01:09 PM: Mike Sugarbaker says...
Age of Mythology First Look: how to outsource game development to a small island nation

No, not really. But it's laughable how similar Eagle's board game adaptation of Microsoft's RTS hit is to the much-lauded German game Puerto Rico. It's a very similar board, similar turn structure in which you choose a role from a (mostly) fixed set and all players (sometimes) then play that role, similar resource production, they even talk about "spoilage" the same way. Given how much people talked about Puerto Rico's similarity to real-time strategy games when it came out, it just seems a little... strange to me that it and its designer aren't mentioned here. There aren't patents or anything to worry about, but still.

That said, it looks like it'll be a blast to play. I like a lot of the ways Eagle has souped up the Puerto template here. I wouldn't call them improvements, exactly, just examples of what Puerto could have been like had its designers wanted something different from it. AoM looks like Puerto Rico with car chases, sex scenes and explosions. I happen to like the amount of luck in this game (some of your role cards are drawn from a larger deck instead of a small fixed set, and combat involves dice), and of course, you can make your guys go over and beat on the other guys, which is always a plus in my book.

One of the touches I really like here is that every few rounds of play, you effectively decide, along with your fellow players, how much certain goals will be worth in victory points. I have a feeling this will set up some very entertaining situations when I test it, hopefully this weekend.

(Eagle Games is also shipping a new PC version of War! Age of Imperialism, complete with single-player and online play.)