Mark K fancied playing this older Avalon Hill game which I'd never played so was quite happy to give it a try. Unfortunately the full game lasts 6 hours plus, so I can't see us ever giving it a full run but we decided to play just one epoch and that was pretty good to get a good feel for the game.

It's a Civilisation type game and Mark K explained the idea was to get the most advances by the end of the game. Now Mark HAD read the rules beforehand but his full explanation of the victory conditions was left until he re-read them just as the game was finishing. So, none of us were aware that the addition of cash or the subtraction of misery was important to the final score. Cheers, Mark!

Phil bid highest for starting city (Venice), followed by me (Genoa), Mark K (Paris) and Nige bid nothing for Barcelona. Phil then managed to play a card on his first turn which allowed him to establish a presence right on the Eastern edge of the board alone - very useful for expansion, while the rest of us were grabbing bits and pieces in Europe. There are some pretty powerful cards to be had and, if you're lucky enough to get them (Nige and Phil) your opponents better watch out. Nige took out Mark K's home city with a civil war while Phil robbed me of a mighty $31 in cash (half my stash) on the third turn to scupper my advancement plans. Towards the end, Nige made a tidy surge into the Black Sea area a turn ahead of me and he looked to have a pretty good lead in advancements as the game came to a close. That is until Mark clarified the scoring rules and declared $62 more in cash than Nige to race past him for the win.

I quite enjoyed AoR as a 3 hour game. I have one or two niggles about the varying strength of the cards (I didn't see a decent card all night) but thought overall it played pretty well. Just, don't ask me to play all three epochs.