Trail to the Temple Review: Tiles, Drones, Temples, Oh My!
Transcript
Hey everybody, I'm Joey Evans.
I'm Mike Delisio.
And today we are taking a look at Trail to the Temple by a little known designer called Reiner Knizia.
You forgot the doctor.
Doctor Reiner Knizia. And this is not a remake, right? This is a new game?
Yeah, if it has some similarities to other games he's designed, that happens a lot, but no, this is a new game.
Okay, excellent. So, I'm going to quickly show you a few rules so you can get a feel of how this plays. Okay, we are set up for a game of Trail to the Temple. So, Trail to the Temple is a kind of a you're watching these explorers take this race and as they do that you are going to get artifacts and different tiles that are going to give you points. And the game is going to end when one of these explorers reaches the very end or one of these drones down here reaches the temple. And these right here, these drones are going to show you how much each artifact is worth at the end of the game. So, also, let's all right, let's go to through how all this works. So, first off, everyone you guys are not these explorers, these explorers are on their own. Everyone's going to get these cards and these cards are going to give different movement for different explorers here. This guy kind of had a hand that didn't show a lot of variety here. Here we go. So, what's going to happen here is this one will then move this explorer one and moving one you will then move and then you'll take that tile. And that tile will then be in your collection and that will score at the end of the game.
And the next person then could take this out and say they can go ahead and move this one five. It would be one skipping where there's no tile here, one, two, three, four, five and then take this into their collection. And then just like that you keep going around here collecting tiles. Now, you will notice here periodically it are going to be different tiles that different events happen when you flip them over. For example, this right here, shrine, starting with the player who revealed the location tile and progressing clockwise, each player progresses any one of the drone markers on the lidar map, which is this right here, by one space. All right, so there are these different types of events are going to happen when you hit those. Now, let's go to the drones, and then we'll get to what the tiles do.
The drones, you'll notice these drone spaces. These drone spaces, when you get there, you are able to move any one of these drones that many spaces. Now, why is that important? Well, these these drones right here correspond with different color artifacts. For example, the red corresponds with the red, and so on so forth. So, at the end of the game, you are going to want your drone to be further, or the artifact that you have the most to be closer to the temple, because the first and second closest drones are going to score two points per artifact. And then, say the sec- the third and fourth are going to score one point per artifact. And finally, those in last, fifth and sixth, they're going to score zero points per artifact. So, all of these are going to be taken to you. Now, one thing that happens is as everyone moves forward and takes theirs, just like this.
Now, the moment everybody moves all the way up, anything behind the last explorer then goes away, but it goes away in a special point here, because it is going to go away and move those drones. So, if you're in this situation right here, you're going to remove all these, this one would move the drone up three, one, two, three. This would move it up two, one, two. This would move it up orange, move up orange two, one, two. This would move green up two, and these would then be discarded. So, because of that, that drone these drones are going to move up, giving different values to different artifacts. So, that's what these artifacts do. Now, what the drones do. You might wonder about these. Well, these are just straight victory points at the end. It's one point per crate at the end of the game. Okay, so there's one other type of tile right here. These right here. These are going to be kind of like you're betting on that explorer to win the race. Because right here you have two values. The you're going to get six points if this explorer finishes first and three points if this explorer finishes second and zero if it if it finishes third. And those values are going to be all across the board. For example, this one's 10 and zero. So, you are collecting all of these tiles, putting them in at the end, scoring depending on how how far ahead each artifact's drone is, you're going to go ahead and score everything on this sheet, and the game ends when one of these explorers hits a temple. And if that happens, you're going to get five extra points for the person that put that explorer in there. Or when these
drones hit the temple to end the game. Calculate the points, and then whoever has the most points wins. And one thing I will mention is that this trail right here actually goes all the way around the board off camera and back on, and then wiggles around right up here. You just can't see all of that from where you are and because the camera's only so big. But that is pretty much how you play Trail to the Temple. Let's send it back and see what we thought about it. Okay, so first off, uh playing this game, it was much simpler of a teach than I anticipated
going. Cuz you never know, Knizia goes wide.
Yeah, absolutely. This one, I think, yeah, is just one of the easier games to teach and learn. Uh he doesn't usually have a lot of rules, but some of the games can be deceptively, you know, uh complex as far as decision-making. This one is a pretty pretty straight straight line.
It has a kind of feels like um Tuned Common and uh Botswana is also his, right? Kind of a stock. So, it has several of those elements all put together in there. And I just I'll tell you what, one of my favorite mechanics is that the choices you make whether to take the tile or let those build. Even in stock market games, which I don't like stock market games, but I like that mechanic. So, that puts that into a I don't want to say real game, I'm going to say it. It puts that into a real game.
Yeah, you know, the this is one of those games where I've played a lot of Knizia games. I mean, we've made a big joke about it on the channel. You know, I do like a lot of his games. Um I got the sense when I read the rules to this that it was not going to be um I thought it was going to be one of his very very kind of like, "Okay, it's pleasant and then forgettable." This one surprised me because it does a lot of things that are familiar. I'm like, "Okay, I've seen him do this. I've seen him do that." But, there's a more depth to this game than I anticipated with how simple it is.
