Endeavor: Age of Sail

EvEvanstar5,9

This is a game about building a little engine by increasing the tracks on your personal board, and using your actions to grab spaces on a central board. At the start of each round, each player gets to add a building tile to their tableau. The various buildings provide track bumps and or action spaces to be used during the main phase. What's nice about this is the buildings only have a track threshold requirement to take one rather than a resource cost. Then you get an income of action markers and get workers back from the buildings you activated in a previous round equal to your levels on those two tracks. Once this is done you enter the meat of the game during the actions phase. During setup tokens are placed in a ton of circle spaces across everything everywhere. Each token has printed on it an icon that provides a single track bump in the matching track, or it has a bonus action it can be discarded later in the game to execute. Spaces on the board tend to be worth 1 vp per space at the end of the game, but then there is an additional point and token for owning both spaces along one of the black lines that bracket a circle space between them. To this end players work to build out little networks. As the game progresses, new areas become available, and more cards can be taken based on how many player markers you have in the various regions. At the end of the game you score based on your board positions, plus points from your tableau for printed points on cards and buildings, then additional points from reaching set thresholds on your tracks. Setting up the tokens everywhere at the start of the game is a bit daunting, but once gameplay gets going, turns are quick and the game is very player interactive. The game has a real elegance to it's flow. Players have time and opportunity to respond to each other's actions giving the game that push/pull feeling I love. In the beginning of the game there's a push for taking boat actions and flag actions to claim empty spaces, but as those open spaces deplete, taking cannon and card actions to grab cards and knock other players out of key spaces becomes important, giving the game a solid play arc. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ★ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★★★☆ Raw enjoyment

GaGarfieldstar7,0

#34.1 Good mechanism. Unfortunately combats are too expensive. [c] Theme: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> Gameplay: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Very good amount of options --> Interaction: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Could be more --> Artwork: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Nothing special --> Luck: ★☆☆☆☆ <!-- size 7]No? --> Strategy: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Many possibilities --> Components: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Very good --> Play duration: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> Easy to teach: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> Rules quality: ★★★★★<!-- size 7]Perfect --> Setup time: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> No downtime: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> Replay value: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Different strategies, modular setup --> [/c]

BWBWizardstar8,4

[c] (15x) GAMING EXPERIENCE: ★★★★★★★★★☆ (5x) DEPTH / WEIGHT: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (5x) LUCK: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (10x) REPLAYABILITY: ★★★★★★★★★☆ (6x) MECHANICS: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (6x) PLAYER INTERACTION: ★★★★★★★☆☆☆ (3x) SCALABILITY (PLAYER COUNT): ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (2x) LENGTH: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ (2x) CLARITY OF RULES: ★★★★★★★★★☆ (6x) COMPONENT QUALITY: ★★★★★★★★★☆ [/c] KS - Deluxe Edition :thumbsup: We all like this game in my group. :thumbsup: With translated, printed rulebook. (I did the translation.)