Time to go!
In the Expedition to El Dorado, we play the role of seekers of a golden city. Our task is to get through all the boards and reach the destination before the others. The base game was released in Poland two years ago, but an expansion pack has recently been added to it. On this occasion, we would like to remind you of this racing proposition for players who like the mechanics of building their own deck, and we also look at the expansion.
There is a bit of preparation ahead of us. We build a route in the center of the table. It consists of a start and an end tile. You should connect them in any way with the terrain boards on which you will travel. You can use one of the layouts shown in the manual, and in subsequent games, let your imagination run wild and create your own paths.
Place one randomly selected blockade token on the joint of the tiles. Divide the cards by type into 18 face-up piles. The ones with the suns in the lower right corner are the basic market available from the start. Another 12 characters can enter the game individually when space becomes available, i.e. one of the stacks is exhausted.
Each one takes his pawn and places it on the starting tile. Shuffle the decks marked with the colors of the players (8 each) and make your own draw pile. We complete the hand to four cards and we can start the race.
Start!
On our turn, we play cards one at a time (very important!), Then put them on the discard pile and draw them so that we have four in our hand. And that’s the end of the rules, because it all depends on what we put in front of us and in what order.
Sabers, oars and coins knock you to enter the field with the jungle, river and city respectively. The number of symbols on the card must be equal to or greater than the number of icons on the board. Therefore, it is important to lay the cards one at a time. Two cards with one oar symbol do not allow entry into a river marked with two oars, but one with two icons does. We can reach the rubble by laying out any cards in accordance with the number shown on the field, while a visit to the camp will cost us to discard cards from the game permanently. Mountains are areas that are supposed to disturb us. We can only circle them and move on.
Moving from one plate to another involves removing the blockage. This can be done by laying out cards that meet the conditions shown on the token. More people will have a clear path, so who gets to the obstacle first and has to waste resources is also important.
Among the cards, there are also special actions that allow, for example, drawing a character that is not yet available on the market or another hand from your own deck above the limit. This makes the game easier, but most often these are disposable cards, which should be put back in the box after use, so they don’t come back to us anymore.
After move and special actions, we can end the round or buy something with yellow cards from the market. The drawn character immediately goes to the discard pile. When we run out of deck, our used cards will be shuffled again and we will be able to draw what we have already used.
Explore the caves
After getting through the jungle several times and familiarizing yourself with the rules, you can play the cave variant. Place the appropriate tokens face down on the mountains. When breaking through the jungle, if we stand next to such a field, we take the top tile, It goes to our resources and we can use it at any time of the game. These are facilities that allow us to finish the race faster, e.g. additional coins, oars and machetes or the ability to discard a card.
The game ends when one of the players reaches the end tile with his pawn (or two in a two-player game).
Appendix Demons jungle
The extension adds components that make the route more difficult, but also offer new possibilities. When preparing the tiles, use those from the supplement. Place the base next to the second board and the hero deck next to it. Divide the new Quest cards into piles by type and add them to the twelve from the base. They enter the game in the same way, i.e. after freeing up space on the market.
The game with the add-on always includes a variant with caves, because we get more tokens and put them on the top. In addition, on the route, we can find new fields with demons and tunnels. By entering them, we collect the appropriate tokens for each creature symbol, and the tunnels are additionally considered adjacent within one tile, so you can move between them. The fields with monsters will make the game difficult for us, depending on what we draw, e.g. limitations in placing cards or choosing a demon for your deck. They clog our set, although they can also be used in a useful way when we have to discard a card from play.
Each player adds a random travel companion to their starting deck, allowing everyone to start with a slightly different set. The goal of the game does not change, of course – we want to get to the finish line as soon as possible.
How was the Golden City?
A trip to El Dorado is a surprisingly pleasant racing game in which we will find classic deck building, i.e. building your own deck. The beginnings are quite monotonous, because we have to visit the market several times for our journey to gain momentum. However, after adding stronger cards, we can delve into the jungle and run to the finish line.
The basic version without caves is useful for learning the rules and when playing with younger children. The introduction of additional cave tokens means that we are not only going forward, but also want to collect a few bonuses, so we go longer, but to get tokens that can help when the cards fail us.
The modular board is a great procedure to ensure replayability. The different shapes, turns and layout of the fields will make each route slightly different from the previous one. There is a finite number of them, but it is definitely impossible to repeat the same game because of the random order of the cards drawn, and thus the fields that we can enter at any given time.
The difficulty level for completing the entire route is not too high. There are simpler and more complicated paths, of course, but the real combining comes with the demons in the expansion pack. Their tiles have more diverse layouts, and we often have to decide whether we will bypass a given field, slowing down the race, or whether we will take a token and suffer negative consequences. While drawing a creature card is not so bothersome, the inability to lay out machetes can hold us up for a long time.
From 2 to 4 players can sit at the table and play well with any squad. Of course, in four you have to wait a while for your move, but you can plan your moves, so it’s not wasted time. I like the condition of reaching the finish line with two pawns in a two-player game, because we can’t leave anyone too far behind and we have to think about two routes. However, when our cards are not suitable for the movement of one person, maybe we can use them to move the other.
There is a negative interaction in the game, but not very much. Apart from picking up the chosen card, you can block someone’s path. I especially like this duo option, because with one pawn I obstruct the simplest path, and with the other I can still go to my goal. Having one figure each, we cannot stand still for too long, because we would be acting to our disadvantage.
At every step, we will be disturbed by randomness, which when choosing cards is huge and there is no possibility of eliminating it. Especially later in the race, we may find it difficult to grind the deck while waiting for the one with a few machetes or oars. Of course, you can buy something during this time, but it does not always make sense and is just a game of waiting. This, in my opinion, is the least disturbing in a two-player game again, because we have two pieces and rarely can do anything at all.
The lack of atmosphere in the games of Reiner Knizia is his trademark. And here was a small surprise. There is still little adventure atmosphere, but the race is very noticeable and pleasantly raises the level of adrenaline at the end, when players can take the lead and cross the finish line significantly at any moment.
Unfortunately, the graphics on the cards do not impress me, but the workmanship and quality of the components are at a high level. The most important thing is that the icons are legible and the fields on the tiles are well marked. The pictures are forgotten very quickly and the number of oars, machetes and coins is counted.
Worth a trip?
A trip to El Dorado is a good family game, but it will also work as a filler among more experienced players. The saucer is enough for fun to play, but with the accessory it gains a bit of depth in decision making. We have stronger cave cards and tokens, but demons that are very disturbing, so the route becomes more interesting and varied. The new components don’t complicate the rules, but make more decisions necessary.
