Trail To The Temple Thoughts From Gen Con 2026. Reiner Does it again, and it's adequately good again
Transcript
What does that even mean, Bowers' Game Corner?
Oh, hi there, YouTube. We're back again today for another Gen Con Bonanza explosion. We're going to cover live Gen Con 2026 with my good friend Adam.
Yo.
Thanks to part two on ero.com, which is some of the best Kickstarter services on the entire planet, including Iceland. You should have liked that logo. Right now, I'm excited. I'm always excited to check out Reiner Knizia game. And I know it's pronounced differently. He and I had a talk once. And he was okay with it.
He was not. I just don't know how to pronounce it. Let's try out the temple from Dr. Reiner. It's for one to four players, 20 minutes to play, ages eight plus, from Mindware, who I really enjoyed most of their delightful things. You should check them out if you're in that that sort of family weight lane. But, we're going to take you to the table. We'll show you what it looks like, how it plays a little bit, we'll come back, and give you our thoughts on it.
Great game because
All right, this is Trail to the Temple. We have it set up, but not completely set up. We're going to walk you through how it works. So, pretty much on your turn, you're going to play a card, and then you're going to move one of those three characters onto a spot, and then you're going to do whatever that spot tells you to do. You're going to draw a card, and then your turn is going to be over. It's really simple. So, let's just pretend we played this card right here. We're going to move that particular fellow six spaces. 1 2 3 4 5 6 along this track, and then we're going to collect this. And then we're going to draw a card, and then our turn is going to be over because this one is not an action that is just victory points at the end of the game. Now, if for instance, this person moves six, now they're going to go 1 2 3 4 5 and 6, and they'd actually hop over. And they would do that action. That action is to move one of these drones two spaces. Now, the reason why you're doing that is the ones that are furthest along the track are going to get more victory points at the end, whereas some of these are scored no victory points at the end. Well, how do you get those victory points you ask?
Well, you pick these up. That means that you are going to score victory points if purple does well. That's if you're going to score points if red does well. And if yellow does well, pretty simple system. Next, we have these tiles. If you land on this tile, that means if this guy finishes in first, if he's the first person to get on top of the pyramid, you're going to get 10 points. If he's second, you're going to get zero. That one's eight and four. You know, that one's for the lady, 10 and zero. Very clean, simple system. The only other tiles you're going to see are these kind of special, larger tiles. And when you go here, you get this. It goes in front of you so everybody can see. And then you flip it over, you read the text, and then something is going to happen. There's five of these different events that are going to be scattered about. And so the more you play the game, you'll you'll know the events cuz there's only five, but you'll be planning towards them potentially, which is kind of neat.
Other than that, you once someone gets all the way to the top, they're going to get five bonus victory points. The other major quirk with this game is that once someone like goes past, all the tiles that are left are going to then move the drones, which makes it so yeah, you might skip over this, but now these drones that that green drone is like zooming forward, and it does create a very interesting aspect. We got a chance to play it two players, but that's irrelevant.
All righty then, Trail to the Temple from Mindware and the doctor, Reiner Knizia. There it goes, the the light. What are your thoughts? Let's go over the pros, let's go over the cons. What did you think? First impressions? We played it two players.
Yeah, uh I thought it was really good. It was uh The There's a lot of interesting, like with my cards, things to, you know, I'm looking at all the different characters. I'm moving and I want to collect different things. Like the There was a lot of things that I could do, like plans I could make.
It never felt limited, but at the same time you always had to think like, all right, if I leave this person back, like if I move this person forward, that means that like these drones are going to move forward this many spaces. Uh I agree. I I think also the special tiles are really interesting and the more you plan, the more rewarding it's going to potentially be and there's going to add extra crinkles to the game where it's like, "Ooh, it's either this tile or that tile." It's going to be that one special tile, so you'll start to potentially get little strategies.
envision about there are no bad moves. Like it doesn't matter what part you play, it's never going to be a something that's a negative to you. You know what I mean? Like cuz you're
how good is the move? And right, right. I would agree with that, right? Cuz if you land on a drone, you're going to move something you want to do. If you land on a person, cool, I'm going to get points.
Yeah, if you get on an artifact, oh man, you got an artifact. That's points at the end of the game.
Yeah, I guess at the end of the game you get like
Potential points. Not everything scores.
You're always going to draw a card, play a card, play a card, draw a card, one of those, so you're always having a decent amount of choices to game play, easy to learn, I'd say easy to teach, and at the end of the day I think it's another good Ryan Laukat game.
Yeah, real solid.
[clears throat]
I think we played at the worst player count. Two players? I mean, as opposed to three or four.
