Our Review

Companions against Creatures

Abenteuerland

Secure the cities

Love for adventures is probably part of everybody, in some it is stronger, in others it is weaker.

It starts with the tales of adventures that one has read excitedly with burning cheeks  as a child, from the classic lore of ancient times or the tales of Sinbad the Sailor from Arabian Nights to the heroic  tales of medieval chivalrous Knights and ends with games with a pronounced adventure flair, as for instance in Dungeons & Dragons.

The love for adventure coupled with the curiosity of an explorer has fueled all expeditions and also caused chasing after records, as with Reinhold Messner in climbing or the crossing of deserts in others. An entire branch of tourism lives off it offering rafting and trekking holidays. Survival training, too, is part of this line of business.

How do you define adventure? AN adventure is an event or undertaking that differs from daily life due to a certain element of risk. Fortunately, in the game before us the personal risk, thank goodness, is limited and only our imagination is about to be fueled.

Who, then, are the “Scouts” taking us into Adventure Land? Two venerable masters of the games community have created this adventure for us: Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling are a seasoned team representing an enormously fruitful cooperation, which, among others, has given us games like TIKAL, ASARA, GLÜCKAUF, NAUTICUS, PORTA NIGRA and many more. Those two designers are guaranteeing that we have surely a well-working game on the table.

If the designers are seasoned veterans, the publisher on the other hand is a bit of a surprise. Haba also has, indeed, been around for a few years, because the company exists in Bad Rodach in Bayern since 1938. They began with wooden toys and very quickly became the market leader in that sector. Since 1980 they also dealt in board games, and with impressive success at that. Who does not know the game “Obstgarten” from 1986? From 1993 to 2001 they regularly, in a 2-year-intervall, won the Award for Kinderspiel des Jahres. In 2015 now a new range of product was introduced with family games. And this, too, met with success, besides Abenteuerland SPOOKIES and KARUBA were published and KARUBA was instantly nominated for Game of the Year 2016.

Now to the game itself:

The cover of the box in the standard square box used by Kosmos and others shows four Swordsman in front of a castle hidden by fog, which seems to indicate a medieval ambience. The box content offers a total of 110  terrain cards with special characteristics. There are also tiles for swords, herbs or gold as well as 14 Fog cards with creatures of different strength. There are ten adventurers each in four different colors and 30 neutral meeples for companions, which set out to support and assist their adventurers. A Water Sprite Marker has a special task to which I will come back later. Scoring markers for the Kramer track and three dice complete the components. Four overview cards in four languages supplement the content, there is one card for each of the three variants that are provided, with varying goals. “Die Gefährten” offers a rather simple introductory game, “Die Glorreichen” gets a bit more difficult and “Die Flucht in die Städte” represents the challenging level of the game. The overview cards in A5 are a very nice size, being very clearly structured and easy to read.

The game board shows a mountain range, surrounded by forests and with shrouds of fog over some segments, and also shows five cities of different sizes. A river crosses the landscape from left to right. All of the board is overlaid by a grid made up from numbers 1 – 10 and letters A – K, together defining the ensuing squares of the grid.

To begin with, each players puts his adventurers to the left of the board outside the grid on the numbers 1 – 4 ( The West) and letters A – D (The North). In a game of two players all 10 meeples are placed, in case of three or four players only 8, the number of neutral companions and swords is also adapted to the number of players. From the well-shuffled stack of terrain cards you draw eight cards and fill the areas on the board thus determined.

There are five different types of terrain cards, city, forest, mountains, river and fog. Each type offers a special feature. The City card introduces a companion into the game; if you enter such a terrain, the companion joins the adventurer and enhances his combat strength. You can assemble any number of companions. In the forests you can find herbs, in the mountains swords and the river provides gold. The foggy terrain hides Fog Creatures that must be fought and defeated.

The mechanics of the game demand that in your turn you first of all reveal two terrain cards and equip the thus determined terrains with the content stated on the card, the respective tiles are placed face-down. What advantages are provided by those tiles?

The advantages of companions were already mentioned. Herb tiles show a number that provides additional strength in combat. For each sword that you use you can use one die up to a maximum of three dice. Furthermore, swords have, in analogy to herbs, an additional value that is also added to the strength. Gold offers two options: Asides from providing two victory points in the final scoring you can use it for one point of strength or use it to re-roll one die. Swords, herb and gold must be discarded after being used. When a river card is revealed and provided with gold, you also place the Water Sprite figure there. When another river card is drawn the Water Sprite moves to this new location and all adventures and their companions that he passes on the way drown.

Now you move your adventurers, either one of them in two directions or two in one direction each – either to the south (downwards) or to the right (eastwards). You cannot move backwards. You can leave out squares with content, with the exception of Water Sprite and Fog squares.

About those Fog Creatures: They have a strength of 8 to 16, and you must provide the corresponding combat strength to defeat them. I would suggest to reveal the fog creature only when you have equipped yourself for combat and forbid later additional arming. This would provide additional thrill due to the uncertainty. The game ends as soon as there are no swords or companions left in stock. The current round is completed.

This takes us to the scoring. It is done differently in each of the three versions and thus players need to consider the suitable strategy.

In the adventure “GEFÄHRTEN” the victory points are already marked on the victory points track in the course of the game. You score points for each defeated Fog Creature according to its strength and two points for gold which are not lost if you use gold in combat. The assembling of companions is rewarded especially. Each additional companion for an adventurer scores one point more than the previous one. Herbs and swords are not scored.

In the variant „ DIE GLORREICHEN“ victory points are scored only at the end of the game. Defeated Fog Creatures score points equal to double their strength, but players only score the largest group of adventurer plus companions, albeit with triple the value of their numbers. Groups of adventurers of the same color can join up during the course of the game. Herbs and swords, if still owned by a player at the end of the game, only score if they show strength value. Gold scores two points similar to the first version.

In „FLUCHT IN DIE STÄDTE“ the Fog Creatures only score their value, but you score seven points if you defeated the largest number of those creatures, the player who comes in second on this scores five points and the third player one point. The amount of gold owned by each player is scored in the same way and there is also a city scoring. In relation to the city size the player with the majority of meeples in the city scores the number of squares in the city, the second one half that number, rounded down, and the player in third place scores half the points scored by the player in second place.

So, in each version you have to focus on other features.

A word on the rules – they are clearly and unequivocally worded and also provide a short summary. The age limit of 10 years is, in my opinion, set too high. As soon as children are able to add up numbers there is nothing to hinder them in playing.

For me, the designers have met the targets of HABA perfectly in providing a family game that is not too complex, and yet varied due to the versions and thus ideally suited to the target group. Asides families, due to the easy access it seems perfectly suited to entice casual players or those who rarely play to the table to acquaint them with our hobby. ABENTEUERLAND will work in that context. So what more do we want?

Rudolf Ammer

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 45+

Designer: Wolfgang Kramer, Michael Kiesling

Artist: Franz Vohwinkel

Price: ca. 30 Euro

Publisher: Haba 2015

Web: www.haba.de

Genre: Move, collect, fight

Users: For families

Version: multi

Rules: de en

In-game text: no

Comments:

Classic family game

Easy access

Variation from three versions

Game summary also in French and Italian

Compares to:

Other move/encounter games

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 5

Rudolf Ammer:

Kramer/Kiesling created a smooth game which will be well-liked by the target group of families. Three variants leave a positive impression.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 1

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0