Tempus

Okay, I've played Tempus twice now, and I feel qualified to offer my opinion of the game.

Thumbs... up!

First things first - it's not the elusive "Civilization in two hours" that it claims to be. I don't know if such a game can exist or even needs to exist. An epic scope requires a healthy playing time and you just don't have that with Tempus. The game has a specific number of turns, and those turns move quickly and painlessly.

However, even without the epic scope, there is enough theme to keep me in the moment. Your civilization rises throughout the ages, giving you bonus abilities if you can manage to "keep up with the Joneses." Fortunately, the game never allows you to get too far behind Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and sometimes you can even spring ahead of them. The progression track has a very bouncy feel that I like. To be honest, though, I never paid too much attention to the progression because of this. If I was able to progress ahead of my fellow players, all fine and good, but I haven't made it a high priority in either game I've played so far. Except, of course, for that last progression (Aviation) which is a +3 doozy!

The only thing that really concerns me is a potential turn-order problem. In my first game, I was the last one in a four player game to place my pieces and got hosed. It was unbelievable. Before anyone had placed their pieces, I had picked out three spots that I thought would be good. Bam, Bam, Bam -- it gets to my turn and ALL THREE of those spots are gone, in the order I would have taken them. So now I can either snuggle in between two other players or live behind the lake with all the nasty mountains. I chose the lake and spent the game puttering around in my hole until I discovered ship-building 2/3 of the game later. The one time I tried to stick my neck out of my shell I got swatted. I didn't win one fight the entire game. I felt like I was playing catch-up the entire time.

In my second game, I still placed rather late in the turn order, but I used an aggressive strategy to help my position early in the game. I still made a few key mistakes, mostly involving city placement, but I ended up coming in second so I feel like I'm getting a better handle on the game.

I understand the folks who are underwhelmed by the game. There aren't really a whole lot of new ideas in the game. Some have accused it of being a game where, "you push a bunch of pieces around and then score at the end." Yes, that's true, but if you're having fun making the decisions about where you're pushing those pieces, isn't that the point?