Yeah, I suppose. I don't know that it's going to change much.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Well, I think there's more interaction with the drones. I think there might be a little bit more drone interaction potentially.
I mean, you're playing with the same cards, so they're going to move at about the same pace.
[sighs and gasps]
What about some of those tiles? So cuz all the tiles have people doing stuff, so I feel like more people doing stuff is better, you know?
Oh, you're right. So like at more player count, then you're going to have uh less things at the end, so what you actually jump to matters a lot more.
Yeah, it would. It would definitely.
I I can see how that would be more interesting.
On the con side, uh a little bit of a better setup. Yeah. A little bit.
And the pieces are quite large, so you need a fair amount of table space for it.
It does look pretty cool set up, though.
look really cool.
Uh, yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, I mean, you weren't probably expecting me to be like, "Yeah, Ryan, he's losing. This thing's a pile of trash." You know, this one is It I think it firmly falls into where most of his games fall for me, which is this is good to pretty good to
Yeah.
You know, if you get the right the right everything, then maybe maybe very good to great, but I don't think most people probably get that high, but I feel like pretty darn good for most people. Actually,
it where it is.
I think if you have kids, it could get to great. I take that back.
Oh, yeah.
I think it's And this is from MindWare. It does It's 20 minutes. It's simple enough, and you and I think there's enough strategy, but we have to remember this is for ages 8 plus. We're looking at this, I feel like, right now from the from the filler weight game perspective.
That's the thing, yeah. I wasn't even thinking about it from that perspective. So, how much Yeah, does that mean for this game? Wow. Um
I think my 10- and 13-year-old both enjoy this game.
Yeah, I agree.
I think that it I think that if we played it game night, people would enjoy it as well, and I could even see it potentially getting requested once in the future, maybe.
Yeah, absolutely.
I don't think I'd be doing the requesting. I don't think you'd be doing the requesting.
I don't I'm like
Okay.
I'm like
I wouldn't. I just thought I I like other Reiner Knizia games better, and Yeah, I got I guess what's the con? Like, are there any other cons? Like, it's just good. It's good. It's good. Graphically, it looks good. I guess I'd want some I'd like some more action tiles. I'd like if maybe there was a little bit like maybe one's not in or something like that.
Oh, I see what you're saying. So, that you don't know that all one things are going to happen every time.
I think and here's the thing, if you don't know Reiner Reiner Dr. Reiner Knizia is a mathematician which is why all of his games typically suck because they're typically well balanced, but by doing that I feel like with most of his games I'm always just wanting like a little bit more of a crinkle, a little bit more of a crazy random crinkle. And that's more of a me thing than a that thing than a them thing.
he he's narrowed it to here but it should be here.
Yes, like it's always going to be good but the fact that it's always going to be good for me personally just never raises it most of the time up to greater fantastic for his games with a few exceptions here or there like the Lord of the Rings cooperative game comes to my mind, Lost Cities, a couple here and there.
Yeah.
But I think this one's still very good and if you have
the Shifting Floors game?
Shifting Fears of Floors?
Fears of Floors.
No, that was Friedemann Friese.
Big old net bath.
Different guy.
Yeah. But either way if I were going to hand this to you, do you think it'd make it into your collection?
Um Mhm. Probably not.
I think it is I think I think it would depend on how well my kids gravitated to it honestly. I think it is good but I think there's a lot of other filler weight games I personally would rather play at game night and I think there's a lot of other 20 minute family weight games that I would rather play but as one that was mixed in with the collection I definitely would not ever object to this one from getting picked from time to time.
That's well put.
I think it does have great table appeal. I think the box is very pretty but at the end of the day I think Reiner Knizia kind of for me just has a cap and this one hangs around that cap, a little bit below, but still a heck of a good game.
Yeah, it's a good game.
Let me know in the comments below, what's your favorite Reiner Knizia game of all time, you know. Uh Well, apparently I don't know him from Freeman Freeze.
Well, why don't you just say Power Grid then?
I do like Power Grid.
What about old
That is one that is in my collection.
Oh, what about Fiera Bend? That's the one where you're fighting for the the more power the the 40-hour work week? Where you're fighting for workers' rights?
Yeah.
That was great. Or you remember the one where you where they had the they went dating on their time off like it was the it was the work placement game where you were doing the
yeah, yeah, yeah, coupling?
Yeah.
So, you know what? Just let me know in the comments below what's your favorite Freeman Freeze game of all time. This video is brought to you by all of my amazing Patreon supporters and I would love it if you would join their ranks and have your name immortalized in the end of many of my videos for the end of time. But, consider for only a dollar a month and as always, thanks for stopping by.