He had done my Medici for Grail Games, along with other titles for them, and he's very experienced in multiple areas," says Knizia. "When he told me that The Quest for El Dorado was his favorite game, we had a deal." Prognosis: a forecast of how the game will likely fare in my collection, and perhaps yours as well. Boss’s are great to roll in terms of explosion avoidance and tiebreakers, yet they contribute nothing to your chances of having the highest sum and outright winning the round. So do you keep a boss result from your first or second roll, or reroll it?! Arghh! 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.

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? 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 Looking for an exciting adventure game that will keep you on the edge of your seat? Look no further than The Quest for El Dorado board game! Each hex space shows the requirements you have to meet to move onto it. The more symbols depicted on the space, the more difficult it is to move there. The number of symbols equals the space's power. 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...)At the end of your turn, put all cards you placed above your expedition board during phase 1 (i.e. all the cards you played excluding any cards that were completely removed from the game) face up on your discard pile.

Each round, a new card is revealed that displays a dangerous combination or threshold that players must avoid. There are two types of cards: Immediate Explosions and End-of-Turn Bombs. If an immediate explosion displays a threshold of 10+, then that means a player explodes the moment they roll a dice total of 10 or higher. If an End-of-Turn Bomb displays “2 Odds,” then a player explodes if their final result has 2 or more odd numbers among all their dice. Other possibilities include rolling a 4 or 5, rolling a pair, rolling three different number results, etc. While the differences are outwardly subtle, they feel surprisingly unique when deciding how many dice to roll and knowing whether there is the risk of an immediate explosion or not. 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. 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. 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. The Danger tiles include five types that can be implemented into your map in any assortment or combination: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 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. 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.)

Exception: If you play an item card without using its function (e.g. to pass a rubble space, or to spend it as % a coin), place it above the expedition board after you played it, then put it on your discard pile. Cards you play to move onto a base camp space aren't discarded. Instead, they are completely removed from the game. They won't be used again this game.In other words, gather up resources to collect sets and score points OR play your markers onto the board to establish connections and race to earn points. There are enough ways to score points here (building a line that connects cities, placing enough markers in one district, placing a marker in all districts, collecting lots of resources and sets of resources) that you’ll always have a decent strategy to work toward. Whether that strategy pans out or not is going to heavily depend on how the tiles are revealed and how tempting those tiles are to your opponents.