In Order to Form a More Perfect Union: A Nations Board Game Review

Yes, I “ordered” a civilization game without direct military conflict....

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Competing on tracks... Sounds like Tapestry?

Good review... the nations war track is pretty savage, my spouse couldn't take it either. I like the game overall, it just wasn't going to get played around here.

Jackwraith wrote: Competing on tracks... Sounds like Tapestry?

Not really, it's much closer to Through The Ages than anything else - fun fact time, it actually started life as an alternate ruleset to simplify TTA for a second edition before eventually splitting off into its own game (cf. designer Rustan Hakansson's own words) so it is very specifically a more accessible variant of TTA.

I would personally rank these three games in the order of Nations > TTA > Tapestry, but only because I found TTA a bit tiresome and repetitive after a while with all the cube pushing and the nonsense that goes on when military escalation dominates play. Nations has this neat mechanism governing stability which gives you a defence against the ravages of war and allows you to step outside of the arms race that often seems to happen in Civ games. The tracks operate in a similar fashion to the military track in TTA in monitoring relative dominance in various arenas rather than being the motive force behind gameplay as in Tapestry. I also recall the asymmetrical factions being pretty interesting in how they shake up the strategic approach for each player.

I did not like Tapestry at all. Nations was kinda fun for a while, and although I left it behind years ago I'd play it again. I believe that there are digital implementations and a mod on TTS if anyone is up for it.

Nations>TTA>running barefoot across 10,000 Legos>Tapestry

I have never heard any positives about tapestry, so I never even sought it out to play.

I confess that I only tried it out of morbid curiosity. I’m less curious about running over Lego.

ps good to see you posting content again Wade. I hope all is well.