Annunaki: Dawn of the Gods Components Overview and Impressions

4x Board Games can be a bit much to consume, even if you are a hardcore board game player. Most have hundreds of pieces that you’ll need to play the game, complicated boards, and a rulebook as thick as a Harry Potter novel. Annunaki breaks a few of these molds in its production and gameplay, and provides a fairly streamlined 4x game experience. Let’s take a look at what you get in the box, and whether the components are worth the price of entry!

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Annunaki: Dawn of the Gods is a well produced game, with a few odd quirks I wasn’t prepared for. I think getting these issues out of the way allows us to move forward and praise the game for what it is – a very well produced title. The oddities for me are on the player boards, where some spaces are dual layered and others are not. For example, the tracks for the various resources you will collect are dual layered, except the “0” space which you can argue actually doesn’t exist. You will often be at 0 on these tracks, so it seems odd to not have a dual layered space for the discs!

The other dual layered oddity is the action board. There are recessed spaces for the cubes you will place, as well as some of the cardboard pieces. But oddly, there is no recessed space for the action tiles. Again, neither of these dual layered board issues actually impact anything, but it is an odd design choice that perplexes me.

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Getting past that, though, and we are talking about a well produced game here. Dual layered boards are fantastic, and although I have my issues with them, I do love the boards in general. Pieces stay in place nicely, which is key for someone like myself who often bumps and his player board and pieces. With everything snuggly in a spot, there is little room for things to topple or slide out of place. I love that, and honestly I think dual layered boards in these types of games should become the norm!

All of the cardboard punch board tiles are perfectly fine. We use to comment on how nicely things punched, but almost all board games are coming with solid punch board in 2024, so we are more apt to comment on poor punch boards being poor, as opposed to average punch boards being…average? It’s fine. It’s good. I wouldn’t expect anything more. So, average is good, yes?

The hard plastic miniatures is where I think some people are going to disagree. I personally find the games miniatures perfectly suitable for the game you are playing. They are not the most detailed miniatures I’ve ever seen, but at the same time, I’m not sure they need to be. I’ve seen someone compare these miniatures to the miniatures from Descent: Legends of the Dark and I think that’s probably one of the dumbest things you can do.

Descent is built as an immersive, story driven campaign game where there are tons of details and descriptions of the characters and enemies you will encounter. Detailed miniatures fit the game, fit the style. This game doesn’t need miniatures to be super detailed. They need them to be tactile and usable, and they are.

I do enjoy that each colour has their own unique set of units and minor gods, and a major god. They could have so easily made the units the same across all colours, but it was nice to see some differences here – the same goes for each player’s buildings, which are also all unique. Again, this is a really great touch!

Aside from the comically large box and the lack of dual layered areas for certain tiles, the production quality on Annunaki: Dawn of the Gods is very good! We’ve been playing this game for the past few weeks and really enjoying it. Stay tuned for a more fulsome review in the near future!