OUR REVIEW
TREASURE HUNTING IN THE JUNGLE
RELIC RUNNERS
FOLLOWING IN INDY’S TRACKS
„Jäger des verlorenen Schatzes“ with Harrison Ford (all parts), Michael Douglas in „Die Jagd nach dem grünen Diamanten“, Richard Chamberlain in „Quatermain oder die Trilogie der Mumie“ and a few more films featuring treasure hunting as their plot! As often before, when I take a look at the topic of a new board game, I remember some films and their immortal protagonists.
A treasure hunt and adventures that go with it, locked chambers, hidden trap doors and riches to discover in order to reveal historic secrets – many dream of encountering such an adventure once. But as this will scarcely happen we enjoy books, films or games that take us on such an adventure.
Relic Runners from Days of Wonder is such a game and will see if it keeps the promise given on the box. Enchanting in any case are the components, they are – as usual for the publisher – almost pompous. Figures, path parts, toolboxes and treasures in sumptuous guises that promise a somewhat higher price, but are worth the price anyhow. This games gives you value for your money.
The square board shows a network of paths made up from roads and rivers, which are treated equally for movement; the rivers show toolboxes, which can only be found on rivers. The center of the board shows the base camp and each crossroads has room for one temple.
After you have taken the pieces out of the punchboards, the rules suggest that you place the empty punchboards beneath the box insert to make the insert flush with the box edge so that components cannot move in the box. Let me mention that you need to be good at filling boxes, because room for components is quite limited. The game offers three different suggestions to set up the game – one for the first game, one standard version and one random version.
Each temple is made up from three levels. You take four temples each from the 8 purple, six ivory and 6 blue temples and put them on the board. The remaining spots for temples are each filled with a stack of three ruin tiles on top of each other. In a game for two players you only use two ruins per stack and remove the top tile (smallest one) from all temples. The remaining components are put back into the box and provide some changes in ensuing games.
One toolbox tile is placed next to each river and each player is given a player board showing the character that he represents in this game. The special ability of the characters should not be used, according to the rules, in a first-ever game or when playing in families. Each set comprises one character piece, three toolboxes and ten track pieces of the same color.
Character pieces are put into the base camp, one toolbox each is placed beneath the three progress tables and each player is given three ration packs. Two more ration packs are put into the base camp for each player; the rest goes back into the box. Finally, the top purple tiles of temples are turned up and the race for the best treasures can begin.
In your turn you must resolve the following actions: Move and then explore and pass the turn to the next player. You must move your character piece even if would be more advantageous to remain in place. You are also not allowed to end your turn on the starting position. You move along the pathways that you placed and may, at the start of your movement or at the end of it, enter an unknown path without a pathway in your color. Each path spot can only be entered once in a turn and the toolboxes that are located on the rivers must be taken, unless already discovered. The base camp is always the end of a track.
When you arrive at the base camp you can take three rations packs, the number of packs you can hold is limited to five packs. All other places are filled by temples and ruins and you can explore any location when discarding a ration pack. The rations you discard go back to the base camp.
If you arrive on a ruins spot, you discard the top tile of the stack there and may place a pathway of your color onto any path that borders that ruin spot. There can be a pathway piece of the same player on each path. When you reach an ivory temple you reveal the tile and declare its action. The tile is placed with the player who revealed it. You are not allowed to own more than one ivory tile of the same level. Should you happen to have to take a second ivory temple tile of the same level one you must discard or implement one of the two instantly. For both actions you immediately score 2 victory points. Those temples feature additional victory points for the final game end scoring on their lowest level, a once-only action on the middle level and a permanent effect on the top level, which is only implemented with certain actions.
When you explore blue temples you do this in secret and place the acquired tiles face-down. Blue temples always yield victory points, varying from 2 to 5, depending on tile and level. The open-faced tiles of purple temples show actions that are resolved instantly when you explore such a temple. Then you immediately reveal the next level tile of a purple temple.
When you reveal the last tile of a temple or ruin the location is deemed to be completely explored and you place a treasure of the temple color onto the now empty crossroads. When an explorer starts his move on a spot with a treasure and finishes the move on a spot holding a treasure of the same color, he takes the treasure of the finish spot and double the amount of points as he used pathways for this journey.
A very important feature of the game needs to be mentioned, which are the toolboxes. As I have already mentioned, you must take the toolboxes if they are still active and must move up the progress table by as many steps as the toolbox indicates. Due to that compulsory action you must plan well ahead if it might be useful to have to move, because you can only resolve the action indicated by the column where the toolbox is situated.
Normally, each player can only use one toolbox on his player board. Due to the purple temple tiles or due to the special ability of a player you might be able to hold two or three toolboxes. In such a case you can distribute the level movement among those toolboxes.
The progress table shows three columns, one for exploration/supply, one for movement and one giving you additional actions or bonuses. In one column there can be several toolboxes of one player. Toolboxes on the spot that was explored are turned over to the grey, inactive side. When the last open-faced toolbox tile is turned over to inactive, all toolbox tiles are made active again and the player moves one of his boxes on his board up by one level. In the course of a turn you can use a toolbox any time and use the action connected to it.
With this you cannot interrupt an action of movement or exploration. Actions must always be fully implemented and in each turn you can only make use of one toolbox. So you should take care, especially towards the end of the game, to use your toolbox actions on time.
