Explorers of Navoria - Board Game Review - MY EYYYYEEEES!!!!

[Music] hi everyone I'm Lor and this is the broken me a show where I Rave and rant about board games but usually more the ranting part this is a game that I had some knowledge of in the previous year when it was being developed I played it last year at the games Expo UK games Expo in its early stages I gave some thoughts about how it could be improved some of which have gone in some of which were dismissed you know with Fair reason and you know now it has come out this year and it's fully released form I've got an expansion in here as well but I'm not going to do that in this video I'll do that in a separate beyond the base game video and other than just how gorgeous the cover looks you wouldn't necessarily know exactly what it's about from looking at it but the idea with this is that it is apparently a very straightforward and simple game of exploring different lands getting drafting cards with different special abilities or powers or benefits and using a kind of unique Twist on a drafting system for how you get those cards and how you take your work replacement actions so with only 20 minutes a player recorded on the box and two to four players 12 plus you know this looks to be something in a kind of light fair you know a light category which you know what I'm down for some more light games because certainly we've had a fair share of ridiculously complex games this year and I'm down for something that's a little bit lighter on the brain from when you want to kind of detox from the really heavy stuff so has this got enough depth in it to make it worthwhile or is it something that is easily forgot them what AM my psychic as with all these Euro games it's all about amassing the most victory points but the premises is that you're exploring these free lands Mountain Desert and Forest each one has a slightly tweaked track which basically has flag Milestones a bonus at the very end but for the most part it's about getting the furest along the track at various stages but in order to facilitate that you have two two aspects of your mechanics firstly you have drafting of cards so these cards are available in threes for every single color and what will happen is that players will draft from a bag these thick tokens that correspond to the different colors so for example I take two here and I've got the red swords I've got the purple telescope here one of which you will use to grab a card the other you place in the Central Village now on the subsequent turn if you don't want to draw out the bag you can simply take one from the village but let's say for example I don't fancy a red combat card this round I'm going to take this purple one you place it on top of the deck choose one of the three cards get it it's yours these cards vary in terms of their bonuses so the yellows allow you to build trading posts along the different camps which basically enable you to start further ahead in each round the green just basically gives you straight up resources and points you know it's get cool stuff the Reds tend to get you scoring points at the end of the game for having certain objectives or mainly you know trading posts at various things the blue is all about end of round scoring so collecting different faction symbols will yield you points here and the purples is all about like facilitating movement across the tracks quicker than other players and reaching the flag Milestones so all of these cards are useful it's just the case of which ones do you want at any particular time and the free that you have in each stack is all you have for a particular round so it's very much a first come first serve over the course of a round everybody's going to have taken a bunch of these tokens so there'll be a few here in the village but for the most part you're going to have a situation where there are multiple tokens out different amounts on particular uh you know different card Stacks so once that's all said and done you move on to a worker placement aspect where the tokens that are on the cards you use in order to go to the different worker spots and these are very straightforward they basically get you movement on the tracks different resources victory points and the like but they're diminishing returns the later you go there so for example the simple one gets six victory points well if I go there first I get six if I go there second I only get four third I only get two same goes for these these other resources so if I take a green I can get two apples and one other resource second person only one apple third just the Apple no benefit of the other resource so but you're only limited to the tokens that you have from the drafting round as to what is available to you so the players have an impact as to what you can do once the worker placement aspect is done you've got your resources you then score up where you are are on the tracks so as you go through the rounds you've got a little meeple dude who's going to move across the tracks you might build little trading posts which enable you to basically reset back to the furest trading point in subsequent rounds but based on the cards that you've got based on how far you've gotten on the track whether you're first second or third you will score victory points you know in such a way you can also score victory points for cards that you've collected during a game by getting favor with the different factions there's four factions in the game and the idea is is that the cards have faction symbols on top collect enough of them I believe it's five for every faction and you get to score victory points for cards at the end of the game so for example if I get uh let's let's try this one here if I can get five of the Goblins figures then I'll score victory points for every blue and purple card at the end it gives you an incentive to take certain cards from here providing you're going to collect the right faction symbols from said cards this essentially rinson repeats for three rounds it's just that you have more stuff to play with as each round goes on but you also have to bear in mind your player board because what exactly are all these resources for you know these diamonds apples and uh you know swords well the idea is is that your board has your Trading Post on there you'll build them straight from this board but when you collect these resources of which there is a restriction on how you can collect them in the first place once you trigger them you basically get the bonuses from all the trading posts that you've already built they've got basic bonuses like move in the desert and score points for green cards