Age of Gods???

Anybody played "Age of Gods??? What are your thoughts?

Never heard of it.

I played once a few years ago with 6 players, it was a chaotic disaster of epic proportions, one of the worst gaming experience in my life (but still better than Liberté).

HOWEVER, the new edition has supposedly addressed some problems (it doesn't play with 6 anymore, for starters), and I know AT people who played it a lot and liked it very much.

Thanks! I found a cheap copy of the game, I will let you know what I think!

Just played the new English edition [one of the crew got a review copy from Asmodee] last week with 5. I didn't think it was that chaotic, but it requires a fair bit of [god I hate this term] meta-gaming if you really want to shape the game play.

Personally, I found that dead in-line with the theme. Gods attempting to screw each other by proxy with mortals, who immediately then fall in the category of "poor bastards." Also the "you can't bet on your own sponsored races" was a real sticking point for some. Again, I found that immediately in line with the mythology/theme. It should be "hidden hand" activity as, should you reveal your hand, the other gods would come crashing down on you like a ton of bricks. Some in the group, though, didn't quite get that; without some sort of "off-board" interaction in the form of trash talk/bluster and on-board feints and sometimes self-harming moves [to deflect attention from your big points race], the game loses focus quickly and can stalemate.

Two suggestions: copy the turn track and "disaster table" onto 4x6 notecards and give one to each player so they can see what's supposed to happen at the start of the turn and can the identify the potential disasters/rolled effects without craning across the table to read it on the corner of the board. Also, immediately replace the dime-sized "1st play" marker that is supposed to move from player to player to signify first move with a great big freakin' "dealer button" from a Texas Hold'em set so all can see who the fuck goes first each round.

Since I smoke like a small mid-19th century English industrial town, my first judge of a game is my cigarette need:game play ratio. If I find myself desperately craving a smoke every 15 minutes in any game that plays in under 2 hours, it's probably one that isn't holding my attention. This one, I didn't notice that nicotine monkey gnawing on the base of my skull until we finished the last score count, re-hashed the betting rules for the 4th time to make sure we hadn't missed anything, and then talked through how we should have played various rounds differently to change the outcome. That's pretty good in my book.

Hope to play it again soon with a couple of different folks who embrace the spirit of the game a bit more. [As I said in an earlier post, 2 of the guys playing this game left at the end to play Age of Steam, which said to me that they lean a bit more to the spreadsheet side of the gaming world...]