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At the beginning of the game, you may choose from any of the 6 different expedition card piles on the market board. Once all 3 cards of a pile have been sold, you gain access to the cards next to the market board.
But regardless of who you move or where they land, the moved explorer always gets placed on the dark side of the space they occupy. This means they cannot be moved again… unless you roll a 2. A 2 lets you move any explorer 2 spaces (even one that is currently in darkness), and there are 2 faces of the die can give you this result. 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.Prognosis: a forecast of how the game will likely fare in my collection, and perhaps yours as well. If you still have cards in your hand (experts or items), you can now choose to keep them in your hand for your next turn, or discard them as well. You may decide for each card individually. Play one card from your hand and place it above your expedition board. Most cards have a power value. The power value allows you to move 1 or more spaces of the same type adjacent to the position of your playing piece. Then, you may play another card to make an additional move. What cards you want to buy during the game depends on what strategy you want to pursue, but also on the route you want to take in your race to El Dorado. Some longer routes might be more rewarding but will require investment on certain terrain cards. This is very cleverly done and it is often a good idea to analyse the route at the start of the game to see what cards might be more valuable than others. The modular board is ace. Setting it up in different ways allows for oodles of replayability, especially as each section is double-sided. Not only that, it can be made shorter or longer to adjust the length of the game.
Despite all of that, The Quest for El Dorado has been an irresistible design that Dr. Knizia just can’t leave alone. Yet if there is any game in his entire ludography that lends itself best to expansion content, it undoubtedly has to be this one. This game features all the key ingredients for expansion content: I’ll tell you what gives: Muisca cards are bankable cards. When you draw one into your hand, you can either play and discard it like normal or you can set it aside and save it for a future turn (where it doesn’t take up space in your hand). This allows you to call upon a stored Muisca card at precisely the moment when you need it most, rather than hope to draw it into your hand on the right turn. Players are allowed to store 2 Muisca cards at a time, and these cards add yet another layer of strategy to the experience. 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? Every player gets one turn to roll their dice, exploded dice end up in the middle, and the highest roll that did not explode takes all of the dice that were rolled (whether they exploded or not).
Final thoughts on The Quest for El Dorado
Sometimes publishers go their own way, of course, using a different theme or art from the original publication because they think it will be a better fit for their market or the game design itself. (When I brought up Lato z Komarami, Egmont Polska's edition of LAMA, as an example of this, Knizia said that actually the Egmont version of that game matches his prototype as he had called the game "Mosquito" to highlight the annoying nature of them being left in your hand at the end of a round. "For AMIGO, the mosquito wasn't the most sympathetic character", says Knizia, so that publisher swapped the mosquito for a llama. Given the Spiel des Jahres nomination for that game, AMIGO might have made the right call...) It’s unclear whether No Mercy or Hit! will become easily available for folks in North America, as it does not have English rules in the box (although you can find a fan translation on Board Game Geek). That’s a bit of a shame, because I find myself preferring No Mercy over Family Inc. (although who knows… it’s possible that Cheeky Monkey is the best of the bunch).
With Family Inc., you only steal from other players’ queued stashes when you conclude your turn without busting. With No Mercy, you must decide to steal mid-turn, the moment you reveal a matching card, and sometimes it’s better to not steal from others if you wish to draw a second or third card without the chance of busting.When moving on your turn, for each card you play, choose which playing piece that card applies to. Move that playing piece, then choose again for your next card. Each time there is a vacant spot on the market board, you have access to all remaining expedition cards.
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. The challenge takes place over 12 rounds of players selecting any number of dice from their hidden supply to roll and attempting to roll the highest sum with the winner claiming all of the dice that were invested in rolls that round. The player with the most dice at the end wins. The catch is that you must accomplish this without exploding. 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. 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. 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.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. 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 Aristocracy is an interesting title in Reiner Knizia’s ludography. It was released in 2019 by publisher Tasty Minstrel Games—one of their last titles to be released before they went bankrupt. Obviously (and unfortunatly) Aristocracy wasn’t a big enough release to save that sinking ship.
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