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Aristo-Maze

Aristocrats and adventurers

As an aristocrat you have the chance to loot the Emperor’s catacombs, you hire adventurers to do the job.

16 different characters carry hit-, mental and spirit values, a normal ability and a crest ability that must be activated with a crest marker. 20 dungeon cards show creatures, menaces, undead and legacies, the carry damage value corresponding to the values on the character cards and show all cards of their type on the backside. Each player has his own board with sections for the phases of the game and uses a screen.

Providing phase – players receive coins and markers, 12 characters and a dungeon of eight random cards – 3 open, 5 face-down – are laid out. In the Inquiring phase players bid in auctions for the cards in the dungeon that they want to check. In the Organizing phase to recruit characters you bid on those characters that you want to hire. In the exploration phase players determine – again secretly – how far they want to delve into the dungeon and which level of the dungeon they want to skip entirely. When all have chosen this the dungeon cards are all revealed and their effects are resolved for each player individually; if you do not reach your intended level, you have gained nothing; you receive victory points, if you master your level and return.

The renewed dungeon for each of the round round and the self-determined variable exploration depth are highly interesting and clever concepts, the mass of information on the cards is a challenge. Unfortunately, the auctions are a bit long-winded and are a somewhat disturbing factor, as they can keep a player completely out of the action in a given round.

Players: 3-4

Age: 12+

Time: 90+

Designer: BakaFire

Artist: BakaFire, hounori

Price: ca. 32 Euro

Publisher: BakaFire Party / Japon Brand 2014

Web: www.bakafire.main.jp

Genre: Adventure, auction

Users: With friends

Version: multi

Rules: en jp

In-game text: no

Comments:

Clever, interesting concept

Realization marred by the auction mechanism

Nearly too much information on the cards

Compares to:

Adventure games that include auctions

Other editions:

Currently none

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 1

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 2

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0