Explorers | Discover the Everchanging Landscapes! | Board Game Overview & Review (Episode #60)

hello everyone my name is ilya and my name is tyler together we make up cavray a couple that loves rolling rights which are board games god always trick me well this is our check it out series where we showcase various games to you in hopes of inspiring you to play them and today we have a rolling rate we didn't give that away already no wish no wish we'll be taking a look at a new phil walker harding game called explorers [Music] yeah well like i said explorers is designed by phil walker harding the art is done by sabrina miramon and the publisher is robbinsburger in explorers you'll take a role of an explorer what dredging through all the lands collecting various points to various ways but we'll tell you a little bit more in this quick overview of how to play now for the purpose of this video we'll be showing you setup as recommended for your first game you'll set up your board in an identical way to everybody else making sure the terrain tiles and the scoring tiles match exactly once you've done that you'll cross out the village closest to the center this will be your starting place each player will then choose one terrain type and mark three spaces with an x starting with the initial village the game consists of four rounds and each round is played in seven turns the beginning of each round the first player will shuffle the eight exploration tiles and set one aside face down and now you're ready to play now each turn consists of two phases the first phase is when the active player chooses a terrain type an active player will draw the exploration card and choose which of the terrains they want to cross off on their map the oriented so that terrain faces them now it's the second phase all players place their exes this is done simultaneously the active player of course places three x's of the chosen type that they've chosen that is facing them however everybody else has a choice they can place two x's of the same train type chosen by the active player or place three x's of a terrain type that the active player did not choose now each x place in the same turn must be of the same terrain type unless you've chosen a wild in which case you can cross off two terrain types for that turn now as you're exploring the map you'll be collecting various objects that provide various bonuses for you let's go over them if you come across a key you'll circle it in the top here now keys are used to unlock temples and can be used at any point you have a temple you'll cross off that temple and score points now speed is a factor here as you'll get more points if you cross off the temple before your opponents now scroll you can use on later turns to ignore the terrain type on an exploration card instead you'll be able to cross off four spaces of a single train type of your choice now horse immediately allows you to place an x in any terrain space of your choice next are an already existing x of course now provisions will score you points once you cross off a provision on the map you'll cross them off on your scoring pad corresponding to the round that they were discovered the provisions are scored for how many you can contain in a round so for example if you obtained two in that round you'll get five points at the end of the game now when you cross off a gemstone on the map you'll cross out the gemstone on your scoring tile at the end of each round each player will count the total of their gemstones and gain points one per gemstone so it's better to cross up gemstones earlier in the game as you'll obtain more points now at the end of the round once all seminal expiration cards have been played each player will count their provisions and gemstones record their points and get ready for the next round now at the end of the four rounds you're ready for final scoring you'll tally up your points your provisions gemstones and temples as well as your villages now you'll count the number of x's placed in the single squares above below into the sides of each of the village space depending on how many x's you place is how many points you'll score so for example if you've placed two that'll be five points where if you place all of four then you get 10.

you'll tally up your points and the player with the most wins so what did you think i like it i'm not surprised by it at all i think that it's a well done game well done rolling right it hits all those like boxes that typical rolling rice would hit for me yeah very standard but high quality rolling right in my opinion i love a lot of various factors that it brings in the combos are fantastic it makes my heart happy and it's a dry erase which is always a win because reusability exactly except when tyler doesn't erase the dry erase and then i have to like take it off this man over here thinks that i'm the messy one well what are some of the comparables that we have two explorers what games would you compare them to oh yeah i have a good comparable right off the bat that this game reminds me of trails of takana oh how come because you're doing the same actions where you're like flipping well in trails to kana you flip two cards and then you have to pick between the two you have to connect them oh yeah you're right sorry you have to connect them but in this one you flip one of the tiles and it has two and depending on the orientation you end up picking um the one in front of you or the one on the opposite side of it so you can choose which one you want yeah um so it's kind of nice it's kind of cool because you get to like choose between those different terrain types and ultimately what you're trying to do is create paths that unlock you things so make it difficult for your opponents and also play at the same time so i think this one for me um explorers if you like trails of takana and you're looking for like something a little bit more um like competitive or slightly more complicated i think explorers like is that stuff tiny tiny step up not a huge step up but definitely a tiny step up i agree with that i think i tried really hard thinking outside of rolling rights because it's really easy to compare to other roland rights that do combos uh so the comparison that i came comparable that i came up with is kuruba from haba so and the reason i chose it is because of that trail building you're really trying to build the optimal trails to get you the most points through various combos you're trying to get the key to get the temple first so you get more points there as well so there's a lot of like comparability there and just like trying to get the best trail yeah i like that because