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Lowell Kempf
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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One game that seems to get a mixed reaction here on Board Game Geek but has proven to be quite successful at my primary gaming table is Age of Gods.
I’m not a big theme guy. I certainly don’t mind or resent theme but theme is not something that will usually make or break a game for me. When it comes to board games, I tend to lean more towards abstracts and euros. Can the mechanics stand on their own? That’s the real question for me. That being said, Age of Gods is dripping with theme, which is one of the reasons why my group likes it so much. The mechanics do a good job of making that theme come to life and keeping things as balanced as they can be in a world where mad gods do war.
In Age of Gods, the players take the roles of capricious gods. We’re not talking nice gods. Heck, we’re not even talking the god of the Old Testament. No, we’re talking the kind of gods who use mortals as play things and who cause endless strife and warfare. You get to be the kind of gods that make your followers want to become atheists.
The map is a brightly colored pieces of work that looks garish even to my colorblind eyes. Over this map, twenty-four different races struggle for power and dominion, each with their own special racial abilities. During the course of the game, empires may rise up and whole populations might get wiped out. Actually, count on that happening. Sometimes to the same race in the same game 
In short, this is one crazy and violent neighborhood.
There is a twist. You may be a God with cosmic, world shaking power BUT you don’t know who actually worships you at the start. There are four population sizes of races and you just get to know who your largest group of worshippers at the beginning. Throughout the game, your other followers will be secretly and randomly revealed to you. No one knows who anyone else’s worshippers are. That’s okay, though.
Seeing as how you are divine powers, there’s no my-piece, you-piece nonsense. As gods, you get to move any of the pieces you feel like
Only at the end are all the worshippers revealed and counted. By that time, you usually have a pretty good idea who has what (and people can reveal it during the course of the game) but bluffing plays a huge part of the game.
You also get to bet on a race that doesn’t worship you. Did I mention that you were a bunch of capricious gods? Yes, you are willing to take some poor race that doesn’t want a shrine to you anywhere near them and still squeeze some points out of them.
The two games that Age of Gods seems to immediately remind people of are Small World and Risk.
And that might be part of the problem. When you actual knuckle down and look at the mechanics and the way you need to play if you want to end up the head honcho of your pantheon, you have to play Age of Gods very differently than either of those games.
Small World, despite the fact that it also involved specifically powered races trying to take over the world, is a radically different game. In Age of Gods, you have multiple-random factors (No less than three different decks of cards, dice rolls for every combat) and enough hidden information to make Nixon feel at home. In Small World, all the information is above board and the random elements are kept to a comfortable minimum. In Small World, luck tweaks your plans. In Age of Gods, luck can turn the world upside down.
I still really like Small World but the thematic similarities deceptively make you think the games would be alike. As one of my friends put it “Don’t ask me to decide between my children.” Yeah, Small World is your son who is in the math club and Age of Gods is your daughter who is on the soccer team but they’re both good kids.
The comparison to Risk is another easy one. I have certainly seen people try to play Age of Gods like Risk and I have seen it turn out horribly. Risk is a game that is all about expansion. The best defense and the best offense is expansion. Get your people on the board. However, in Age of Gods, every race has a very limited counter mix (more limited than Small World, in fact) and who owns what is a secret. On top of that, anyone can use any race. Yeah, at the end of the game, you want to hold as much territory as you can. However, you cannot afford to be obvious about it. It is far too easily to get wiped off the map and to have only archeologists find your holy scriptures and say “Huh. Never heard of this god.”
You know, that might be why some people really don’t care for Age of Gods. On the surface, it looks like your bog standard light war game, a la Risk or Nexus Ops or the like. However, it is really a game that is all about bluffing and gambling. You don’t play it like a conventional wargame. For you and your fellow deities, the world is not a battlefield. It’s a casino that is dripping with blood. The game does not always go to the strong. It usually goes to the best conman.
Age of Gods is not for everyone. Heck, it might not even work that well for folks who you would think would be its target audience at first glance. However, if you take it for what it is, a game that is about lying and bluffing and doing your best to make sure your enemies kill each other thinking they are you, Age of Gods does a fine job.
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Thanks God, I remembered and loving you so much through my heart and feelings. 
Test some crazy pics on at 
