Ravensburger The Quest for El Dorado Strategy Board Games for Adults and Kids Age 10 Years Up - 2 to 4 Players

Product Information

Reiner Knizia loves to revisit his strongest brands with designs that put a spin on what makes them shine. It’s smart from a business perspective, as these brands already have a built-in following, and it’s fun from a fan’s perspective, as you get to see a designer riff on the concept. Yet as I’ve mentioned with other lines (Azul, Super Skill Pinball, Keyflower), they also run the risk of intimidating newcomers or burning out fans. We have many ideas", continues Knizia. "They are in development, and it depends on individual publishers what we will do with them. For some publishers, it's important to have ideas of expansions, and others focus solely on the base game. The publishers will decide what they want to do. I will build the world, then the publishers can take one thing or another from it."

I've spoken with Knizia many times since I started covering the game industry full time in 2006, including an hour-long retrospective in 2015 of his thirty-year career as a game designer that remains my favorite interview to date. I've spoken of my love for Knizia designs many times, most recently in my video overview of LAMA, and aside from being a fan of his designs, I'm also a fan of his business practices. More than anyone else I've encountered, Knizia merges the art of design with the business of ensuring that those designs get into print and stay there, and that's where this story begins. Designed for 2-4 players and suitable for ages 10 and up, The Quest for El Dorado is a game that's easy to learn but challenging to master. With stunning artwork and high-quality components, it's a game that's as visually appealing as it is fun to play. Assemble your team of explorers and equip them with the tools and supplies they need to navigate treacherous terrain, overcome obstacles, and outwit your opponents. Use strategy and cunning to navigate the jungle, build paths, and reach the fabled city before your rivals. There’s plenty of tactical nuance here that I’m impressed and engaged during play. I’m just not sure that Great Wall of China does quite enough to stand out from the Samurai & Condottiere crowd. Most critically, it’s not quite fast enough to justify playing this over more meaty strategic games that also play in under an hour. Here we have a classic Knizia card game from 2006 that honestly feels like a card game version of Samurai… only Samurai got its own official card game 3 years later which is even more faithful to the source material. Great Wall also mimics the auctions, hand management, and card ability chaos of Condottiere, but it admittedly does so in a more reserved and balanced manner.The worst thing I can say about the components is the cards are those mini cards rather than standard sized, and though I understand the space-saving reasons for using them they just don’t shuffle or play as well as regular cards. The Best of El Dorado When a player reaches one of the 3 finishing spaces, this triggers the final round (they will then place their playing piece on El Dorado to free up the finishing space). Each player left in that round will now play their final turn. Once the round is completed, the game is over. Deep in the dense jungles of South America lies El Dorado, the city of gold. Unlimited treasure waits in this lost kingdom - gold, jewels, and precious artifacts. You are a group of daring adventurers who embark on a search for the lost city. In a tweet on July 9, Knizia had stated that the game would appear in eleven languages not covered by Ravensburger, but following the publicity of his original announcement, a twelfth language edition has been signed. Those languages are Dutch (from 999 Games); Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Swedish (from Lautapelit.fi); and (from publishers still to be announced) Chinese, Greek, Hungarian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, and Russian. (The Lautapelit.fi edition will include components and rules in English, but it cannot be sold by the publisher outside of Finland and Scandinavia.) Cards provide a movement to a green jungle space, a blue water space or a yellow desert space. Movement is slightly complicated (in a good way) by the necessity of certain cards being used. Symbols on the board dictate the value of the card required to move onto that space. For example a space with two machetes, requires a card with two or more machetes on it. Surplus machetes can be used on subsequent squares if there is a neighbouring matching type. Therefore, a card bearing three machetes could move you along three spaces bearing a single machete. However, cards cannot be combined to move you onto a single space. So you cannot combine two cards with a single machete on to move onto a two machete space.

