How to play Origins: First Builders & Review

Origins: First Builders is a worker placement game.

This is how to play and my review of the game.

Title: Origins: First Builders

Year Published: 2021

Designer: Zbigniew Umgelter, Aleksander Zawada

Publisher: Board&Dice

Players: 1-4

Game Time: ~120 mins

Set-up Time: ~5 mins

Ages: 14+

Theme: Ancient Civilisation

Mechanisms: Worker Placement, Tile Laying

How to win: Score the most points by expanding your civilisation.

Game Description

They came to this planet, and they chose you. Uplifted your people and promised great prosperity. They provided the wisdom and the resources to build your cities sky high. Taught you the ways of culture, science, and warfare. They promised knowledge for any willing to learn. Come, Archon, guide your citizens to victory, under the watchful eyes of the Builders, our benefactors from beyond the skies above.

How to play Origins: First Builders

A quick comprehensive video showing you all the rules you need to play Origins: First Builders with 2+ players.

Theme

The only way the theme stands out is when you visit motherships to take an action. This represents the aliens helping you get things done.

It’s good, but it’s really the only thing truly alien about the game that I can see.

Setup & Rulebook

The setup is a little bit fiddly. It can take some effort to put in (and take out) the motherships from the board. Then there is a bit to do which depends on the player count. It’s not a lot, but you’ll probably need reminders on each play if you don’t play it much.

The rulebook does a good job with 3 different colour blocks for rules, clarifications and examples.

Components & Artwork

The game looks nice with the bright dice and cool looking motherships.

I didn’t notice the detail of any art while playing but there is some there. It’s a nice mix of ancient and futuristic.

Ease of Teaching & Accessibility

Like a lot of Euro games, there is a lot to take in but it’s all straightforward. If a player has played any kind of Worker Placement/Resource Management/Mid-Heavy Euro game they will have no issues here.

One problem is the terminology… A Citizen dice placed in a population base is a Freeman and then can go into a Seat of Power or become an Advisor… That’s 4 names for the same component which is weird.

Also having to explain what an Advisor is in order to correctly explain how colours work for the Archon is a bit awkward. Especially as you cover placing an Archon before talking about increasing Freemen.

There is no hidden information and that helps with accessibility.

Origins: First Builders Summary

There is plenty to do at least!

Growing your population, collecting resources, improving your military, attacking, building, closing districts… Lot’s to think about.

As well as the colour matching there is also the need to have a large enough value on the die. This is awkward as I did (at least once that I know of) forget to check the value of the mothership, played the die and took the action. Oops!

This is due to keeping track of so much stuff, I just ploughed in! Oh well, I didn’t win that game anyway 🙂

Origins: First Builders Round-Up

It’s good, I mean, this is the first time I’ve done a how-to-play video and review for a game I haven’t kept on the shelf because I liked it a lot. It just won’t get played when it’s alongside games of this weight I like more, like Gaia Project and El Grande.

Rating

I give it 6/10

Note: The copy I played was a review copy generously provided by Board & Dice, big thanks to them for this game.