Age of Empires Collectable Card Game

Bookkeeping

There is no doubt about it, the game requires a lot of bookkeeping. Here are some suggestions.

Resources

Wood      Food      Gold      Stone 5 2 7      10 5      5      0

There are four resources you must keep track of: Wood, Food, Gold and Stone. Every turn, you will produce and consume some of each, so the count of each goes up and down frequently. For this reason, a running total is most useful. I've been using a piece of paper divided into four columns, one for each resource type. In each column, keep track of the number of units of that resource by crossing off the previous value and writing the new one beneath it.

Villagers

You will need a token of some sort for each villager. No tokens are sold with the game: you must supply your own.

It is likely that you will have twenty or more villagers before long, so you'll need a sufficient quantity of whatever token you choose. Also, the villager tokens get moved around from card to card a lot, so they should be easy to handle. Pennies or another coin would work fairly well, but something with a bit of a handle would be better. The tokens found in the board game "Risk" are very well suited, and the game comes with plenty tokens.

Military Units

Your military units are represented by tokens (again, that you supply) and they ride around on military unit cards that you put into play. Since these cards need to be moved around the table as you launch your attacks, lots of loose tokens become very clumsy. We've found that using a 6-sided die is most efficient. Place one die on each military unit card as it comes into play. Orient the die so it shows the number of military units on that card. Since you are limited to 5 military units per card, the die will always be sufficient.

Building Damage

Buildings can be the target of an attack. Usually it takes several attacks to completely destroy a building, so it is necessary to keep track of damage done from one round to the next. Again, you'll need to supply some kind of token.

Keep in mind, villagers and cards carrying military units can be located at buildings. Start adding a lot of damage tokens and buildings can get pretty crowded.

The unused tokens in the Risk game are well suited for the task of counting damage. You can use the different shaped tokens to represent 1, 5 and 10 units of damage, thus minimizing the number of tokens necessary. I suggest using one color of the Risk tokens for villagers, and another for damage counters.

I hope these tips are helpful. If anyone has any other suggestions, I'd love to hear from you.

First Impressions | Second Impressions | Hints/Tips/Strategies