Century: A New World First Impressions

Century: A New World is the next game in the Century universe.

Cubes, cubes and more cubes…

Century: A New World sends players to the Americas at the dawn of the 16th century. Braving the wilderness, players are forced to explore new lands, trade with local inhabitants, journal their findings, and hunt/gather to survive!

Century: A New World GamePlay

This is a worker placement game where players will place workers to get or exchange resources and use those resources to gain point-scoring cards.

The board is covered in a load of spaces to place your 6 workers. These spaces need 1, 2 or 3 workers depending on how powerful they are. They allow you to:

• Gain cubes of different colours
• Upgrade cubes you have to cubes of different colours
• Exchange cubes for different coloured cubes
• Gain a bonus tile

If a space is taken by another player you can place the required number of workers plus one on that space and bump the previous workers back to their owner. This is important as every so often you’re going to need to rest.

Resting lets you bring back your workers from the board to your play area ready to use again. Also, it frees up all those spaces you were occupying.

When you take a bonus tile you place it on your player board. You can only hold so many so make sure each one is one you’ll need/use. These give you abilities or end-game scoring points based on the set collection of different symbols.

When you take a bonus tile you can also take a Point Card by paying the cost in cubes. You get the points on the card, but each of these also gives you an ability and symbol counting towards the bonus tile scoring.

When someone has 8-point cards, add bonus points to that total and the player with the most points is the winner.

Theme

Well, I mean… I guess. the spaces are themed but who cares really. If I need green cubes I go to the green cube space. I wouldn’t use the thematic words for whatever that action/resource is called.

It is, however, reflected in the artwork which is something.

Setup

Boards and tokens aplenty. The cubes come in little plastic bowls which are really nice and help with setup, teardown and gameplay.

Components & Artwork

It’s all OK… The bowls I mentioned are good and everything else is quite standard. Double layered player board to keep the cubes nice and neat would be nice, but not required.

The board is VERY busy but the graphic design of the worker placement spaces is very clear indeed.

Actually, the graphic design is very good in this game in general.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

It’s easy to teach and as a gateway game, it was designed with accessibility in mind. Again, all open information so it’s easy to help new players.

Century: A New World Summary

This is one of a series of games including Century: Spice Road which also involves cubes and long cards.

I have a weird relationship with worker placement games. I like them, but I’ve never had one that I’ve owned and wanted to keep. This doesn’t make the grade either, but it’s not that I didn’t like it.

You have a lot of workers compared to other worker placement games but as some spaces take up to 3 workers it feels limited. There is that ‘fight for spaces’ part that every worker placement game needs too. But you’re never without options, you just take one a bit less optimal instead.

Although you’re just gaining cubes, exchanging cubes and spending cubes is engaging. I wonder if they were resource pieces rather than cubes the game would feel even better?

So it’s a pretty decent entry-level worker placement game that you can get into, it just needed to be a bit less ‘cubey’.

Jesta ThaRogue