The last round is started as soon as a player has taken the 7th treasure in case of a game for two players, the 8th in case of three, the 9th in case of four and the 10th in case of five players. All other players except the one taking the trigger treasure have one more turn. Then you add the victory points from the temple tiles to the victory points acquired in the course of the game and add also five points for each treasure color.
Some bonus tiles also reward you for treasures of the same color. Possible ties are resolved first by number of treasures owned and then by the number of different kinds of treasures.
For a first published game Relic Runners is quite nicely done. Matthew Dunstan has developed games before Relic Runners, but did not attend attraction beyond the Australian borders. His second published game, in 2013, was a card game that was published on the web. So far, inventing games has rather kept him from attending his university courses.
Our first game was chaos, pure and simple; nobody really knew what to do and where to move to. The rules added their mite to make the access even more difficult. But we fought our way through and the allure was big enough to merit a second game. But if you have mastered the rather simple mechanisms and rather few rules, you can concentrate on paths and temples.
That paths and the placement of pathways connected to that are the central element of the game became only clear to us after the second game. But this in turn introduces a problem of lacking tactical depth, because if there is only one feasible winning strategy and all try to follow it, you will quite soon be lacking ruins to place pathways and this in turn results in a small advantage for the starting player.
In all other aspects turns work without problems and implementation is easily handled when rules are know and from that moment on families and casual players can play, too, albeit always provided that they get that far.
The rules are badly structured, contrary to what usually comes from this publisher, and also completely flamboyant. In this case “less would be more” would have been better. The explanation of temple levels in a separate section of the rules instead of in the middle of the rules themselves. Even I with a lot of experience in reading rules had to search and re-read them again and again and leaf through them repeatedly. Due to their position in the rules a casual run-of-the-mill gamer assumes that points are important immediately and tries to understand them instantly. At second glance it is absolutely of no interest which tiles have what function. You can look that up. And some small additions to the rules seem so unimportant that you instantly forget them again and are left with the impression of having done something wrong at the end.
There are no mistakes in the rules, but I am not sure about the relevance of two sections in the rules: Are scores of players secret or not? They are expressively named to be secret for the blue temple tiles, but not for other victory points. The second section is the question of the second ivory tile of the same size. You must discard one and score two points. But do I also score two points when I use it? The rules for me are not clear enough. We have decided, yes, you get them, and I have explained it like this earlier in this review.
I like the three versions for an introductory game, a standard game and an expert game, and I was surprised to find rules in Hungarian, Polish and Russian.
Components and design are classic Days of Wonder Standard, as we used to. For me, the character drawings remind me a bit of Cluedo; one of them looks like Oberst Gatow, another one like Professor Bloom and one lady cannot disclaim being related to Fräulein Ming. The board is solidly designed, supports the game and provides a good basis for the game.
Tactic and strategy are a bit weak. First of all, I must mention that the games works best for three players and not at all for five players, that is to say, you can play with five players, but cannot do any planning. Temples and treasures disappear before it is your turn and there is a danger of team formation. This is a problem we also encountered in a game for four players, and also a problem of passive plan, because nobody wants to provide an advantage to the next player.
At second glance, Relic Runner is not a hunt for treasures or a chase after adventures, it has more the feel of a railway game, because constructing paths is at the center of the game and therefore it comes across rather dry and analytically, and, basically, a player who completes the exploration of a temple is published because the treasure will of a surety be collected by another player, which leaves me with the impression that I am being played by the game.
But, and I was surprised by this, despite those obstacles, which I removed and due to the easier access I provided and despite the rather dry feeling my family kept demanding another game and yet another game and meanwhile they have also played it without me, and that is rather remarkable for my family. So the game must have something that maybe has not yet been revealed to me.
A feature that you must not underestimate at all is he progress table. Toolboxes there should always be used on time and be placed on the right levels and columns at the end of the game, for instance on doubling points for a treasure hunt, etc. If you do clever placements there you can collect a lot of points or reconstruct important paths.
Pay attention to paths, do not neglect temples, take good care of your ration packs supply and don’t forget about the tool boxes. All in all you need endurance or a person already familiar with the rules for a start and you should not expect lots of strategy or tactical depths. If all this applies you will be well placed with Relic Runners, according to my family; it seems to be more of a family game than a game for friends or experts, as was my first impression – who would have believed that at the start of the first game?
Kurt Schellenbauer
Players: 2-5
Age: 10+
Time: 80+
Designer: Matthew Dunstan
Artist: Julien Delval
Price: ca. 45 Euro
Publisher: Days of Wonder 2013
Web: www.daysofwonder.com
Genre: Adventure, turn taking
Users: For families
Special: 2 players
Version: multi
Rules: de hu pl ru + en fr
In-game text: no
Comments:
Flamboyant, badly structured rules
Amazingly good components
Forced topic
Best with three players, not plannable with five
Compares to:
Löwenherz, Java, Mexica
Other editions:
In English and French
My rating: 4
Kurt Schellenbauer:
The unstructured play of the first game disappears with the second or third play and then the game provides more fun, too; but unfortunately that is when you notice that the tactical options are limited.
Chance (pink): 1
Tactic (turquoise): 2
Strategy (blue): 1
Creativity (dark blue): 0
Knowledge (yellow): 0
Memory (orange): 0
Communication (red): 0
Interaction (brown): 1
Dexterity (green): 0
Action (dark green): 0