it's the it's like a race to the temples if you get there first you get more points yeah that's a good comparison yeah well with the comparables out of the way why should people check this one out well for me the one thing that makes it stand apart in the role in my genre is it has this really neat uh insertable board that has kind of the variability to it but you basically build your game by flipping tops by putting the ones in that you want to put in there's a lot of variability there which is another really good point but i've never seen a game that has here's like the insert then you can put all the things in to like make your game essentially yeah that's a good point i think that um on top of that when you're placing the board or when you're basically setting up like i think that's a very engaging experience where it's not just like oh i have my board i can do my own thing and then wait until the game is set up to go there's like a whole process towards it where everybody has to place the tiles the same way like cross off the same temple and everybody has to be like paying attention to that so really same village yeah same same village sorry and it really like gets everybody in the mindset for the game yeah it's always nice when setup is a collective experience because if one player is doing it you lose people right off the bat so you don't want to do that and i guess the last thing that we can talk about is just the modularity and the replayability of this game there's various scoring modules there's also eight tiles that you can choose from to put in so and the way you twist like you can switch them in four different direction in four different places yep so no map is gonna be the same yeah most likely there are definitely a lot of combinations that you can create there and you can flip the main board over right so that it turns into a different like scoring harder mode i don't is it i think it adjusts the score a little bit too and each style has a different scoring mode as well so there's some cool more complex ways to play the game there's just a lot of game in here which i really like yeah yeah that's a good point there's also like just just a reiterate i guess it's like it is a well it's a standard like flip and write flip so uh like my point being is that it fits all those boxes so if you really enjoy rolling right i think that this is like a very good game and then on top of that the plus for explorers for me is that there is some bit of a bit of competition within the game instead of like everybody's doing their own thing and at the end of the game whoever's the most points wins yeah competing for the temples exactly well why should you not check this game out kind of like a i guess a backhanded comment to what i was just talking about is it it feels to me that it doesn't do much different than what most rolling rights do so if you're trying to look for like something that's going to wow you because it is innovative in the roland rights space then i don't think explorers is that game that doesn't mean it's not a good game it's just it's a role we're rolling right snobs down apparently yeah yeah but even that's like i think i think we like this game but i think it's just like combination aspect like it does what a lot of roller mates do you get combos you get specific things you get more points to them there's some races there's a lot of elements put together it's put together very nicely but if it's an experience you're not looking for then this game might not be and there's tons of rolling rights out there like if the if the theme really speaks to you sure but if the theme is not for you then like there might be another one out there for you it's hard it's hard there's this is a really good game so it's hard to find different things to kind of say why not to check it out yeah i can't i can't think of much to say besides that besides that point i guess like the other thing i would say is it we've talked about this before that roland rights tend to sit on the lighter side of games uh and then like we particularly like when we can find like those middle those middle meaty um roll in rights and then those heavier roll in rights this one definitely falls on the lighter side so if you are trying to look for a more meteor game i don't think explorers will hit that tick box for you and last but not least as with any roland rights there's a factor of luck there's a fact that you might not get what you need for it to have flipped so if that leaves you frustrated if it's not genre you're into then this game may not be for you that is a very good point but overall thoughts really good i i like that it has a solo mode too and i don't think the solo mode veers off much from what the game actually is so i'm excited to maybe give that a go um but other than that i think we're just lovers of rolling right so like when we really get into it yeah when we get into it we're just like looking for certain things and it ticks the box for us and we love phil walker harding he makes a lot of games to really enjoy so this is definitely unlike the other not like this this one is like some of these things are not like the other except this game is the other one so yeah really enjoy explorers it's a game that we definitely would encourage you to check out yeah this one's gonna stay on our shelf we're excited to show we love the theme there's a lot about this game that um just yeah it it speaks to us yes now for our question of the day what has been your favorite place you've explored oh interesting does it have to be like natural stuff it could be your armpit [Laughter] oh it could be anything you want it to be ah what would yours be what okay well you know what because we're doing this i will go out and say this when i was in high school i got to explore a frog by dissecting it that was fun i guess well i we got to explore france a few years ago and there was a very amazing this is the standard answer that i would imagine he was going through a first assassin but um yeah it was a very lovely trip uh we got to go to a bunch of different cities and we're excited to go traveling again soon oh my goodness yes i want to go to europe somewhere somewhere in europe that's about it it's just like historical there what have you explored and what have you learned from your exploration there you go well until next time be sure to give us that thumbs up if you like this video and hit that subscribe button because we make videos every week and we love building a community around talking about board games well have a wonderful rest of your day and we'll see you next time exactly this is us check it out [Music] you