Publish or perish!
🦸♂️ Age of Comics is a game with an awesome theme and even better aesthetics 🤩 - and I say that, even though comic books were not that big of a thing in my childhood. Trying the game at LeiriaCon was pretty fun, and if you'd ask to play it with you, I'd do it. Unfortunately gameplay is a bit simplistic so I don't think we actually need to own it. 😶
In this game players lead different comic publishing companies, trying to create more fun comics and collect more fans than their rivals, and all of this done through simple worker placement. 👉 Players just place workers each round and do the depicted action - spots are limited, and the later you visit specific actions the weaker the effects are.
Publishing a comic is of course the most important action: 🧐 for it you need to have an artist and a writer, and also a comic card with matching idea tokens. If the writer and artist match the genre, the comic will have extra fans. This is pretty basic color matching of cards, but thanks to the awesomely illustrated comic book covers, it still feels fun. If you want to cheap out, you can make knock-offs of your opponent's comics. In this case you only need a writer and an artist - sometimes quantity beats quality. 😈
The other actions all revolve around publishing: drafting the different cards and ideas or getting a bit of extra money. Your salesman 💼 can also move on the map, gathering orders that can net you bonus fans.
Each player tracks their comics’ popularity on the board. 📈 There is a race each round to have the most fans for fame 🎖️ points, but popularity also determines how much money 💰 you earn. So you really want as many and as good comics as you can churn out. As you publish new comics you also unlock some ongoing special abilities, to get an edge over the competition.
💬 So like I said the theme is fun and the implementation is pretty thematic. The looks really put the cherry on top! It's all very simple though - which could also be good for a more relaxed euro session. I'd also add that you will need 3 or 4 players due to the way competition works here. After all, the more comics you can make knock-offs of, the better. 😄
