Review – First Giants

I got into board games heavily around 2011. To this day, I think that 2015 is the best year in board games. We got Pandemic: Legacy, Blood Rage, 7 Wonders: Duel, Codenames, and many other games that remain modern classics. The one downside is that games that might have made a real splash in other years got washed away in the deluge. Elysium was one of the first Space Cowboys releases, and remains a game I find quite intriguing and fun, as well as one of the best board game productions I’ve ever seen. Sadly now out of print, it has been streamlined, shortened, and rethemed to… dinosaurs. For better, or for worse? Let’s see!

Given that First Giants’ existence is a direct result of Space Cowboys’ early publication Elysium, I cannot help but make this a comparative review. To me, Elysium has now fully embraced its Hellenistic theme and become a Greek tragedy. It was (and still is) an amazing and beautiful game, nominated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres in 2015, but eventually went out of print and a rumored “expandalone” set was never released. Elysium had two distinct mechanisms: a “column” system where, every time you drafted a card, you had to forfeit your ability to draft certain other cards, and… retiring cards to score sets and runs. The latter system was fine; a game has to have some way to make scoring happen. But what really made the game sing was the agony of each decision, knowing what you were forfeiting every time you took a card. In fact, though I’ve never truly aspired to be a game designer, I started to draft a few prototypes of simple, Splendor-style card games, using the column system.

Yet, in a redesign of the game, they decided to focus only on the sets and runs. I’m sorry, but this decision makes no sense to me. Despite the scary mouths of the pictured dinosaurs, First Giants has no teeth to it. You are now simply allowed to take once from each of four card “depots” (for lack of a better word) before you must recall your markers, and each one recalled allows you to get amber (“money” needed to display fossils, the new version of putting cards in your Elysium) or display one fossil. This system still has a smidge of interaction, as you know you won’t get a card taken from you if other players’ have markers lying there, and you can go work on something else. But in general, it’s a system that simply lets you breathe too much, and lowers the tension significantly. 

Yet at the same time, this system also erases tension by keeping players off-tempo with each other. When the game had a round structure prior, one of the “cards” drafted each round was a token that determined future turn order, as well as victory points, money, and how many cards you could move to scoring. Now, players are doing this at different times, which causes the “meta-problem” of one player taking a slow turn while others take lightning fast turns and wait. More importantly, it makes it much harder to assess where you’re at in terms of tempo, and the endgame can happen a bit more unexpectedly. It’s also overall too fast, at least with two players; the victory point pile is quite small, and the game is over before you’ve built a satisfying collection. 

Additionally, the card abilities have been simplified, and also become entirely symbolic. They’re much easier to parse, sure, and Elysium did suffer from too-small text. But they’ve also become far more boring. Frankly, I don’t like a single change about this game. Even the new theme is worse. While it’s unique, the artwork of Elysium was truly incredible, and helped establish Space Cowboys as a premier publisher. Sure, the new game is passable, but I’d never suggest it over Elysium or even other faster, light engine-building / card-drafting games the same speed as First Giants, like Furnace or Mille Fiori. Is it terrible that I just wish this game didn’t even exist? I guess the one bright side is that I was inspired to hunt down a used copy of Elysium. 

I admit to being harsh. The game is not… bad. But it’s not good. For someone new to the hobby, or loves dinosaurs, it could become a treasured memory, the same way I have a soft spot for lowly-rated games I discovered early on. My library’s summer reading program is dinosaur-themed, so I gifted my copy of First Giants to be used as a prize for the teenagers. They were elated and assured me the game would bring someone great joy. That’s likely true. The person, however, is not me.