Plan B Unveils Century: A New World and Era: Medieval Age

With Spielwarenmesse 2019 — the annual toy fair in Nürnberg, Germany — opening today, Canadian publisher Plan B Games has decided to spill the beans on two games that it will be showing to localization partners at that fair.

One of these games shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone since Plan B had announced it in January 2017 when the company first went public. That game is Century: A New World, the third title in the Century series from designer Emerson Matsuuchi. Here's an overview of how this design compares and matches up with the earlier two titles:

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Century: A New World sends players to the Americas at the dawn of the 16th century. Braving the wilderness, players are forced to explore new lands, trade with local inhabitants, journal their findings, and hunt/gather to survive! The game integrates the compelling and incredibly fun resource trading mechanisms found in the Century series with a worker placement mechanism with a twist!

Century: A New World may be combined with Century: Spice Road or Century: Eastern Wonders or both for all new mixable games.

Century: A New World is scheduled to debut at the 2019 Origins Game Fair in June. Will Plan B once again have one of the few game debuts at that show, keeping all the buzz for itself and not sharing it with others? Time will tell...

• The other title comes from Plan B's imprint eggertspiele, and this title has been in the works for a while as can be seen in that Jan. 2017 debut post in which I wrote that Plan B Games "says that it will announce additional titles in its catalog in the 'next few weeks', with Matt Leacock being one designer on its roster."

And with that said, I'll introduce you to Matt Leacock's Era: Medieval Age, a 1-4 player game that plays in 45-60 minutes and that will debut at Gen Con 2019 in August. Here's what to expect:

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Era: Medieval Age serves as the spiritual successor to Roll Through The Ages. While that game was a pioneer for roll-and-write-style games, Era is a pioneer for roll-and-build!

In Era, your dice represent different classes of medieval society as players attempt to build the most prosperous city. The "build" comes into play as players actually build their cities on their boards. You will use beautifully modeled three-dimensional components such as walls, keeps, farms, and other structures. By the end of the game, each player will have a unique city of their very own!

Era: Medieval Age is made even more challenging as players interact with each other in ways such as extortion, scorched earth, and, of course, disease! Hey, this is the Medieval Age, right? Speaking of which, Era serves as the first of a new series of standalone roll-and-build games from Matt Leacock and eggertspiele!

I played Era: Medieval Age in prototype form in early 2018, and what I remember most is not the 3D pieces — which were all makeshift at that time — but everyone playing at the same time. While I had enjoyed Roll Through The Ages when it debuted in the late 2000s, I think about the game now and wonder why I'd want to sit around watching others roll dice and possibly giving me pestilence. Maybe that's just me, though...