Timespan

Lead your civilisation from the Stone Age through four eras (Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Modern Era and the Future).

Spend resources to play cards depicting historical figures, buildings or technologies onto your timeline. You can then use your population tokens to activate the effects of these cards or to upgrade them by providing luxury goods.

As you play new cards, older ones may be pushed out of your timeline and sent to your discard pile.

Throughout the game, you’ll progress along the culture track (to unlock wonders and grow your population) and the science track (to gain access to unique technologies), whilst exploring the world by sea, air or even space.

Combine one of the six asymmetrical civilisations with one of the six unique technology boards, then further customise your civilisation by recruiting from 175 historical figures, buildings, technologies and wonders.

Much of the game is played simultaneously, allowing you to lead your civilisation from the Stone Age to the Space Age in around 90 minutes.

There is no war: Timespan focuses on the peaceful aspects of civilisation-building, exploration and establishing an economic engine.

The game is played over 5 rounds. Each round consists of an exploration phase and an action phase.

During the exploration phase, players take turns (according to their position on the harmony track) to draw cards and discovery tiles corresponding to the current era.

Next, players move their camels, possibly visiting other players’ wonders to benefit from various effects and rewards.

Next comes the action phase, played simultaneously by all players:

Each player has a civilisation board featuring a timeline, onto which they can play up to 4 cards. As new cards are played, the old ones are pushed off the timeline and added to the player’s heritage.

Players use their workers to activate the cards on their timeline, as well as the action spaces on their civilisation board and their own wonders.

All activations provide various rewards such as resources or progress on the culture track (to obtain wonders and new workers), on the science track (to unlock technologies on the player’s technology board), or on the ship track, flight track or space track (granting access to various rare luxury resources). Luxury resources can be used to enhance the effects of your cards, and when transferred to your estate, they continue to generate a permanent passive income.

At the end of the second and fourth rounds, a new era begins, and new cards and discovery tiles are presented to the players.