One of these civilization games was way in the back of the halls, hidden in the part of the convention center with what was easily the least foot traffic, a little 20-minute card game called Chronicler. I got the attention of one of the guys at the booth, and sat down with a German couple to try out the game.
In Chronicler, you are given a set of numbered cards, which are labeled as different technologies, and almost exclusively have a requirement of five tech points to play. (This is where I first got the sense that I wasn't going to be scratching my civ itch with the game.) You start at the lowest level, 1, and as you and your opponent's play 1s, the entire group of players is able to move up to playing 2s. Each card I have in front of me counts as two tech points for the level above it for the purposes of playing my cards, and each card an opponent has counts as one point. It may sound a little confusing, but in reality, it basically boils down to everyone staying fairly close in terms of tech level, since I can leach enough from the rest of the players if they pull ahead to try and catch back up.
So what do you do with the handfuls of cards that you can't play yet? They go from 1 to 9, so when you begin, you are limited to small portion of the deck. Well, any card equal to or above your highest card you can discard and then redraw. So... not much, actually.
So far, all of this card play, which feels remarkably like Solitaire (look for a specific card, play it if you find it, dump and redraw if you can't), is explained as "research" and "development."
But, thankfully, that is not all there is to the game. You can also build "structures"! These allow you to dump cards equal to your current tech level or below in order to score points or get a little bonus to your tech points and proceed down the Solitaire road in a slightly quicker fashion. As this mechanism was explained, I thought "Oh, that's interesting, you can use your cards for this or that, so you have a choice as to what is going to help you the most, or help your opponents the least." Unfortunately, once play began, I saw the reality: you rarely have much of a choice. If you can play a card as tech, you probably should. It's worth more points and it helps you get to higher levels that are worth even more points. I'm not a tactical genius, but the structures often felt like a waste of a turn. And I was not alone in feeling this. The other players questioned the move's value as well.
The game goes on like that, with players taking turns that consist of dumping unplayable cards to find playable cards and then making the most obvious decision about how to play them, until the deck runs out a few times or someone reaches the 9th tech level. Then points are totaled. I suppose this could feel like a climax, as you want to make sure that you don't reach the end of the game when other people are scoring points, but it doesn't. You know the scores, you know if playing the last card will cause you to win the game... and if it won't, well, don't do it.
In all of this, there is a military option. But not really.
You can use one of your actions as an attack, and place a low card facedown over another player's tech. And then on their turn, they can use an action to remove that card. Each of you took one of your actions, and now you are back to exactly where you started, minus a card that you could have used for points... while other players took actions that perhaps helped them build or get ahead (but, honestly, more likely involved them discarding 8s and 9s and then sighing when they still didn't draw the 5 they need). There is a structure that you can spend a few turns building that allows you to make your attacks slightly more effective (hitting two cards at once), but that's still not a huge draw for the cost.
Overall, the game isn't very exciting. The theme is poorly represented, the options aren't compelling, and far too often you sit, unable to do much at all because of bad card distribution. On the other hand, the game sold out at the convention. When my wife and I walked by the next day, they had a sign up letting everyone know how popular their game had been! It's a real possibility that I missed something that would take this from a mediocre game to a great game, but I don't know what it would be. As it stands, I would be happy never to play Chronicler again, and I am glad I had a chance to try it before I made a mistake and bought it.
(Also posted at BoardGameGeek.com)
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