This month, for the Asmodee Blogger Board Game Club, we are playing Timeline: British History. This fast and easy-to-learn game had us hooked from the very first round!
How To Play
Whether you are a history buff, or barely kept awake through your school history lessons I guarantee Timeline will be great fun.
Shuffle all of the cards, making sure that the “date” side of all cards is hidden. Each player is then dealt 4 cards (“date” side down- no peeking!). More experienced players can start the game with more cards, this makes the game more challenging. The remaining cards are left in a pile on the table. Turn over the first card in the pile so the “date” side is visable. This is your starting card for building your timeline.
Each player then in turn, chooses a card from their hand and places it on the table within the Timeline where they think it should be, after the card is played, turn the card over to see if you got it correct chronological order. If the card was not placed correctly it is returned to the box and the player takes another card from the pile. Their turn is over and they must wait until their next turn before playing another card.
The winner is the first player to correctly place all of their cards in the Timeline correctly! The game can continue if there are more than 2 players, until all players have placed down all of their cards. And that’s it! Super easy and super addictive.
Watch my terribly rushed video for an example game! (the baby was stirring, I had lost my tripod and I had to mad-rush make the vid… I’ll never be Steven Spielberg that’s for sure!)
The Game – Good points and bad points
Timeline: British History is designed by Frederic Henry and is presented in a beautiful vintage style tin. I really liked the tin as it is small enough to pop into a suitcase for holidays (like we did) and it keeps the cards nice and safe. The cards are really small and super cute. The artwork on the cards and the tin is beautiful too. My husband and I decided to play Timeline while staying in our holiday caravan as it seemed like a perfect travel-friendly game, as it is so compact and easy to learn!
Despite the tin being small, it could have been smaller as the cards are tiny. But, this really isn’t a huge negative. As we own so many board games, it does make the tin easy to spot on our games shelf. Any smaller and it could easily be lost!
The rules are very easy to follow and the game takes seconds to set up and learn… there was nothing complicated within the rules that left us confused. It is honestly one of the easiest games I have ever played.
The game contains 110 cards, which seems like a lot but I would have liked more. But this is not a reason to panic. 110 cards is perfect for a stand-alone game, but Timeline: British History can be combined with other Timeline games (more about those later) to make a tougher, longer game. This is definitely on our to-do list.
I am so pleased that we have discovered Timeline, as it really has become one of my favourite go-to games for some quick and easy fun with the whole family.
There were quite a few times during the game where we said “No Way!!!” when a date was revealed. My husband and I are quite good with history (I studied it at A Level too, although ‘study’ is a loose word) but we still found ourselves shocked and often in fits of laughter when dates were revealed!
Extra Info
The game is suitable for 2-8 players, but I have actually played this game on my own, just to challenge myself and it was still really fun (and passed a few minutes!). Gameplay lasts between 15-30 minutes, but when it was just the 2 of us playing, a round was over in around 5 minutes. We ended up having so much fun we played 6 rounds!
Timeline is aimed at children aged 8+, which I think is a great age to play this game. Kids and adults can play side by side, with no special rules and children will easily understand the aim of the game.
I mentioned above that there are more games in the Timeline Boardgame range. The range features: General interest, Science and Discoveries, Music and Cinema, Historical Events and Inventions can all be played as single games, or combined together. Timeline is a game that will never become boring! I would love to collect all of the games and play a mega-game!
If you fancy expanding your Timeline collection even further you can also add Timeline: Star Wars onto your games shelf!
Check out the Timeline website for more information.
Where to buy
Timeline: British History has an RRP of £13.99 and is available in all good board game shops and online. Do shop around for the best prices!
