Through the Ages - Third Edition

A current favourite in our household, Through the Ages is a great civilization building game. You can take your civilization all the way from ancient times up to the modern age and there seems to be an incredible range of strategic choices along the way. This is not a light game, but it is always engaging and offers significant replayablity.

You need to be prepared to spend some time with the rules to understand all the complexities of the game and I was still left with a few questions (visit BoardGameGeek for some good tips). Don't let that put you off - the rules are actually pretty well written and offer three different types of game - simple, advanced and full - to help you pick up the details gradually. The biggest jump is from Simple to Advanced and my advice would be to have a good few goes of the simple game to get used to the range of cards, before stepping up to the Advanced version.

There have been a few production issues with this game which may have put some people off buying it. Nearly all of these have now been resolved and the couple of issues that still remain are really not worth worrying about. It's a little expensive for what you get component wise, but you definitely get your value in gameplay.

A brilliant and deep strategy game - thoroughly recommended!