but you might be able to get more movement more points etc for build building a lot of those trading posts but when you collect resources let's say I gain these three resources here each one has to go in a different Zone you cannot just say right I'm going to take all of these free and put them into that zone not allowed so there is an element of resource management as well but that's fundamentally the game you play through three rounds as such draft the cards with the tokens use the tokens to do the work of placement use the worker placement to get across these tracks and then score them up at the end of three rounds see who got the furest check the end game scoring from some of the cards and of course the most wins that's easy now you probably don't need me to tell you this but you know what I'm going to tell you anyway just because this is a review but Jesus tap dancing Christ is this game well produced woohoo this is a colorful spectacle on the table everybody turns their heads when they see this it is just an absolute like ah your eyes cannot tle this much color my eyes all the cards like different types like stand out you know they've got symbols at the bottom if you are colorblind so it's not a big deal you know all your pieces are stupidly thick wood I mean you think these are Deluxe tokens they're not this is what you get in the basic game the only add-ons you can get for this game are Deluxe resources in which these cardboard tokens are replaced by wooden tokens less than a tener if you want them but honestly I don't think you need them or you can get the playmat which basically introduces enough space to incorporate the expansion I have it it's fantastic but that's an expans Imaging we're not worried about it here you know you just have the cards to the side of the board in this instance but wow everything even the rule book is linen finished and just like very nice to handle and very nice to read these tokens that you draw out of the bag just thick chunky wooden tokens and I'm just going to Advocate this from now on you know I am starting to get sick and tired of everybody trying to do Miniatures in their games plastic minis for this and that and it's like it's unnecessary you can make tokens fantastic by just using wood wood is a solid component why do we need everything to be plastic Miniatures and stuff like that I just find wooden stuff a lot better in games you know fight me that's the way I see it but the only bit where the components do sort of falter is your player board now you don't war that much but what I don't like is the fact that it's fake Jewel layer there's not actually a jewel layer board in this essentially what happens is that you've got this thin veneer of a layer that's been peeled off for the trading post and I guarante you they will not hold the Trading Post I mean you can put one in there but yeah um it still slides around without too much effort so if you're going to give us a player board either don't give us this thin veneer or just make it Jew layer in the first place you know I mean I would happily have given you a extra couple of quid for these to have being jeel layer boards or better still just poke a hole out of it that would have done me fine actually so that I could just have it on the table holes are poked out of here and then all you do is put the thing in the hole and then the fact that there's enough space between the top and the bottom and then would be enough to hold the Trading Post in place but that gets a little annoying but it's a small blemish it's not a big deal but it's just like yeah come on I mean I would have just happily had the whole punch through and that would have been an easy fix and they really did need to find a better way to do this whole turn order thing I get that it's about exploration and you want to do a compass thing but uh this whole Compass mechanic of doing Turn order where you've got to put the markers down and then look at it clockwise or anticlockwise it's a bit on the fiddly side it is tricky to kind of see what's what I mean I think a simple just one two 3 4 track would have been sufficient without having to go too far into your phatic setting but components aren't everything is the game fun to play yeah actually it's a very smooth experience and that's kind of like the biggest like draw to this it's nice it's light it's smooth it doesn't feel clunky at all you know it's a very simple Prospect you need to advance up three different tracks which ones you focus on it's entirely up to you you might try and diversify you might just you know build all your outposts on the mountains and do nothing but Mountain Trails and all your cards score you points for Mountain Trail you can happily do it how you like but you know how each phase plays out isn't clunky in the slightest the most clunky part is probably when you fill a contract on these boards and you have to trigger these bonuses but because it kind of happens instantly but that's about it and it's not that big a deal really you know the rules themselves not complicated you've got a good round summary on the back of the book to help you when you're sort of memory jogger with a little flow chart for the round the rounds are labeled the uh Ru book has pictorial examples for how things work it's colored it's you know Big Font you can easily read it the layout maybe could have been a tiny bit better I mean we go into like the layout of the cards a little bit later in a book than I would have liked but you know it's a minor blemish and sometimes when you're referencing specific rules it can be a little bit hard to exactly tell where it's written I mean you can go into the round section You' be like okay I'm in the return section but where's that bit about that oh well wait there it is you know and it won't take you that long it's not that the rule book is you know the rule book's pretty decent I don't think it's bad at all it's just not not as perfect as it could have been but it's a very simple game and it won't take you long to learn from the rule book and if you're bringing this to the table after a play then the round summary is all you need to jog your memory but in terms of its gameplay I particularly like the way this Drafting and worker placement aspect works I mean it is very light these worker placement spots are lighter than you would get in something like those of Water Deep they're that light but I love the fact that these tokens play a part so already you've got the drafting aspect of the tokens and yes there is going to be a luck element here you know you've got ones that you can pick from in the village but if you're drawing out