Game: Timeline: British History
Year: 2016
Today we are going to
discuss the history of Britain, a once-proud island nation that withstood the
test of time, until the early two thousands, when it famously became the first
nation to vote for its own irrelevance. The story of Britain begins approximately
6500BC when the Island of Britain first separated from mainland Europe. Its people
were simple scavengers then, it wouldn’t be for another two thousand years
until they began farming. Thousands of years after that the early Brits began
to erect great stone circles; such as Stonehenge. But it wasn’t until 55BC,
when the Romans came, that a lot of technological breakthrough began to appear
on the island. After that not much happened, a few battles, a little fire, and a
handful of other minor events, until, in 2011, Kate and Will got married! Then
finally in 2016, the country was allowed to vote on Brexit... and, well, we all
know how that worked out!
Timeline: British History is incredibly fast paced. A 2-player game will probably take 3-5 minutes to complete, but as setting up the next game is a matter of dealing out 9 cards, that’s not a problem. Even with larger groups the game doesn’t slow down much, and you can reliably get a game completed in 10 minutes. Each player starts with 4 cards, so for smaller groups the timeline can be quite small and therefore finding the correct spot for your card is disproportionately easy, the rules do suggest that once you are experienced you should start with a few more cards. I’d strongly recommend this at low player counts, or else first player advantage is very strong, and any mistakes are massively punishing.
Publisher: Asmodee
Designer: Frédéric Henry
Year: 2016
Today we are going to
discuss the history of Britain, a once-proud island nation that withstood the
test of time, until the early two thousands, when it famously became the first
nation to vote for its own irrelevance. The story of Britain begins approximately
6500BC when the Island of Britain first separated from mainland Europe. Its people
were simple scavengers then, it wouldn’t be for another two thousand years
until they began farming. Thousands of years after that the early Brits began
to erect great stone circles; such as Stonehenge. But it wasn’t until 55BC,
when the Romans came, that a lot of technological breakthrough began to appear
on the island. After that not much happened, a few battles, a little fire, and a
handful of other minor events, until, in 2011, Kate and Will got married! Then
finally in 2016, the country was allowed to vote on Brexit... and, well, we all
know how that worked out!
Timeline: British History
is a 2-8 player card game in which you attempt to empty your hand of cards as
quickly as possible. You do this by placing dual-sided cards into the correct
space on a common timeline, each card has an event on one side, and the event’s
date on the reverse. Should you place the date in the wrong place then you have
to collect a new card from the supply. Timeline:
British History is, of course, based on the history of the British Isles,
however there are a series of Timeline
games, so you can very much pick your preferred flavour, or even mix and match
within reason.
Timeline: British History is incredibly fast paced. A 2-player game will probably take 3-5 minutes to complete, but as setting up the next game is a matter of dealing out 9 cards, that’s not a problem. Even with larger groups the game doesn’t slow down much, and you can reliably get a game completed in 10 minutes. Each player starts with 4 cards, so for smaller groups the timeline can be quite small and therefore finding the correct spot for your card is disproportionately easy, the rules do suggest that once you are experienced you should start with a few more cards. I’d strongly recommend this at low player counts, or else first player advantage is very strong, and any mistakes are massively punishing.
 |
| The game set up ready for a two player game, players will play cards to the timeline, then flip them over to find out if they placed them correctly. |
By its very nature Timeline:
British History is an educational game, there’s only so many times you can
see cards before you find that you’ve learnt the dates on them. While this
makes it a lovely idea to pull out in an end-of term history class, this does
limit replayability. I would have appreciated more cards in the box, 110 is
enough for a reasonable game, but I found that after half a dozen games (which
is only about 25 minutes of playing) you begin to see the same cards again, an
extra 50-100 cards would have given this game more shelf life.
 |
| If you really have no idea when something happened, the art can often give clues, via styles of machines/clothing. |
It’s important to judge Timeline:
British History as what it is, a quick filler with an educational twist. And
it actually does that very, very well. I’m not going to say that it’s the most
fun I’ve had playing a board game, but I did enjoy Timeline, its strangely easy to find yourself saying “one more
round” over and over again.
6.5/10
Timeline: British History
was a review copy provided by Esdevium Games Ltd. It is available for an RRP of
£12.99 at your friendly local game store.
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