article/26336774#26336774

[@JonGetsGames]

Thanks for this, I hadn't seen it before. I still stick with everything I said in the video, it may be an intentional design decision but I still think it feels flawed and much less interesting than the game it could have been.

[@xfoolsgoldx]

I love it and the more I play it the better it gets. Have played around 15 plays.

[@ricke1732]

I think a couple small house rules could fix these issues (which seem rather large). Maybe: Whenever the 3rd cube of the same color is placed on a card, those 3 are replaced with 1 cube of the next level. So, the 3rd yellow cube on a card would make all 3 yellows become a single red. Either way, this game seems very similar to a game I think is much better - Portal of Heroes.

[@elsasslotharingen7507]

That's actually horrible lol

[@cursivecurses]

ONE HUNDRED percent agree with the incentivization problems

[@spiderfingers86]

Many are comparing this to Splendor. How would you say they stack up against each other?

[@chuckm1961]

In terms of what? Ease of play? Mechanisms? Suitability for newbies? Which is the "better" game? If the question is "better," then how do YOU define a better board game?

[@JonGetsGames]

Honestly, I avoided bringing up this comparison because so many people have made it before. They appear to be much more similar than they actually are. Sure they are both streamlined engine building games, but the engines they make are SO different that comparing them doesn't make much sense. In Splendor you build up ongoing benefits to buy more and more expensive things while in Century you build a bigger hand and do lots of spice manipulation to try and match a constantly cycling row of set collection goal cards.

[@spiderfingers86]

chuckm1961 just in general, which is the overall preferred game. Like I said before, many have compared the two games for their similarities and would usually rank one over the other. They've done the same for Castles of Mad King Ludwig vs Isle of Skye, or Patchwork vs Cottage Garden vs Barenpark. Things like that are good for the average consumer who may be looking for a game to scratch a particular itch while wanting options for an optimal purchase.

[@cursivecurses]

I have strong opinions on this. Exactly because of Jon's negatives - the very poor, very low interaction is why Splendor is far better. Reserving cards in Splendor is HUGE. Also, the engine-building never stalls because the engine building and the VP-gaining are completely intertwined and not in two parts.

[@ramonosuke]

Agreed. I always hated the comparison of Champions of Midgard to Lords of Waterdeep, when both are vastly different games, and from what I've seen here, I think both Splendor and Century share some similarities, but are different enough to own both if you choose to. Great review by the way

[@jacqueszachariethaddeuspon4151]

Hi John! I am a big fan of yours and it would mean a lot to me if you would have a full playthrough of zombicide!

[@JonGetsGames]

Unfortunately I don't think that'll happen. I don't have access to the game anymore and when I honestly didnt like it very much back when I used to own it :-\

[@thatPUNKdude]

What if, once the row of cards stalls, you begin discarding the lowest card in the row each time you cycle through all the players taking an action? Would that help resolve the issue?

[@JonGetsGames]

That would potentially help, yeah. The game just needed some form of auto cycling on the action card row I think whether that be adding cubes until someone takes a card or having a card get discarded.

[@thatPUNKdude]

JonGetsGames Thanks for the reply. Huge fan of your channels. By far the best laid out and most thorough reviews on KZbin imo. Keep it up!

[@Rock7MAN]

I own this game, maybe I didn't read all the rules but I didn't know you could use a single card multiple times if you have the cubes for it. I thought you used it once and only once until you rested to get you're discard pile back into your hand

[@JonGetsGames]

This is apparently a frequently missed rule, but yes you can activate a trade card as many times as you can afford with that single card play, once it's on the table in future turns you of course can't use it until it comes back into your hand.

[@Rock7MAN]

that should prove effective in some cases, thanx for the info!!

[@Hieronymus-Pseudonymous]

The possibility of only "engine-running" past a certain point in a game seems to be a particular concern of yours.

[@EyalItsik]

Ha! First time I disagree with you strongly :) Most of my games were in 2 and 3 players, and I enjoyed them all quite a bit.

[@jonathandodd7682]

"Spiced up gameplay" - Unintentional pun?

[@JonGetsGames]

Hehe yep, 95% of my puns are unintentional but I was raised by an English father so they definitely happen :)

[@Sir_I.I_William]

Couldn't disagree more. This game is really fun at 2-player. Frankly, this review stalled out at some point, ha.