Age of Comics: The Golden Years Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Age of Comics: The Golden Years a worker placement game published by Liruis Games. In Age of Comics, you are running your own comic book publisher during the golden era.

As a teenager in the 90s, comic books were my jam. I spent countless hours at the comic shop (every Wednesday) grabbing the new issues of X-men, Spawn, Batman, and Sin City. I was primarily a super hero fanboy, but occasionally browsed other themes like scifi or horror.

So it should come as no surprise that I was super excited to check out the newest comic book themed board game, Age of Comics: The Golden Years from Lirius Games. This worker placement game puts you in the shoes of a comic-book publisher during the golden era of comics.

Age of Comics takes place over 5 rounds, with the goal of becoming the best publishing house in the city. In each round, players will be able to take 4 actions using a standard worker placement mechanic. Different options are:

Once all players have taken their 4 actions, the round ends. VPs are awarded based to the most popular publisher, comic books earn their publisher money, and then each comic book loses a fan.

After 5 rounds, the game ends and points are totaled up from fans, vp tokens, money, and a few other bonuses. The player with the most points is the winner.

The thing that first attracted me to Age of Comics was the theme. While there are plenty of games where you can be a superhero there actually aren’t too many about collecting (or making) comic books. Which is surprising since there is clearly a lot of overlap between the two hobbies. And in no small part due to artist Laura Guglielmo work, Age of Comics does a really great job of embracing its theme.

The art is spot on to the time period and even