Aeterna

• Designer: Martin Wallace
• Publisher: Ares
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60-120 mins
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/41v4VO6
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Æterna, the new game designed by Martin Wallace and developed by Ergo Ludo, you will take the role of a Roman Gens (family) that will try to increase its prestige through three Eras: The Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic, and the Roman Empire.

Your goal will be to increase your influence over the city by ruling over the 7 Hills, contributing to the construction of monuments and buildings, and supporting the conquest of the provinces.

You must always be careful to keep the citizens happy, as unrest in the Hills under your direct control could put you in a bad light. If you outwit your opponents, your Gens will be remembered in the History books as one of the most important in Rome.

Increase the power and prestige of your Gens to climb the social ladder of Ancient Rome and wield and seize power.

To set the game up, the board is placed on the table. This board shows the Seven Hills of Rome (each with unique scoring rules, naturally) and an unrest track in the lower right.  Unrest Damage markers are placed at the appropriate places on this track.  Two Personality cards are drawn at Random from the Era 1 Personality deck.  Each player is dealt a hand of 2 Province and 3 Monument cards (also from their respective Era 1 decks).  The decks for Eras 2 and 3 are set aside. 

Each player gets their own Domus board which is used to hold their inventory of citizens and resources – later in the game, cards will be played around this board.

The game is played over 3 Eras, each following the same set of phases – there is a track to remind you of the phases at the bottom of the gameboard.

A] Draft – each player gets 3 Monument Cards and 2 Province cards to start the Era. Players simultaneously examine their hands and choose one card from it, placing it face down in front of them.  The remaining cards are passed to the left and the process is repeated three more times.  Players will then have a hand of 4 cards.  The unchosen cards are placed on the slots found at the very right of the game board.

B] Actions –  There are five different options for main actions: Play a Card, Take a Favor, Build, Influence a Hill, Pass.  You take one main action on your turn. You may also take any number of free actions, which can happen both before or after your main action – you can discard a card to gain resources or to lose Unrest and you can also activate a previously played Monument to get its effect.

Play a Card – Choose a card from your hand, pay the resources as seen in the upper left of the card, and then place the card around your Domus board:  If it has an Instant effect, to the right of the Domus board, if it has a permanent effect, place it above your Domus board, and if it requires activation, place it to the left of your Domus.  Note that each card has a colored arch at the bottom of it showing you the category of the card.  After playing it, gain 1 Aureus for each other card previously played in the same category. Icons at the bottom of the card tell you how many VP the card is worth at the end of the game, and the rest of that line tells you the rewards that you immediately receive.

Take a Favor – If you have fulfilled the criteria at the bottom of an unselected Personality card, pay the cost in Aurei and take the Personality card, moving it to the right of your Domus. Immediately gain the bonus on the Personality card for EACH time you can currently fulfill it.

Building – place a Citizen from your Domus on an unoccupied building space in the Construction area on the board. Pay 1 stone, and gain 3 VP for building the building – which you move from the Construction zone onto a free matching space on any Hill on the board.  The building will remain there for the rest of the game.

Influence a Hill – Place a Citizen from your Domus onto a Hill.  There must either be a free space in that hill OR you must have already placed there (and then you place your Citizen on top of your previously placed citizens).  The cost to place is 2 Wheat, minus one wheat for each previously placed citizen in your color. Now, move your stack to the left if it exceeds the number of citizens in the stack to its left.  Keep doing this until it cannot move further.  Whichever stack is in the leftmost position is the Prefect of that hill.  If there are any reward tokens still active, you can choose to take one, getting the bonus on that chit, and then the reward token is slid down into the taken position. 

Pass – When you pass, you can take no further actions. Move your marker on the turn order board to the highest VP space in the row underneath it.

C] Scoring – Score each hill – with the Prefect getting the highest VP reward visible on that hill, and continue awarding points to each stack rightward until the VPs are all handed out.

D] Devastation – The most populated hills will be devastated – with a minimum of (N-1) hills being devastated each Era.  Start with the hill(s) with the highest population, and devastate each of those by covering the highest VP marker still visible on that hill.  If you have not yet met the quota, repeat the process with the hill(s) with the next highest total of Citizens.  For each hill that was Devastated, the Prefect of that hill gains 2 Unrest points.

E] Buildings – For each hill, the Prefect gets bonuses for each type of building present on that hill. 2 VP for a white temple, 2 Wheat for a blue Aqueduct and -2 Unrest points for a red Amphitheater.

F] Domus – All players take back their Citizens from the board and place them in their Domus

G] Unrest – All players now look at the Unrest track on the board.  For each Unrest Damage token which has been passed, the player must either pay the resource penalty on the Damage Token OR take a Doom marker (which gives a VP penalty at the end of the game).

