It is month two of the blogger board game club and I have been sent Timeline British History. Now if you are not aware of the Timeline collection the aim of the game is to place your cards in the right chronological order and get rid of all of your cards. If you get the order wrong you pick up a new card. It seems simple enough but it can get tricky. Timeline is available in lots of different varieties including music, science, history and even Star Wars which I reckon I would be pretty good at.
We were sent the brand new British History Timeline which includes things as recent as 2016 and as far back as the British Isles breaking off from the continent. In other words it includes a lot of history.
Inside the Timeline box you will find some instructions and 110 timeline cards.
The Timeline cards are double sided with one side showing the date that this particular moment in history took place and the other side just showing the moment in history.
To play you give each player four cards with the date side face down. You then place the rest of the cards in the middle and turn over the first card. The first player needs to decide which one of their cards to place and whether it should go before or after the first card played. Once placed they can turn the card to check the date order. If they were right then the card stays where it is and it is the next players turn. If they are wrong then they remove their incorrect card and discard it. They then take another card from the pile in the middle and add it to the cards in front of them. Play continues in this way with each player placing their card in the spaces within the timeline they are creating. The winner is the first person to run out of cards.
Now I love the concept of this game and I think my girls would be good at the Star Wars one and if they did a Harry Potter one then they would be brilliant but they are not very knowledgeable about British History as they are only 7 and 9 years old. This Timeline is advertised for players from 8 years of age and is suitable for 2 to 8 players but I think it is better for older players who have more knowledge about the subject. However I also think that this is a great learning tool and even I was surprised at the dates on some of the cards which were really interesting.
I don’t think the kids will be reaching for this to play on a rainy day but I will definitely be trying to make us play it to increase our knowledge on British History.