Treasures of Nakbe streamlines and simplifies the strategy of Winner’s Circle by simply dealing one secret card to each player that displays the three explorers they are invested in. The goal is to help those explorers race to stay ahead of the competition as they run from the dreaded guardian who ever closes in on them. With no bets being made and no probabilities to analyze, this game offers a much more family-friendly experience while still keeping things interesting with the game board interactions along the way. All the cards in the market are good, but your starting cards are quite weak. It can therefore be worth discarding those as the game progresses. This ensures that they don’t bury the good cards in your hand. There are also times where cards become superfluous to requirements. That is to say, you might have some water cards in your hand, but no spaces to use them on. In these instances you need to try and get rid. This refinement can be vital in winning or losing a close game. It is also why buying a single use card isn’t always a bad thing!Each time there is a vacant spot on the market board, you have access to all remaining expedition cards. Katrin Seemann, PR Manager at Ravensburger Verlag, has confirmed that the company will release a new version of The Quest for El Dorado base game in January 2023 with the Vincent Dutrait artwork and graphic design. Says Seemann, "Of course we are also planning extensions, but we first have to wait and see how the relaunch is received. The first expansion would then be Heroes & Hexes and the second one Dangers & Muisca. But there are no concrete launch dates for the expansions yet." This new Ravensburger edition will feature larger cards than the original base game to match the 999 Games production. You start each turn with 4 cards in your hand. Use expedition cards to move through the jungle or hire more people for your expedition.

English courtier Sir Walter Raleigh made two trips to Guiana to search for El Dorado. During his second trip in 1617, he sent his son, Watt Raleigh, with an expedition up the Orinoco River. But Walter Raleigh, then an old man, stayed behind at a base camp on the island of Trinidad. The expedition was a disaster, and Watt Raleigh was killed in a battle with Spaniards. The market starts with the six pre-determined cards in it, each in a pile of three. Once this pile is empty, the next player to buy a card may fill the gap by buying any of the other cards. This lets you shape your tactics, but also makes the card you have chosen available to your opponents. This simple mechanic creates some difficult decisions! Despite this, all these cards have their uses, so it is easy for younger players to get in on the action and not lose out. The Rest of El Dorado? The Spaniards started calling this golden chief El Dorado, "the gilded one." The ceremony of the gilded man supposedly ended in the late 15th century when El Dorado and his subjects were conquered by another tribe. But the Spaniards and other Europeans had found so much gold among the natives along the continent's northern coast that they believed there had to be a place of great wealth somewhere in the interior. The Spaniards didn't find El Dorado, but they did find Lake Guatavita and tried to drain it in 1545. They lowered its level enough to find hundreds of pieces of gold along the lake's edge. But the presumed fabulous treasure in the deeper water was beyond their reach. Raleigh's Quest To win, you must reach El Dorado first with both of your pieces. If both players manage to reach El Dorado with their second playing piece during the final turn, use the normal tie-breaker rules.

Wait a minute? A new edition of The Quest for El Dorado, for which Knizia and Ravensburger received a Spiel des Jahres nomination in 2017? It's being released with new artwork by Vincent Dutrait while the original version with Franz Vohwinkel's iconic artwork is still on print? Large format cards wouldn't match the original, which means that the existing Heroes & Hexes expansion wouldn't be compatible — and what about The Golden Temples standalone expansion that Ravensburger teased at Spielwarenmesse 2019 ahead of a late 2019 release? Is Knizia talking about those expansions — or something else? You know what’s surprising? According to Board Game Geek, there is only one game in existence that goes by the title “ Great Wall of China.” You know what’s less surprising? It’s designed by Reiner Knizia 😆. As I wrote in my 2019 article, announcements like this one can be frustrating since you don't necessarily want to buy a game a second time or feel like you're forced to buy in to increase the chances of the expansions being released. That said, I can understand Ravensburger's hesitancy to charge ahead with the expansions at the same time as the base game. Indeed, as I noted three years ago, Ravensburger initially had no plans to release expansions for the game, primarily because it just wasn't a company that released expansions (outside of its alea brand). I would not have anticipated this development, however, so I'm curious to see what will come next.