4 Gods Board Game First Impressions
“While calling on the gods a man should himself lend a hand.”
~Hippocrates
Four Gods is a real-time tile-laying game in which players create a world — one tile at a time — before laying claim to one of the four gods of their world and attempting to win followers by sending prophets into that world.
4 Gods is a real-time tile placement with STRESS!!!! (The images in this post show us playing by the wrong Apostle placement rules, but I’ve since played it correctly :))
Players will place tiles in real-time with the goal of building cities, destroying opponents’ cities and selecting the right God to control areas on the board.
The 4 Gods board is a frame of 4 edges, players draw 2 tiles (one in each hand) and the game begins…
Players place their tiles on the board following 2 rules…
- Each tile must touch 2 straight edges of either the board frame of another tile
- The artwork on the tiles must match up
Alternatively, a player can place a tile into a discard pile, which holds 10 tiles in a 4-player game.
Players can take a tile from their own, or other players discard the pile as the game goes on placing them into play if they want. However, they must have at least 1 hand free to do this. (Meaning they’re only holding one tile)
If they have both hands free, they can draw a tile from the bag. (One hand to pick up the bag, the other to draw a tile) They can draw 2 tiles, but the second one MUST be placed on the board or their discard pile.
4 Gods Tiles
Each tile contains up to 3 types of the 4 available terrains, each terrain also has a God… At any time a player can take a God and the matching colour Apostles, opening up a bunch of new actions.
This is the Mountain God I took in my game, it means I can add grey Prophets to any terrain type on a tile I just placed. It also means I will score Mountain regions at the end of the game.
Cities
The other thing players can do is build a city…
To do this, place a city disk on space and put a Prophet on top to claim it. These again must be next to 2 straight sides and can be placed anywhere… However…
If a player can find a tile that replaces a City token, that city is destroyed and is replaced with the tile. The destroying player keeps it for end-game scoring.
When no more tiles the game ends and endgame scoring occurs.
4 Gods Scoring
Players get 5 points for each completed City they control or Destroyed City token the own.
Each section of connected Terrain containing a Prophet is worth one point per tile minus 1 point per Prophet it contains. Points are scored by the player with the most Prophets in that region.
Now the 1st 2nd and 3rd Gods with the largest single connected ‘Landscape’ of terrain tiles scores points, and the top 3 Gods also score points for having the most individual Landscapes.
Most Points Wins
Positives
Fun, fast-paced gameplay that keeps you thinking.
It’s very tactical, like a real-time Carcassonne with the time pressure of someone possibly putting a tile down in a space you were just about to place one yourself!
It looks pretty 🙂
Negatives
Mistakes can be made. Forgetting to line up ALL the art or placing a tile next to 2 straight edges can lead to a lot of “Who put that there?”
4 players will mean 8 arms fighting for airspace over the board and control of the bag. (It’s not difficult, sometimes it is)
It’s stressful!
4 Gods Summary
Had fun despite playing a big part of it wrong the first time. The second play with the correct rules was good too. Definitely want to play it more and hopefully, actually score some points 🙂
