Everybody wants to be a god—it’s why “god games” are perennially popular, even if they take the guise of “sim” games. There’s a real sense of satisfaction that comes from being worshipped, obeyed, and venerated even if it’s only in a game. I got my first taste of gaming godhood playing the classic POPULOUS on an Amiga 500 I traded an electric typewriter for sometime back in 1991 and I still think Peter Molyneux’s design is one of the coolest and most original designs I’ve ever played. So how about turning that “god game” paradigm to board gaming?

Surprisingly, there have been very few board games where the players literally take on the role of a god- Martin Wallace’s POPULOUS-inspired LORDS OF CREATION, the god-awful two-player HERA AND ZEUS card game, and the literally ancient SPI game MYTHOLOGY are all that spring to mind. AGE OF GODS, a French game published to little notice a few years ago is the latest pretender to the god game racket with a new, revised edition published in English by Asmodee and packed with ninety minutes or so of heretical hijinks, holy wars, and extreme religious persecution of everyone from lowly Gnomes to pirates.

AGE OF GODS drops the player into the role of one of twelve deities that preside over a fairly generic fantasy world peopled with 24 different races representing the usual swords and sorcery suspects such as elves, dwarves, giants, and the like. Each god or goddess is imbued with a special powers tied to their domain (war, love, vengeance, time- you get the picture) and the goal of the game is for each player to nurture, protect, and expand four of these races while waging a very abstract and family-friendly Eurogame version of genocide against the rest of them. At the end of the game, players reveal which four races were their worshippers and score points based on the number of their respective tokens on the board. There’s special power cards that add some surprise and drama, some bluffing and intrigue since which four races each god is assigned are hidden, and some dice rolling. There’s even a “Wrath of God” random event table that allows eliminated races get to roll on to extract sometimes devastating revenge on rival gods and their worshippers. Sounds pretty good so far, doesn’t it?

So AGE OF GODS offers players a solid and uncommon theme, meaningful interaction, and the potential for a lot of fun competition. What’s more, it promises to pack an epic-scale struggle for 3-5 players in under 90 minutes of table time and the brief rules are simple enough that a veteran rules explainer could probably have a table up and running in under ten minutes. To top it off, the game is presented as a very nicely appointed package that benefit from Asmodee’s top-shelf production values including excellent artwork and high quality components. On paper at least, it seems like we’re on our way to boardgaming heaven.

Unfortunately, AGE OF GODS fails to deliver on a lot of the promises its concept and presentation makes and where we wind up is more like boardgaming purgatory—which is pretty appropriate considering how the game plays like a strange, uneasy medium between Ameritrash and Eurogame design styles.

However, while games like STARCRAFT have succeeded in merging narrative themes and conflict-driven gameplay with efficient and streamlined designs, AGE OF GODS completely fumbles in its attempt to do the same by relying heavily on mechanics and rules concepts that just do not mesh well with the theme or concept of the game. What’s worse, any sense of epic scope or godlike interference with and influence on these races is completely crippled by a too-tight, too restrictive gameplay structure with a few bizarre and anti-thematic rules twists that are more irritating than interesting.

Probably the most egregious problem for me is that AGE OF GODS initially renders any conflict between players as an indirect, passive-aggressive affair. All 151 of the race tokens on the board are useable by any player and the assigned races each god is charged with protecting and expanding are secret until late in the game. The idea is that players will try to bluff by using other pieces than their own races to try to obscure who it is they’re really supporting. But with only ten turns and very limited opportunities to attack (a player only gets one standard chance to attack and expand per turn) it’s really a foolish strategic decision to bother with wasting any moves on doing anything that won’t directly advance one of your races. So any time a race attacks another to try to expand, you usually do not know which player you’re attacking. Call me vicious, but I would much rather know who it is that I’m knifing. This mechanic also has the effect of preventing players from identifying who is actually leading- you just know which races are doing the best. It seems like a lame Eurogamer-friendly contrivance to solve a supposed “beat on the leader” problem than anything else.

The races themselves are represented by tokens as well as by a fixed number of cards each player receives at the beginning of the game. The tokens have no special powers or abilities and the cards’ only mechanical interaction with the tokens is that the special ability they afford can only be used if the race hasn’t been wiped off of the board. So your Gargoyles can use the Pirates’ ability to attack a coastal area, even if you’re not worried about the Pirates and have spend half the game trying to decimate them. Or your Fairies can suddenly and inexplicably gain the Voracious’ ability to devour tokens, thus removing them from the game. It doesn’t make any thematic sense and the mechanic serves as a strange disconnect that strips the cards and tokens of any sense of shared meaning. A few games I’ve played have seen players pretty much shafted by the card draw since what you draw at the beginning is all you’ll ever get- which really sucks if you don’t get any cards for a race you’re trying to support.

There is also a completely out-of-the-blue gambling mechanic that players can participate in at the beginning of the 7th round that really put the game into sharp relief for me- what I was really playing was a jumped-up version of the Reiner Knizia game COLOSSAL ARENA, wherein players place bids on various races of monsters and try to win some big monster fight with their picks. In AGE OF GODS, the gambling mechanic just doesn’t work and again seems like a goofy, gamey contrivance that attempts to balance the fact that by the 7th round some races- likely including some supported by players- are going to have been eliminated and result in no points for their gods. Players can place one or two of their unused race cards under their god card and should either of the races reach its full size (which means that double the number of tokens it started with are on the board) then the player will net three points. Yet, by the time the gambling round hits at least seven cards have been played so essentially the player has a very limited number of cards- and races- on which he or she can bid. So if those rascally Humans look primed to reach their fullest fruition and you’ve played all the Human cards you had early in the game to take advantage of their Holy War ability, then you’re pretty much screwed out of the betting. This is also the kind of game where a lot can change in three turns, so bets are rarely safe.

I can see gods, at least in the Olympian sense, betting and wagering with each other so at least that feels right with the theme. But that doesn’t excuse the fact that it feels bizarre, tacked on, and really pointless. It, along with the other grievances I’ve already outlined, make the game feel unfocused and awkward. At times, given how the game reduces concepts such as technology advances to unspecific, unnamed +1 die roll modifiers and completely misses the opportunity to provide detail to each race by merging the powers of their cards with their on-board presence, I really got a sense that I was playing part of something good that just couldn’t meet its potential due mostly to poor design choices and a uncomfortable misalignment of play style and concept.