H] Feed – Pay one Wheat per Citizen in your Domus board; for each Citizen you can’t feed, gain 2 Unrest.

I] End of the Era – Deal everyone new cards for the next Era. Move all Reward tokens on the Hills to the active position. All players un-tap their used Monument cards.  Starting with the player who passed first, choose your position in the Turn Order track.  If this is the end of the 3rd Era, the game ends.

Final Scoring is then done.  Players score VP as indicated on their played cards (seen in the bottom left corner).  Then, you score for sets of card diversity – 3VP for a set of six different colors and 9 VP for a set of seven different colors.

There is a small pittance for leftover things.  Finally, take your Doom Penalty. Move your Unrest counter to the right onto the Doom track, then move it one space upward for each Doom Token you picked up in the game.  Take the penalty as shown on your finishing space UNLESS you’re at the top space of the track – if you are there, you automatically lose the game. 

The player with the most points wins. There is no tiebreaker. 

My thoughts on the game

Aeterna is an interesting game that meshes together a few familiar mechanisms into a fairly tight game.  The crux of the game come from the action selection (based on the cards that you have drafted) – but, you’ll have to be carefully be watching what the other players are doing as you’ll possibly have to pivot quickly if your plans are interrupted by their actions!

The cards have multiple functions, and you might end up playing a card more to get its ongoing special ability – there is a small sense of engine building that happens here.  After my first few games, I have found that I really like to try to play actions that are synergistic with each other – there are plenty of possibilities to play; but I have found that more focused strategies do better for me.  (That being said, I have yet to win the game, so take my advice with that huge grain of salt).  Some actions give you ongoing abilities, some give you once an era abilities – and don’t forget that some cards can be tapped for a one-time bonus.  As you control the timing of these one-time bonuses, though, they can be quite powerful in helping you achieve your goals.

One of the things that surprised my about the game is how much resource management is involved in the game – oftentimes, your actions are taken mostly to provide you with the resources you need to take future actions!  The Province cards often pay out with lots of resources, though they do cost your population… 

Overall, the resources in the game are quite tight.  You’re often scrabbling around trying to get enough stone or people or whatever to do the card you want to do.  Sure, it’s always possible to discard one of your cards for some of those resources, but each time you do that, you’re giving up a possible action.  However, it is inevitable that you will need to do this at some point – you just have to figure out when the right time is for that discard.

This brings me to the one sticking point (for me) about Aeterna.  It’s a game that wants you to play cards cleverly but it makes it really hard to actually play all those clever cards.  For me, this was more frustrating than tension-filled.  I personally did not care for the Era structure where I spend a good deal of energy trying to draft the best four cards possible, and then end up having to discard at least one each Era – but sometimes two – in order to get the other cards in play.  

As you move through the Eras, the costs of the cards (and the powers of those cards) all tend to increase.  So, if you’re short of resources at the end of the first Era, it’s going to be harder and harder to get the later cards into play.  This has actually become one of my big pieces of advice to newbies – that is, to let them know that while it is possible to play all four of your Era I cards, it might not be a strong choice as you really end up resource-short in the next two Eras.   Maybe we’re playing it wrong, but so far this has happened to someone in all of my games – and it leads to a really frustrating experience.

Since we’re talking about moving through the Eras of the game, I think it’s also good to note that I like the way that the game state evolves through the Devastation phase of each Era.  The most populous hills will get Devastated, making their value lower in future rounds.  Of course, the most valuable and/or best equipped Hills are the ones that usually end up best populated, and this brings all seven Hills into the game as their relative values ebb and flow.  Interestingly, as all the citizens are removed each Era, you do not keep any claim over a Hill you used to dominate, so you’ll fight for it anew each round.

The components are fairly well done.  I like the board art, and the icons are pretty easy to follow.  I am less a fan of the scoring tokens – they are weirdly shaped wooden pieces that really aren’t made to stack well, and the tracks demand that you stack them.  For me, I would have preferred simple wooden discs that are easier to handle and don’t topple over when you try to stack more than two of them.  

The Domus boards are well done as a way to store your inventory as well as giving you a way to organize your played cards to see when they each give you their benefit.  I’m really not sure if the Era 2 and Era 3 cutouts are needed for the cards, but there was apparently extra space on the punchboard, so there’s no harm in them – there’s just no help either.

Aeterna has the bones of a great game, but for now remains a bit maddening to me because I can’t do all the things I want to do in each game.  It is moderately complex, and I think that it will take a bit of experience for players to really maximize what they can get out of their three four-card hands in this game.  I’m hoping to get better at it, and I still want to play it some more – so that’s a good omen for the game.  Will it stay in the game collection eternally? Not sure yet…

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.  Dale Y, John P
• Neutral.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/41v4VO6