Books of Time

Books of Time is an unusual entry in the current wave of euro VP salads, just noticeably shallower than Barcelona, which I mentioned previously. Its central idea feels fresh and initially won me over: the books and their pages give tableau building a nice, distinctive identity.

At its core, you build your tableau through these book pages and try to make use of the actions they open up for you. The design’s main inspiration is that tableau development is not merely about accumulating cards, but is tied to when and how you handle your books.

That is also where the system loses most of its meaning for me. There is no real build-up or progression through eras in the cards; everything appears in something of a jumble. So, instead of feeling that I am constructing an evolving engine, I mostly got the sense of delayed action selection. Maybe my group simply played it poorly and failed to spot the proper use of the close book effect, but we did not find any particularly interesting reason to abuse it.

With a few tweaks, I think it could become much better and make a more convincing case for its central idea. As it stands, though, it lands in the “we played that too” category for me: pleasantly odd, but without enough depth to make me want to come back.