To be honest, when I started this blog, I had no idea it will be this long. It was meant mostly as some intro text to the designer notes for expansion cards we are adding to the game web. But when I was digging through that old history, nostalgia surfaced, and the text is now living its own life. Let's see where it takes us today :-)

Through the Graenaland to America

Since the previous millennium, Czech players are visiting Essen "Spiel" show - to hunt for new games, to compete in Europe Masters tournament, and generally to celebrate their love for games. But in 2006, it was different. There was a Czech booth in Essen! And one of the games on that booth was the first print of Through the Ages. Just a few hundreds of copies, not that nice art or production value, but done with love and hope.

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In my last post, I was writing about how the leaders sneaked to Through the Ages from an older prototype of mine. You probably wonder also about the wonders. But before diving into it, I owe you one more explanation.

Who Leads the Nation

Even if you accept that kind of random approach to leader selection I described earlier, you may still wonder - why the heck I thought Aristotle, James Cook, or Sid Meier are leaders of a nation? Well, I haven't. In my Czech prototype, they were called "osobnosti", which means "personalities" or "great persons". Their texts were not meant as effects of their leadership, it was rather the influence and legacy of those persons that affected the entire nation for centuries. The nation had only one leader, kind of timeless and transcendent - you.

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If you have been playing Through the Ages for a while, I suppose you got used to that mix of leaders and wonders in the game. But there was probably a moment when some of you asked yourself - how the designer picked those wonders. And especially - why just those people as leaders? Such an experienced designer sure had very good reasons, right? Or, are we missing something here?

This text might help you to understand what's behind that :-)

Before The Ages

What is important to realize - Through the Ages was not created by an experienced designer. And it was actually not even created "for publishing". Back then, I was designing various board games without any plan, just because I loved to, and then, I was playing them with my friends. I was actually quite surprised when a friend of mine who happened to be a hobby games publisher said about one of them (Arena): "This is good, I would publish it".

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