Page 17 - spielbox 03/21 - English

The board shows the woods, the castle and the village. There are tiles embedded in the board, which your figures can inter- act with. You can talk to the maid, sidle on up to the farmer for a chat, disarm a guard, trick the executioner or take a look at what‘s lying around by the river: Every- thing is possible.
The main game mechanic uses a beau- tiful hardcover book, where you read out loud what happens as you make your moves. I‘d like to take a moment to praise the publisher for choosing this method, instead of using an app. It‘s not that apps can‘t be great (as, for example, the ad- venture games The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-Earth or Forgotten Waters prove), but it‘s about the overall aesthetic package, and a heavy, hardcov- er book is simply provides more than an app can. There are only two minor issues that bring the rating down to a B: The game board unfortunately bulges a bit, which means the inserted tokens sit so tight that they quickly show wear marks when they are flipped over. But both are of little consequence.
The second interesting mechanic is the bag into which you simply throw every- thing you‘re going to need to make prog- ress in the game: tokens in player and en- emy colors that determine the turn order, small dice that decide if actions succeed or fail, tokens that trigger changes on the board. The wooden dice come in two colors, and players want to get as many white ones into the bag as possible to maximize their chances of success when moving. In return, they have to give up their longest measurement piece during the movement phase and so end up covering less distance. Most of the time this trade-off is worth it. But you‘ve got to keep in mind how much hope remains and what that means for time pressure. When the minstrel on the hope track gets down to zero, the end is near. When there are no more hourglasses on the game board, all is lost.
It‘s fascinating how the Advent calen- dar-style board makes the order of things immediately visible. A tile can show a carriage, and when it drives off, the tile is turned over and, poof, now there’s only road where the carriage used to be and the carriage now appears in the castle courtyard. In this way, the game board dynamically depicts the events. What happens where, of course, varies from
chapter to chapter: depending on where you are in the story, which character you‘re interacting with, which decisions you make (and which ones you made be- fore), and if the people you deal with give you different information. As the game progresses, more complex action options are introduced.
Since this game is driven by an adven- ture book, the replay value is naturally not exactly endless. Still, Menzel‘s atten- tion to detail deserves praise. If you man- age to find yourself at the same place a second time, don‘t expect the same story again – there‘s a second version. No one should expect this to be a connoisseur‘s or expert‘s game. For gamers with strate- gic minds, the tasks are really too simple: there are plenty of clues and the game is too luck-heavy sometimes.
Small rule tweaks for a bit more chal- lenge can be found on the game‘s web- site (die-abenteuer-des-robin-hood.de), where you can also find a solo scenario and free bonus adventures. Menzel‘s
great success with Legends of Andor showed how important it is to cultivate the community, and it didn‘t take long for fans to contribute their own scenarios. In fact, the first fan adventure has already been announced for Robin Hood.
Another clear advantage is Robin Hood‘s suitability for gaming evange- lists: If you want to gather people around the table who are usually put off by complicated rules, Robin Hood is a fine beginner‘s game with enticing tactile and visual appeal. Or to put it in more straightforward terms: this one can hook them all. (sb)
Title:
Designer: Illustration: Publisher: Players: Age: Duration: Price:
The Adventures of Robin Hood
Michael Menzel
Michael Menzel
Kosmos
2 – 4
about 10+ years about 60 minutes about 50 Euros
Reviewer Playing appeal
Maren Hoffmann 8
Udo Bartsch 7
Very innovative how the game lets us experience the stories.
Andreas Becker 8
This is how you do immersion. It‘s also great that the stories change when
an adventure is lost. The love that was put into the game is immediately noticeable in every play. The fact that a bound book was used instead of hundreds of cards increased my alrea- dy strong impression.
L.U. Dikus 8
An adventure game book turned into to a board game with an original advent calendar technique, spiced with a pinch of bag building. But playing requires considerable effort at times, which will make it difficult for some gamers to immerse themselves in the story, and the tiles suffer because of it.
Stefan Ducksch 8
Many fresh ideas make the classic Robin Hood story a completely new
Even if sometimes a pinch of luck is needed when pulling discs from the bag, I love the idea and the immersive game experience of The Adventures of Robin Hood. Kudos!
Harald Schrapers
This is an atmospherically strong campaign game that works very well cooperatively because it opens up
the space for play. This allows even older kids to have an equal say in the game. With the exception of the fourth chapter, which can end up – most unsatisfactorily – in a kind of dead end, the different scenarios are easy to master. By not using a checkerboard or hex pattern, Michael Menzel has given himself great creative freedom, and
he proves he knows how to use it. The players also feel this freedom when they move their pieces, because there is no dogmatically defined movement requirement.
8
experience for families. Rarely has engagement with a game board been as intense as it is here. Only the use of the “tree bridges“ could have been better explained.
Stephan Kessler 6
The basic idea, while innovative, didn‘t do it for me.
Marie Poenisch 10
Christoph Schlewinski 7
Great idea and great implementation. A few more “cliffhangers“ would have been nice, because that‘s how you play through a story you‘ve heard a million times before.
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