Timeline – where does it all belong?

Hello all! My apologies for failing to get the promised second post in yesterday. But fear not, there are more to come. I’m going in a different direction with this post than the previous pair of classic games. In fact, this is a separate genre altogether from the games I’ve posted thus far. Timeline belongs almost to a genre all its own, but I might categorize it, for want of better terms, under card placement and trivia games.

In a game of Timeline, players will be dealt five cards which have printed on them various inventions, moments and events from history. A single card will be placed in the middle of the table. Then, one by one, the players will play one of their cards into a growing chronological sequence of points on the timeline.

One of the many Timeline packs. This is the “Events” pack, but you can play any of them; they’re not expansions and each stands alone. They can be readily combined to create interesting timelines, though.

If you’re concerned that, as a non-history buff, this game isn’t for you, don’t worry. I’ve played this game with hardcore history fans and those with little history knowledge, and everyone has enjoyed it. The clever thing about this game is that you don’t need to know the date for a particular card (say, the great fire of London), as long as you can guess whether it comes before, after, or in between the cards on the table (after the first outbreak of the bubonic plague and before the U.S. Declaration of Independence was signed, for example).

Here’s an example of a turn. This player has decided that the Hundred Years’ War goes before the United States Declaration of Independence. They’ll then flip the card and see if they’re right.

This fact makes the game very interesting. You’ve got to think logically. For example, if I have to decide whether the first moonwalk took place before or after JFK was assassinated, I might think to myself: did Kennedy get to actually see the landing? What was his involvement in it? That way you can actually puzzle out where things might go.

Of course, if you get it wrong, you’ve got to draw a new card, so there is some pressure to get it right. The first person to get rid of all their cards is the winner. And there is definitely strategy involved: if you play the card you can place precisely (say, the Woodstock Festival) immediately, those cards you can’t will sit around in front of you and you may struggle to play them when the timeline fills up more and more. It’s a wonderfully tricky game, and best of all, you really do learn a thing or two while playing. I recommend that, to extend the game’s replayability, you buy a few sets and keep playing with different ones on rotation so you forget the dates for the first one. That way, you can make each set last quite a while.

I also recommend Timeline Challenge, a tremendously fun version of the game for large groups of players where you team up to compete in a variety of minigames, such as getting closest to the actual date on the card, playing a traditional game of timeline, or placing a card in one of ten historical eras. This is great for parties and comes with really neat metal figurines of historical vehicles, like a biplane and locomotive, for the teams to use to track their score. Unfortunately, that game is a little on the older side and harder to find than the regular game, but at the time of writing, there are several copies up on ebay.

Here’s the Timeline Challenge board. This game is also lots of fun and great to break out when you’ve got a bunch of friends or family over for game night.

There you have it; another great choice for the casual board game player either in you or in your life. Either version of the game will be fun for any group, with Timeline being playable with up to 6 or 8 players, depending on your pack, or more with Timeline Challenge, since you split the players into teams. There isn’t yet an online version, but there is a free online single-player trivia game called wikitrivia that might give you a sense of whether you like this game’s premise. It uses wikipedia as a kind of databank to create new cards, separate from those in Timeline, but the rules are the same.

Hopefully this review was helpful! The next one will be on a great game for a relatively large group of friends and is coming soon. Please do let me know in the comments below what games you’d like to see reviewed on this blog!

Thanks and happy board gaming!