That's what got me too. It's like the the rule set is simple. It's like probably one of the quicker ones as far as getting, learning, playing.
Mhm.
But, then you got those decisions that really build. And again, he does a good job in a lot of his games
Yeah.
is building the cadence to where at the end becomes so important. You almost slow roll that ending because you want every you want to maximize that.
Yeah, absolutely. Um really quickly, I mean, I guess we can talk about the production a little bit.
Yeah.
Um first of all, cool box.
I know. Look at you catching the light.
Oh, yeah. Iridescence.
I know. It's pretty, Mike.
Yeah, it is pretty. Um and and some nice kind of wooden or wooden, sorry, uh cardboard counters. There are wooden pieces too, which are all nice. Uh tiles, the only downside to this as a production is that it takes up a tremendous amount of table space because you're having I said straight line earlier, that's with the rules. That's not with the production cuz you're laying these big tiles all over the table. And while it gives you this kind of nice feeling of, "Oh, yeah, you're going down this mean- meandering jungle path. Practically, there's a lot of table space being used. Um, that's my only downside is that, you know, maybe it it didn't need to be uh as much table space, but it looks really nice. It actually has a nice insert. Um, some some quality components here.
That is one of the things you didn't see my overview. My overview was pretty much showing the you know, the trail right here. Then the the trail went off of the camera and came back on the other side.
to, yeah.
So, it's silly to say it's a table hog because you think of a lot of setup for table hog. This is you're just laying out tiles. You know, that's it. But, it does take up a lot of space. But, I think it's also not one of those things that's very commanding, you know, you can work with the area you have.
You can and you yeah, you can you can kind of play around with the table space. But, but it is something I mentioned cuz I'm like, wow, this game looks like this huge thing on the table when you do it.
Yeah, I I do like the theme though as far as mixing like ancient things with drones.
Yes.
I just I like that modern aspect of it. I I everything about this really does sing for me, I think.
Yeah, so I've mentioned a couple of times that it it has some things that are familiar. There is a game that came out not that long ago that was not terribly popular called Sumatra and this reminds me of that in the sense of the timing, right? As far as like how how like you said, the slow rolling and and and the pacing. That's really important in this game because there are times when, you know, you may want to jump forward because there's a particular thing you want to get, but also there's there's benefits to laying back when you can as well. And so, that tempo and timing, especially as it gets towards the end of the trail, I think is really interesting. Knizia is oftentimes known for his scoring and here it's kind of like a greatest hits in some ways of Knizia's scoring where you've got not only the things that you're collecting um are going to be kind of multipliers for you. You've also got things that are going to be almost like a set collection type of a thing going on. Um so, he kind of throws all these little different scoring elements, and you kind of have to be thinking about all of them. So, I like that. I like the fact that it's got some things that are familiar, but this does feel like it's own game.
Um and it also plays remarkably quickly. And uh so, yeah, a lot of good things uh to say about it when I didn't honestly expect much
after reading the rules.
That's where I was, too. Because the paths to victory, I mean, cuz like at one point I'm like, I'm going to try crates. Crates I have not gotten to work, you know? You've got to diversify your portfolio. But then you can also use desertion start betting on people, but the problem with that is people are going to see who you grab, and they're going to kind of kind of shift that around. Sure, sure. Which makes a makes I really like a lot of that build-up and a lot of those different avenues of victory. That's a big thing for me. I mean, for something that's simple rule set, a lot of decisions in probably 30 minutes, it's really good. All right, so where are you coming down on it?
So, I'm coming at a 7.5, which is you know, a solid recommend. It's a game that I enjoy. It's a game that um I think will serve well for people that want to get uh a game that is a full feeling game, but without a lot of rules. It's not super heavy. You could play this towards the end of your game day. Uh you're not going to break your brain, but there are certainly things to think about. Uh the downsides would be, I guess already mentioned that the the table space is definitely one. Um and I don't know that this is a game that I'm going to be coming back to over and over and over again, but I feel like a couple of times a year I'm going to be like, "Yeah, Trail of the Table, that's a really good one." If I'm, you know, have a specific group that maybe likes this exploration theme, which I also like as well. And also, if I have people that are of maybe a mixed group of gamer non-gamer, I think this works It's in a group of gamer non-gamer people.
That's why I'm a bit higher at at an eight because number one because I think this has fit a niche that a lot of games don't that you can let anyone play and they're still enjoyable to you. And I love this theme. I love Arnak, I love Incan Gold, I love Lost Cities, all that. But this is very approachable for everyone and it's crunchy enough you want to go back to it and I think it blends a lot of those mechanics in games that I don't particularly love
Yeah.
but I like those certain mechanics and he puts them all into this. So, I think this is the one to definitely check out. This is Trail to the Temple which I would visit a temple, would you?
Um sure. Why? Why not?
All right, we're going.
Let's go to a temple.
Next Dice Tower Cruise, Mike and I visit a temple.
Temple excursion.
Yes. I'm Joy Evans.
I'm Mike Delisio.
And this is Trail to the Temple.
Hey folks, thanks for joining us for that video. If you haven't yet, like the video, subscribe to the channel and hey, make sure you check out what's happening where I'll cover an app on an iOS or a Switch device and you can check it out along with me. Thanks very much. You've been watching The Dice Tower.