Age of Quarrel is a strategic 4X board game set in the shadow of a fallen medieval order. Long ago, the city of Middelalderen held the land together. It was a crossroads for merchants, a seat of learning and a source of legitimacy. It did not collapse in a single catastrophe. It narrowed, hardened, and quietly pushed whole peoples beyond its walls. The city still matters, but the world around it has learned how to survive without permission.
Players lead rival factions competing to shape what comes next.
The game unfolds over three Years, each divided into four Seasons. During Spring, Summer, and Autumn, each player takes four turns, choosing a Civic Action to drive their faction forward or a Tactical Action to press their position on the map. The Winter Season is a time to consolidate your position, weather the hardships of Winter, score Legacy, and prepare for the coming year.
The map grows during play. Exploration expands the world outward from known clearings, revealing new opportunities and new challenges. New terrain can change your plans immediately. It can also change what your opponents can reach, reveal new Barbarian tribes, and affect how reliable your supply will be later.
Military power matters, but it is not the only way to take ground or break an opponent’s hold. Citizens, military units, and Priests each matter in different ways, and pressure creates conflict. Sometimes it’s an exposed settlement or an overextended line. Sometimes it’s converting rival units to your cause.
Between Seasons, the game’s economy moves the world forward. Settlements produce resources based on the land around them, storage limits force hard choices, and prices at the Market shift as conditions change. If you stretch too far, the supply check can punish you, sometimes harshly, and the map remembers that mistake.
Barbarians are not a scripted nuisance. Their presence on the map is shaped by the world's history and by the gaps players create. They grow in Winter, they threaten weak borders, and they can become the cost of ignoring what you can’t protect.
Legacy Points are earned throughout the game and in final scoring. You gain them for what you build, what you hold, what you achieve through force or influence, and for controlling Middelalderen. Winter scoring rewards the settlements and important buildings you establish, while end-of-game scoring rewards the position your faction has built: its wealth, population, settlements, road network, and military.
In Age of Quarrel, the old order is gone, but many of its mechanisms remain. As the factions compete to build what comes next, the overarching question is what kind of order the winner leaves behind, and whether it is any better than the one that broke the world in the first place.
History will remember what endured.
Whether it deserved to is another matter.
Civilization, Dice, Economic, Exploration, Fighting, Medieval · Action / Event, Bribery, Dice Rolling, End Game Bonuses, Map Addition, Pieces as Map, Point to Point Movement, Rondel
More ▾
