ألتاي: فجر الحضارة

I went in expecting another dry civ game and instead spent three hours genuinely stressed about where to place my last settlement. The way the four societies play so differently means my second game felt nothing like the first.

The deck-building combined with area expansion keeps every turn tense, and I love that each of the four societies plays completely differently. My group finished our first game in about 90 minutes and immediately wanted a rematch.

Four asymmetric factions that actually feel different to play, which is rare for this genre. Our first game ran about two hours with three players and nobody got stuck waiting. The area expansion tension is real, every territory grab matters.