I am guessing I have to roll for adventure? Would that not be, roll for an adventure? It is a confusing title and a confusing game the first time you play it. In fact, I am still not 100% sure I played this game correctly!
Time to point out the obvious, unless you have seen the box that it is, or a listing on a website...
Players: 2 - 4
Age: 10+
Time: 30 minutes
What is in that strange looking box?
You get quite a bit in this game, dice, cards and tokens and there are lots, I am not going to go through it all, or am I? I probably will because I am that anal about it.
4 game board pieces that are double-sided
1 vortex of resurrection Token
8 power stone tokens
6 barrier tokens
4 end game tokens
1 storage chest
1 card holder
5 chain tokens
4 board piece connectors
10 hero boards
4 adventure boards
4 skulls
1 boundary token
You thought that was it? You silly fool, there is more to come!
20 hero dice (4 sets of 5 in different colours)
4 bonus dice
1 territory dice
I know that is quite a lot of dice but you are rolling for adventure....
Guess what?! You also get some cards!
24 enemy cards (four colours to match the zones and each ranging from number 1 to 3)
1 master of shadows card (he is the bad guy we want to f**k up)
24 special enemy cards (6 of these are blank, go nuts)
4 turn overview cards
1 master of shadows overview card for when the prick shows his/hers/theirs/whatever face
I think I got them all but there is so much I feel I might have missed something out.
Setting up the game, let's do it!
Now for some unknown reason, I forgot to take a photo of the board all setup! You can kinda see some of the setup from the images above, yes I could go set it all up again and take a photo but, yeah, no!
Firstly I am going to describe the setup for your first game, which is simple. Take the game board pieces and double-check they are on the A-side (there is an A letter on them) and then use the matching connectors to connect all 4 to build the board.
Pick the book of magic adventure card as we will be playing this one and take 5 power gem tokens.
Now around the board place the vortex token, then the storage chest with the 5 power gem tokens on, the cardholder and finally the adventure card we will be trying to fill with tokens to win.
On the green board piece known as the forest territory put the barrier token (the fire line looking one) and put it on the first black line that is after the 6th dice on the board.
You can just see the fire barrier on the image above. Place 1 barrier token on each of the 3 spots on the fortress territory (black board piece).
If you look at the black board piece you can see the 3 fire tokens below each dice section. Also place the skull pieces in each territory after the arrow marker.
Now in this game you will be given 1 of 4 heroes so shuffle the following 4 cards and deal one to each player;
Adventurer
Fighter
Healer
Warrior
Once you have them take your starting dice colour and place them on your card.
Now we played a two-player game so we get 2 extra dice of a different colour to use as our allies. In a 3 player game, you would all take 1 extra dice.
Read your special ability and do not forget to use this in the game because they are very handy!
Give each player a turn overview card to match their dice colour because why not? Be rude not to.
The overview of the master of the shadows should be placed next to the card holder along with the territory dice.
The 4 grey dice which are the bonus dice need to be placed in the space shown on the blue board piece known as the ice cave territory.
You can see where the dice need to be placed on the image above.
All the following items will NOT be needed in your first game;
The special cards including the blank ones
The game end tokens
The chain tokens
Put them back in the box and breathe easy knowing this will be a little easier, well you would think that....
Now, this is important to the set up so pay close attention to my words.
Remove the master of shadows card
Shuffle all the other enemy cards
Deal them all out into 3 piles (8 cards in each pile)
Put the master of shadows into the middle pile (pile 2 we will call this) and shuffle that pile only
Now put pile 2 on top of pile 1, now you have a pile of 16 we will call pile A now take pile 3 (8 cards) and put it on pile A to create the starting pile.
Then place this pile on the cardholder.
That is the game setup and ready to be played now pick a player to go first and let the fun begin!
How to win?
You win the game by collecting the number of power gems shown empty on your adventure card. In this example, you need to collect 5 power gems to end the game.
If at any point a zone is damaged to the skull marker this ends the game in a loss!
How do you play?
Pick a player to go first and then they roll all their dice, they pick 1 number from that roll so for example 4, they must then place all the 4's they rolled into one zone (territory), long as the zone allows them to do so (4 spots left in that zone).
Once they place the dice THEY MUST RE-ROLL THE REST and do the same again, they do not stop until they have rolled and placed every dice! This is important, also remember to use your ability if it helps you.
Now after the first turn there will be enemies out that you can out dice on too, you might have dice on the vortex to try and release some of the dice stuck in the vortex too. You will not always be putting them into zones sometimes you will need to put them else where.
Once they have placed all their dice the board might look similar to the image below.
At the end of the players turn they must flip over an enemy card, move it to the zone and perform the action for that enemy in that zone. This is what happens in each zone;
Desert enemy: Remove one dice from the first section of the board piece, if there are no dice in this zone suffer 1 damage to that zone. This means if you have no dice in the first column but do in the next one or the locked area the dice stay there and 1 damage is taken.
