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Author: Hartmut Witt Publisher: Hexagames 1995 Awards: none |
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This game for 2 to 6 players is centered around the story of the homecoming of the greek heroes after the conquest of ancient Troy.
Each player takes the role of a greek leader which tries to get back to his home at Ithaka.
But having scorned the gods by burning their temples at Troy, the gods deny the heroes their homecomming until a number of quests has be fulfilled. By rolling the dice, each player sets out from Troy on a ship occupied by 4 heroes.
The players try to reach islands distributed among the map.
Whoever is the first player to reach an island may pick up a random event card for it and may leave one of his 10 ruler-stones behind.
The player has to fulfil the text of the event card, sometimes allowing him some benefit for his ship, but sometimes also opposing him with fearsome monsters like a Cyclops or the Sirens.
All the event cards drawn then are kept by the player who has drawn them.
If an other player lands on an island which was already visited, he may also place one of his ruling chips there, but he gets his card from the player who last placed a ruling chip there.
This player may chose which of all his event cards he is going to give to the newcomer, and thus each player has a great control as to whether other players will get a benefit or not.
When a player has not ruling chips left (each event card on hand allows to ignore 1 remaining ruling chip), this player may return to Ithaka.
The player who is first back home wins the game This game definately is hard to evaluate.
On the one side stands the fine equipment of the game (a nice gameboard, multicoloured event cards and wooden boats and other playing pieces), but on the other side stand the obscure rules.
These are the major flaw of the game, since they are too short in important passages and some questions concerning gameplay are left open.
Another thing is the strange gameplay.
The method of getting a event card from another player certainly is an idea, but it makes the whole game a little bit too predictable.
And worse is the problem that I donīt have an idea of how to improve the rules.... |
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Looking for this game? Visit Funagain Games! |
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Copyright © 2006 Frank Schulte-Kulkmann, Essen, Germany |