Components:
The Artwork for this game is very good, the card stock for the larger Travel cards is a little flimsy but the graphics on them are quite good. The Smaller cards are better quality with some more great artwork. The player pieces are wooden and there are two wooden card holders to make the adventure cards look like pages in a book. The rule book is well laid out with pictures and examples but is large and rather than being a book, folds out making it awkward to use at the gaming table. Fortunately there is a PDF of the rulebook available so I was able to print out a much smaller version easier to reference at the table.
Gameplay:Players represent explorers from various nations trying to uncover precious artifacts by taking part in various expeditions to earn money to buy adventure cards leading the way to their locations.
From their starting locations players use travel cards to move around Africa gaining rewards for taking part and completing them but in order to travel they need the right travel cards to get to each location on their chosen route.
On each turn players have the choice of
one of these actions:
- Drawing New Travel Cards (2)
- Moving through Africa (Playing an appropriate card for each destination)
- Buying Adventure Cards
The adventure books are a really nice touch with players being able to pay a coin to flip the "pages" to reveal another card before they decide to purchase or not. The number of rounds being set by how quickly players complete the expeditions, the game end triggered when they are no cards left to replace a completed expedition at the end of that players turn. The round completes so that everyone has had an equal number of turns.
As each expedition gives the player a reward for joining (each player can join a max of 4 at any one time), either coin(s) or Travel cards, it can be a tactic whilst moving to join an expedition just to get another card which then may help your current move action. To join an expedition you playing piece needs to be on the Starting location for it, which can be where they start moving from or any destination they pass through along the way. The first player to get to the end destination, as more than one player can join an expedition, gets the final rewards VPS's for the end of the game and an amount of coins.
Whilst there are only 1 of 3 actions you can take each turn there is a lot behind each choice and certainly tactics to be thought of as well.
This game is easy to teach someone new how to play but is another of those games where there is always different ways to play to win.
Conclusion:The mechanics of this game are really easy to grasp but executing the perfect timing of your actions, spending your money wisely and getting in on the right expeditions takes careful thought. I really like this game and lately have played this quite a lot. There is a lot here for all levels of gamer with plenty of replayability as the cards play out differently every time. Whilst there is a certain amount of luck in this game with the random draw of travel and expedition cards the Joker card everyone starts with plus the ability to spend 5 coin to turn any card wild means you are never truly stuck without an option.
The fact that most games I have played of this have resulted in fairly close scoring shows how well balanced this game is, it is also a lot of fun to play and also frustrating as you always need to do one more thing on your turn you can not