Fortress enemy: Remove one dice from each of the 3 dice zones if possible, if there are only 2 zones with dice in remove 2, if only 1 zone does have a dice remove 1 from there. If there are NO DICE in any zone the zone suffers 1 damage.
Forest enemy: Remove 1 dice with a 5 and 1 dice with a 6 if there is only 1 number in the zone remove just 1 dice. If you can not remove any dice because there are none then the zone takes 1 damage.
Ice cave enemy: Remove the dice with the highest number from the zone, if there are no dice in this zone the zone takes 1 damage.
The enemy attack is pretty easy to understand to be fair.
The card in the image above goes to the ice cave zone (blue) and you need to remove the highest dice in that zone, since we did not have any we took 1 damage and moved the skull forward a space.
The turn would move on to the next player but there are some things we still need to talk about.
If an enemy manages to remove your dice from a zone then they go into the middle of the game board (the vortex) and you will need to put dice into the vortex token until it reaches 10 or more. Once it hits 10 or more the dice are released from the vortex and go back to their owners. So do the dice on the vortex token.
To defeat an enemy you need dice with the value of 6 or more on the enemy. This can be done with 1 dice with a value of 6 or multiple dice from 1 or more players. Keep in mind until the value of 6 is hit the dice will be locked on that card!
Dice in a zone are locked until it is broken by completing the goal for that area. Once it is broken all dice go back to their owners. This means;
Ice cave: You will need to either have 4 dice in the zone or 5 or 6 depending on the bonus you are aiming for. The ice cave does not give you power gems but it does give you bonuses that can be handy!
4 dice = Collect a bonus dice if you have dice in this zone when complete.
5 dice = Same as above but also destroy a monster!
6 dice = same as both above but also reset 1 zone damage to 0!!!!! This was very useful for us in this game!
Desert: You will need to do the first section and then move 1 dice into the next column, the two other dice go back to their owners. To collect a power gem from here you will need to do this process 3 times in total. Once you do it the 3rd time and the 2nd column is full you need to lock 1 dice in (you will never get this back) and collect a power gem.... ouch!
Forest: Keep putting 5 or 6 dice into this zone until you reach the fire barrier, once you reach this a power gem is unlocked, all players get their dice back from the zone and finally move the fire barrier to the nest black line!
Fortress: This one needs 3 dice zones completed to remove each barrier and score a power gem. This means this zone takes 12 dice to unlock 1 power gem. Once a zone (4 dice) is filled the barrier is removed and all dice are released (no dice can be put into that zone until the entire area is reset (power gem collected)). Once a power gem is collected all 3 barriers are put back in place and the zones can start to be filled again.
Each time an enemy is drawn you need to do a value check, check the number of the enemy drawn and any other enemies in play with a lower value attack this turn also. Enemy management is important, imagine you have drawn a 3 blue and you have a 2 blue, 1 green, 1 yellow out that would mean this round if none of those zones has dice in they will take 2,1,1 damage to the zones. This can stack up quickly so make sure you are handling monsters when you can. If you only have higher ranking monsters or matching rank they do not attack it is only lower value monsters that attack (monsters are enemies).
If you draw the master of shadows you need to:
1: All enemies out attack their zones
2: Roll the territory dice and do the following;
Blank grey = Nothing!
1 zone image = that zone takes 2 damage!
All zones image = all zones take 1 damage!
3: Shuffle the card back into the remaining cards....... Sucks!
Final Thoughts?!
This game is all about luck because you are really relying on the dice, not to f**k you over. Of course, you need to be thoughtful about what you are doing and talk has a team about what you think you should do with each roll. That said none of this matters if the dice are not on your side when you roll.
I did have fun playing the game but at times was also frustrated that I could not get the dice I needed or found myself low on dice because the enemies were just taking my dice away all the time. It is at times brutal if you are not managing the play area.
I like the fact you can lock in dice to build towards a number and that you can only place that 1 number this round. That is an important element to the game that really can be frustrating also. If you roll 3 5's and then 4'4s but only need 2 4's to unlock a zone but the 3 5's could help out the forest what do you do! It is frustratingly fun because you know for a fact you are not going to roll that again for some time!
It is team-based, you do need to work together and talk about what you are both working towards. You are not an alone wolf in this game so share information, work to free your teammate's dice if they are all tied up in one zone. Also for the love of God do not let the enemies stack up because they will make you cry! Remember to use the ice cave zone bonuses and try to aim for the full 6 bonus because it helps a lot! Try not to get too many dice locked away forever in the desert zone.
These are some harsh lessons we did not know about in the first game that we lost. In the second game, we won because we planned ahead and talked about what we thought we should do.
BUT I repeat if the dice are just not rolling the way you would like none of this matters because you are f***ked.
6/10
