Monuments: Look at the Size of Those

Every year at Gen Con (well, the last 3 years now) we demo a bunch of games at the Mayfair Games booth. In exchange they give us a 50% off coupon and we buy stuff from them. This year, however, I attended the convention as a much bigger, more prepared board game nerd than ever before. I was enough of a nerd that I recognized every single game being demoed at their booth except one: Monuments.

My expectations were low. After all, I typically research a game pretty heavily on BoardGameGeek before I buy it and I'd never heard of Monuments. That means it isn't ranked highly enough to have caught my attention, and hadn't created any kind of a stir. Much to my surprise, the game was really good. Good enough that I used my 50% off coupon to buy it. It's a card game where you collect and play sets of monuments and reduce other players' sets of said monuments. There are some clever play mechanics and scoring rules at play as well.

After buying the game, I went to Board Game Geek and found it. It was ranked pretty low. The general consensus seemed to be that it's a boring, bland game. I can see how people would feel that way. Playing the game makes me feel old. It has a very quaint look to the art; the colors are fairly muted, the box cover and card backs show some dude hunched over at a desk scribbling on some parchment next to a stack of papers. I find it peaceful and relaxing, largely due to the aesthetics of the game. I feel like I should be sitting in my den which I don't have next to the fireplace I don't have smoking a pipe which I don't have while playing this game.


I played a 2-player game of Monuments for the first time tonight with my wife. I must say the game is lacking in the head-to-head play department. Fewer players means fewer people to swipe at during your historian turns. It also does away with the limits on the number of players that can build a given monument. Granted, I didn't see the official 2-player rules in the back of the rulebook until the game was almost over, I don't think it'd make a difference.

Sadly, Monuments will probably be a 3 or 4 players only game for me, which means it'll be relegated to waving it's arms, trying to be chosen for Wednesday game nights among its brethren on my board game shelves. No matter, I still like the game.