our review

A journey of 75 weeks

Legends

to eight legendary places

In the tradition of Phileas Fogg members of the Adventurer’s Club want to visit all eight most legendary places worldwide in a period of 75 weeks and collect as much information on the legends as possible. Within those 75 weeks adventurers want to meet four times in the Adventurer’s Club and share their acquired knowledge.

Well, the possible travel routes are marked on the board that is assembled from six parts, the board is very nicely designed to look like an old, somewhat damaged map. A time track indicates weeks 0 to 89, die prestige track is depicted on a separate board. Each player has his own adventurer board and the corresponding components, that is, six travel diary books, his adventurer and a marker for the prestige track and the time track and a marking aid. Silver sand timers are placed on cases 25, 45, 60 and 75 on the time track, case 25 also receives a golden sand timer. 14 legends cards each in eight colors represent Atlantis, Avalon, Bernsteinzimmer, Bundeslade, Elefantenfriedhof, Grab der Nofretete, Shangri-La Yeti, and are supplemented by eight joker cards.

The starting player and his left neighbor begin with five of those cards, all other players are dealt six; in turn players put two of those cards of their choice face-down into the Adventurer’s Club and place one of their diaries into any location of their choice on Book spot 3; each location has four book spots, marked with 2, 3, 4 and 5, paired with Prestige Medals of values 2, 3, 5 and 7.

And now we are ready to  begin our travels: In your turn you first must move your adventurer and then choose one action from the options of card action and book action; sequence of play is not in turn, but the active player is always the one who is in last place on the time track. In case of a tie the owner of the marker on top goes first; at the start of the game all markers are stacked randomly.

Movement is a mandatory action, each step from one location to another costs one step forward on the time track; you can move over any distance and should try to always use the shortest path. If you want to enter a location where there are already one or more adventurers you must hand one card or your choice from your hand to each player; if you cannot do so, you cannot enter the location and must choose another one.

At the location you reached you take cards if you choose the card action – either as indicated from the face-down stack or from the open display at the location or at several locations or cards from a renewed open display. All card actions cost the indicated number of steps on the time track.

If you decide on the book action, you place one of your diaries at the location and discard cards in the color of the location accordingly, the book is then placed on the book spot corresponding to the number of symbols on the cards from your hand. In the book action each card that you discard costs one step on the time track Instead of placing a book you can also relocate a book. When the intended spot for a book is occupied, you move the book already there by one position to the left (next to a medal of lower value), if it is pushed off the location, it goes back to its owner.

If you enter the Adventurer’s Club, you can place 1, 2 or 3 cards – albeit no joker cards – face-down and draw one card; each placed cards costs one step on the time track.

If you reach the golden sand timer on the track or pass it, you relocate it to any location; if you pass or reach a silver sand timer, you trigger a scoring. For a scoring the cards in the Adventurer’s Club are shuffled and revealed one by one, sorted by locations, until five different locations are laid out or until all cards are revealed. Eventual surplus face-down cards go back into the Club. Then the books at the revealed locations and at the location of the golden sand timer are scored:

For their books at a location all players score the number of points indicated on the medals next to the books and then the revealed cards are dealt in descending order of card values and book values – if you own the most valuable book at the location you get the most valuable card, and so on – to the book owners at the location. Each symbol on cards received gives you a prestige point.

After scoring each player can place a card from his hand into the club; the golden sand timer is set down with the next silver sand timer and play continues with the player in last position on the time track.

When all players have passed the silver sand timer on case 75, the last scoring is done and then you win with most prestige points.

Legendary locations, rock solid mechanisms and a very nice dilemma offered by the decision whether to use cards to place books or to place cards into the Club to be sure to score for books already placed, because there are enough cards in the Club. This is the central element of the game and introduces tactics into the attractive family game, which is quickly explained and can easily be played in the 60 minutes indicated, without too much downtime. A real arc of suspense is missing, though, you do what your cards allow you to do and hope that nobody will chase you off the high-value book spots for which you already did place lots of cards into the club.

Dagmar de Cassan

Players: 2-4

Age: 9+

Time: 60+

Designer: Knut Happel, Christian Fiore

Artist: Franz Vohwinkel

Price: ca. 40 Euro

Publisher: Ravensburger 2016

Web: www.ravensburger.de

Genre: Card collecting, marker placement

Users: For families

Version: de

Rules: de

In-game text: no

Comments:

Very attractive design

Well-made family game with interesting details

Nice background story

Compares to:

Games with collecting cards and discarding them for marker placement

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 5

Dagmar de Cassan:

I am tempted to say – a true Ravensburger game, just right for families, attractive, easy to explain, quickly understood and nice to play, albeit without too many tactical demands.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0