Wettlauf nach El Dorado

review

Expeditions crossing a jungle

GOld at the end of the journey

Not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is what the expeditions want to find, but the legendary land of gold, El Dorado, where gold, jewels and artifacts are waiting.

Up to four expeditions set out to find their way over varying terrain, represented by seven double-sided terrain boards featuring distinct terrain types: Landscape hexes in green, yellow and blue, as well as mountain hexes in black, rubble hexes in grey and base camp hexes in red. Five of those boards are used for a game - there is a suggestion for the first game in the rules; for later games you can use the boards any way you want or use one of the more advanced suggestions in the rules. The target tile of El Dorado is always added at the end of the row. Regardless of which boards you are using, you always place a blockade piece to connect boards.

Players use one pawn for their expedition, an expedition board and eight basic cards marked in their color - one Sailor, three researchers and four travelers - and place their pawns on the starting cases of the first board in the line-up. Finally, you prepare the Market - with 18 distinct types of cards in stacks.

Now the adventure can begin. Players draw four cards from the basic cards stack in hand and put the rest on the left-most case on their expedition board for their draw pile. Players are active in turn, starting with the owner of the cute Indiana-Jones-starting-player-hat. As active player you resolve a turn of three phases: Play cards - discard cards - replenish your hand.

For Phase I, you play any number of cards from your hand and use them to move your expedition and/or to buy cards. To move the expedition, you must meet the condition of the hex on which you want to move the pawn. Hexes are marked with symbols for the strength of the hex - the more symbols the harder it is to meet the conditions. A card that want to use to move on a hex, must show the symbol of the target hex and the strength of the card must be at least equal to the strength of the hex. If there is surplus strength from the card sufficient to move to another hex with the same symbol, you can make this move, too. Unused strength points are forfeit.

To move to rubble hexes or to a base camp hex, you can use any type of cards; you need to play as many cards as the target hex shows symbols. However, cards that you play to move to a base camp are not discarded but are taken out of play permanently. You cannot move to mountain hexes and to hexes occupied by another expedition.

If you are the first player who reaches a blockade between two terrain boards, you play the necessary cards in the same way as you would to enter a hex and then take the blockade. If you have surplus strength then, you can move on to a suitable hex in the blockade color on the next board.

It is always possible to buy a card, regardless if you moved or not - you can buy maximum one card per turn and must for them with cards from your hand; cards are either worth as many coins as they have strength, if they carry a coin symbol, or if they are not marked with a coin, are worth ½ a coin. A card that you bought goes directly to your discard pile and is available after shuffling the discard pile and then replenishing the card pile, at the earliest. When the cards of stack on the Market board are taken, you can access the stacks above the market board; the rest of the accessed stack is immediately placed on a free slot on the market board. Item cards can only be used once and are then taken out of play; if, however you use them to pay for cards or for entering rubble hexes, in which case you can place them on your personal discard pile.

What can the cards do?

Green Expedition cards provide movement, yellow ones provide coins, blue ones give you paddles to move across rivers and Joker cards provide one of the three symbols each time they are used. Purple action cards: Transmitter - one free expedition card; Cartographer - draw to additional cards from your draw pile and play them in the same turn; Compass - draw three surplus cards but remove the Compass from play: Scientist - draw one additional card and remove a card permanently, if you want. Travel Log - draw two cards and remove two cards and the Travel Log card from play; Native - move one hex and ignore conditions.

Then, in Phase 2, you discard all cards you played open-faced on your own discard pile on the right side of your expedition board. If you have persons or items in hand, you can keep them for the next round or discard them, too. Then, as Phase 3, you replenish your hand to four cards from your personal draw pile; if this is empty, you shuffle your discard pile for the new draw pile.

If an expedition arrives at one of the three end hexes, the end of the game is triggered. The pawn on the end hex is placed on El Dorado and the current round is completed - if then the pawn on El Dorado is the only one there, this player wins; if other players reach El Dorado during the last round, the winner is whoever removed most of the blockades; if there is still a tie after this, you win, if you removed the most valuable blockade piece.

In a game of two players, each player uses two pawns for his expedition and must be first to have both pawns at El Dorado to win; card strength cannot be split between the two pawns, and one of your pawns is an obstacle for the other of your pawns.

After a few games using those rules for a base game, you can use the Cave variant. For this variant, you place four randomly selected, face-down cave tiles on each of the mountain hexes marked with a cave. When the movement of an expedition ends on a hex adjacent to a cave, you take the top tile, open-faced, and can use it anytime - in the turn in which you acquired it or in any subsequent turn. It goes out of play after you used it. The cave tiles provide: Strength values for move or card shopping - drawing of additional cards - removal of cards - exchanging of hand cards - discarding of items instead of removing them from play - moving across occupied hexes - moving to adjacent hexes, regardless of of their conditions - changing the symbol of the next card you play.

Wettlauf nach El Dorado uses core mechanisms that are familiar from many deck building games, but not as usual for the acquisition of victory points or creating a display, but only to enable fast movement across the terrain boards. The base camps offer - in addition to the action cards - a nice way to get rid of surplus cards in the deck to facilitate a quicker turnover of much-needed cards. You need tactic for clever use of the cards and of course also a bit of luck when drawing from your own stack-

The core game is - even with a self-assembled terrain track - absolutely suitable for families with same gaming experience, while the Cave variant will appeal to experienced players, too.

All in all, a well-made and entertaining game, not filling an entire evening, but a good game for a conclusion or a filler, not too long to explain and access. Due to the modular board, the cave tiles and the unpredictable buying pattern on the market there is a lot of replay value there, too!

Dagmar de Cassan

Players: 2-4

Age: 10+

Time: 60+

Designer: Reiner Knizia

Artist: Franz Vohwinkel

Price: ca. 40 Euro

Publisher: Ravensburger 2017

Web: www.ravensburger.de

Genre: Race, meet conditions, build deck

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de en fr ru

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Good mix of standard mechanisms

New detail mechanisms

High replay value

Good rules

Nominated for Game of the Year 2017

Compares to:

Deck building games using track movement

Other editions:

Lavka (ru), Ravensburger (en, fr)

My rating: 6

Dagmar de Cassan:

Wettlauf nach El Dorado uses standard mechanisms in attractive combination and a few additional, new details - solid entertainment with a high replay value, suitable for families with gaming experience as well as for expert players.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 2

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0