the bag you got to accept that you might just not draw the two tokens you were hoping for this is not a long game it's only about an hour to play an hour and a half absolute tops with four players if play people are playing a bit on the slow side but yeah this is a game that can feasibly be played in an hour to an hour and a half easily after the teach and set up without any trouble but you know the cards themselves easy to read even at a distance you know they make sense but I like the cool thing that I'm every time I'm choosing with these cards I feel like it's a tough decision because part of me wants to build a trading post but then part of me needs more resources I could trigger my Mountain track a lot when I'm going to need some green cards then but I need to get victory points from somewhere and it's like well I could take a red card they give more faction symbol for these things but but then the red cards don't give me any extra points during the game so do I really want a red card now or should I just grab it later but there might not be another cool red card with those symbols on it that rewards Mountain trail for a while U purple well that would move me up the tracks far enough but is that going to give me much of a reward you know do I need more perhaps I should just get tickover income for the cards you know there all of these cards are useful in their own way and particularly as like the green score from your player board and you know the Reds and the blues and the purples have end of round or end of game scoring there's a lot of things to consider with that but then it also stems well into the work placement side where you're only allowed to use the tokens that happened in the first phase so you might not even have enough tokens to use on spaces and they're diminishing returns now granted I do find that the purple one the one where you get to build a trading post anywhere is a little bit too powerful for its liking because whenever these tokens are free I guarantee you 75% of the time the first player is going to take a purple token and stick it on that space it just always is probably the most popular space out there which is great if you're going first but there's a bit of a pain otherwise you know maybe that just maybe the idea of building trading post via worker placement spot I needed to be more prevalent or maybe just take it off the worker spaces entirely and have it focusing on the cards but it's not a big deal but a lot of people do try to go to that space quite often so if you're not going first and around you might want to kiss it goodbye but I like the fact that you might just have a situation where for example you know I've got all the green tokens out great and I've got these out but then I've only got one yellow nobody else was picking yellow and it's like well I could go to the yellow and I get that spot but how long do I leave it before I decide I want to go to Yellow because you know what do I value more resources movement or building the trading post or you know what six victory points is not a small chunk of points maybe I should just grab that but then somebody's going to take the yellow and then maybe I should take the yellow because it's the only one you know this these aren't brain burning decisions but they're a cool new addition and they're just you know sorry cool feature and it's enough to make you think and like consider what you're going to do from turn to turn without burning the brain cells so the drawer of explorers and why this game works is its Simplicity its pleasantness it looks the part it is produced to a phenomenal standard with just a minor blemish for the player boards the different cards easy to read the worker placement and the drafting phase easy to do but I like the twists that it throws on those phases so it's not entirely just as generic as other games and yeah I mean you're just moving across three tracks at the end of the day but how you move along them where you focus on trading posts on on one track or do all three the the the competitiveness with the opponents because obviously you only have to go as far as the other players you don't necessarily have to reach the end of the track although it's cool if you do and if you're going for flags for example you don't need to get all the way across one track you could just do flag LS on multiple there's a lot of different ways that you can play and there's enough depth of decision space without burning the brain cells and that's the idea this is meant to be a the box says 20 minutes per player I guess I mean two players could do this in 40 minutes but you would have to be playing this pretty quick but you know you are talking a 60 to 90 minute time frame absolute tops it should not take any longer than 90 minutes at all you you after the teach you know no way in hell should it and that makes it a nice light shorter Euro which in a year where we seem to be in inded with extremely long complex 3our plus Euros it's a nice refreshing change of place I can shove this into my game bag and when we need something to detox in the evening or something like to get us started before we play something heavy this fits the bill nicely while just looking drop dead freaking gorgeous at the same time I'm giving this one overall an eight out of 10 it's a great game it's not quite like blowing my mind to the sake that I would give it a a distinction seal you know a little bit of extra variety here and there could certainly help and you know a couple of these spots do seem a little bit popular for their own good um but overall it's just really cool and solid the expansion is little bit more hit and miss we'll get on to that in another video but overall I think this is just a nice clean system that's going to be appealing to the eye be appealing to light Gamers and will do the job just nicely so that's it for me on this episode of the broken me if you like we see them please thumb it up on YouTube and thumb it up on board game gek when it goes live on the page check out the rest of the essn content I'm doing there has been a ton that I have already recorded and there's more to come besides whether or not I'm on my cruise or not so by all means check it all out let me know your thoughts on this game but just the base game don't worry about the expansion we'll talk about that in another video but you know is this one beautiful for you do you love it do you hate it let me know your thoughts and we'll debate so take care and remember regardless of whether you believe you can balance your Trading post on this board or not it's still only a game good luck with that and bye for now [Music]