BOARD GAMES | Timeline - Historical Events

One thing I want to incorporate with my blog's new direction is board game reviews.  If you follow me on Instagram, you might well already know I'm a board game geek.  Over the years the hubby and I have accumulated quite a collection.  I'm not talking about games like Monopoly and Cludo, I'm talking *real* games.  Games like Pandemic, Carcassonne, Settlers of Catan, Ticket to Ride (Europe) etc.  I'm hoping to bring you at least one board game review a month, preferably more :)

I'm kicking off this series with a short, fun and educational game called Timeline. It's a fun and simple game that's really easy to learn.  It's a great introduction into slightly different games if you're looking to try something a little different.  There are 5 different versions of the game, the one I have is the 'Historical Events' version, don't worry, you don't need to be 'good' at history to play this, after playing a couple of times you'll soon learn when lots of these historical events happened :)

Close up of the cards in the game

The game is made up of a series of small cards.  On the front there is an image depicting the event (I like to use these as clues - often you can look at elements of the drawing to give things away, so look at the weapons being used, the clothing people are wearing or the buildings etc), and the name of the event.  You then have to decide if the card you chose from your hand, occurs before or after the starting card in the timeline (in my pic the starting card is 'The End of World War II' - 1945 - it's the card from the top of the pile, you simply place it down and turn it over to reveal the date to kick off the timeline).

Each player is dealt 4 cards which are date-down.  You have a draw pile which you will draw a card from if you place a card down incorrectly (if you put a card down and turn it over to reveal the date, and you've placed it in the wrong place).  If that happens, you discard the card and draw a new one. The winner of the game is the first person to get rid of all their cards (successfully placing them in the timeline).

The suggested game duration is 15 mins which is pretty accurate, depending on how many rounds you want to play.  The more people you have, the more complicated it gets, as when you have lots of cards in the timeline, it's easier to make a mistake, unless you really *know* the date of the event you're placing down.

It's a fun game to kick off an evening of board games, or just to have a quick couple/few rounds if you have a spare half hour or so.  I'll be taking this one into work to play during a lunchtime (yes, there's lots of geeks where I work and we regularly meet up to play board games at lunch) :)  If you're looking to buy this, it costs £12.99* and you can pick it up from Waterstones, and online at WH Smith and Argos.

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*Post contains a PR sample