Near and Far

EvEvanstar4,6

Really solid. This felt like a major improvement over Above and Below. The euro elements were better integrated into the adventuring theme, as the worker placementy town visits function as adventure prep. Each player gets a small character sheet, so when you have an encounter, it has the chance of giving you a connecting quest you mark on your sheet for your next encounter opportunity. This gives each player a cohesive plot arc. The game also gives you a budget of "hearts" which are points you use to either move extra spaces, stake claims on the map for points, or most crucially you can spend them freely to increase your dice results so there's solid luck mitigation. The other cool thing is in campaign mode, you save your characters session to session, and there's a book of maps where each game you play on a different map until you've played 10 times. Of course the concern there is that you'd need to have a consistent group across those sessions. However, leveling isn't so complicated that we couldn't fudge it and start a new character at the level of the others if we wanted to. If you didn't want that, the game has two other, different modes, "Character mode" which is about completing your own personal plots, and then a random encounter mode for a more similar questing experience to above and below. Each of which has it's own section in the encounter book, so you'll get a different story experience by playing each of the different modes. ★ 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

Rob Millwardstar8,0

Nice theme, great world and setting, pretty straight forward rules that are easy to follow. A lot of fun to play