Bower's Game Corner #186: Era Review

About ERA, from BoardGameGeek:

In Era, you will lead a special historical group on the brink of greatness or ruin. Using the leaders, inventions, and technology of that time period, you must successfully unfold the events that made that nation or culture forever remembered in history. But your opponent, leading a different Era, will be trying to do the same. As each of you works in your separate time periods, you will both throw unexpected catastrophes, powerful invaders, and obstacles at each other's plans. Which player will lead their Era to greatness first? Era is a strategy card game that features a unique, 3-pile card management system to let you build, expand, and defend your unique historical group. Era is a symbols-only, no-text game system that provides a large amount of information-at-a-glance for quick and effective gameplay. The first player to score 15 progress points or deal 3 destruction tokens to his opponent, wins. Other features of Era: Each Era deck contains conflict cards that represent your Era's weakness or dangers. These cards are given to your opponent, and they give you theirs. These cards are then shuffled into your decks for you to play against each other. Each Era deck has "keys" that unlock new cards or symbols, allowing you to relive the progression of historical events as they really happened.