Review: Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition (WizKids)

You stand in the knee-deep grass of a rolling prairie. Mountains to the east give way to a gleaming lake stretching beyond your vision to the north. A forest blocks your view west, but promises a bounty of resources.

That’s where you begin in Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition from WizKids games.

This 4X game (eXplore the world, eXpand your reach, eXploit the resources, and eXterminate your enemies) puts you in charge of either a basic early civilization or one of 15 historical ones. Either way, it’s up to you to ensure that the world remembers your civilization’s name far into the future.

Let’s look at the top five things you need to know about this sprawling tabletop extravaganza.

There’s a Lot in This Box

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Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition is really two games — plus a promotional expansion — in one big box.

First, it’s a revised version of the original Clash of Cultures game published in 2012. Next, you get the 14 unique civilizations and expanded gameplay from the Clash of Cultures: Civilizations expansion. Finally, there’s the 15th civilization — the Aztecs — which was originally a promotional item given away at the 2014 Spiel in Essen, Germany.

In Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition, WizKids updated everything from the rules and special abilities to artwork and game components, and made it all fit into a single massive box.

Peering into the Rules

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Given everything in the box, you might wonder whether the rules make the game clear or muddy its waters.

Good news: They got it right. The rule book’s visual design makes Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition easy to learn and play.

Everything that goes with the expansion is visually identified with a blue-black background. Expansion rules are done in white text on the same background. The design choices make the book accessible to players who have issues seeing color and easy to use for everyone.

Six Actions to Rule them All

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The game’s primary mechanics revolve around six actions players can choose among during their turns. You can do different actions or repeat the same ones (with one exception which we’ll talk about in a moment).

The Advance action moves your civilization through its unique technology tree or government advancements. Moving units is how you explore world and get your military in position to conquer and control.

Founding a city replaces one of your settler pieces with a shiny new settlement, which you can then grow into a powerful reflection of your cultural prowess. Activating a city lets you either gather resources, construct buildings, or recruit new units. Increasing happiness ensure that nothing bad happens there.

And then there’s influencing culture, which really fired our imaginations.

Conquering with Culture

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The influence culture action caught our attention as one of the most interesting things we’ve seen in a 4X game. This mechanic elegantly models how people become intrigued by what other people are doing, and may change their behavior accordingly.

As a player’s city grows in the game, it can use its cultural power (measured through its size) to influence other player’s cities. The game plays this out by letting you combine a die roll with culture tokens to replace a building in an enemy city with one of your own. The building still works for the other player, but it gives you a victory point at the of the game.

Influence Culture is also the exception to the rule about repeating actions. You can only succeed at Influence Culture once per turn.

The Right Touch of Randomness

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Since this is a 4X game, it naturally relies on the interaction between each player’s strategies and choices. But what’s life without a little bit of randomness?

Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition delivers the perfect level of chaos and frustration through the barbarians and pirates.

Barbarians are introduced in the basic game, with pirates floating in on the Civilizations expansion. Barbarians maintain their own settlements and armies. They move, battle, and even capture cities. Similarly, pirates interfere with trade routes and ship movement.

Worse, both of them block resource collection in their spaces. However, players can fight both of them to earn gold, take over their settlements, and more.

Verdict

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There’s plenty to love in Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition. It starts with an excellent take on the classic 4X game system. You also get the choice between playing it as a fully asymmetrical game or giving each player identical abilities and technologies.

The game’s replay value starts out high thanks to the variable map setup. Then it goes off the charts by adding the Civilizations expansion. Speaking of the map, we both loved the way the game handles exploration thanks to its hidden, random map generation.

Our only frustration involved tracking all the changes and bonuses that the tech tree gave us when it’s late in the game. There’s a lot happening, and we got a little bogged down keeping track of it all.

Clash of Cultures: Monumental edition delivers a solid 4X game experience with just the right balance between technology development, government systems, and military power. We give it a solid recommendation if 4X-style play sets your heart aflame.