Endeavor – Age of Sails

Endeavor – The Age of Sails Endeavor – Age of Sail)

Re-edition of a fairly old position. Reissued on Kickstarter, the release includes bonus content and a new graphic design.

The original Endeavor is already a few years old, but don’t let that fool you! In the latest version, both the board and one of the best moldings I’ve seen in board games make a great impression – everything has its place, and it speeds up the start of the game a lot.

Despite its advanced age, Endeavor stands out among other strategy games with a short gameplay time, while providing many interesting decisions to make – in two people you can easily fit in an hour. The game itself scales well, ensuring the smoothness of turns made by individual players. Rounds pass quickly, and at the same time we have the feeling of building our influence on the board and developing our nation.

The main axis of the game is the collection of symbols that allow you to increase your level of advancement on four tracks that each player develops – construction, wealth, culture and influence. These symbols are found both on the tokens lying on the board, which we collect using specific actions in our turn, as well as on the cards corresponding to individual regions – to collect them you also need the right action. Each acquired symbol allows you to pull up one field on the appropriate track. Such a mechanism works very efficiently, we quickly develop our kingdom, sailing and discovering unknown waters. At the beginning of the game, we can only move around Europe, but as we progress in the game and our own discretion, we can discover the areas of interest to us – each of them offers different benefits.

Every turn, each player also obligatorily builds one of the buildings, with the level to which his level of advancement on the construction track allows him. Each of the buildings gives either specific symbols (they develop the appropriate player paths) or possible actions. all in all, simple mechanics, and allows you to combine a lot.

As for the negative interaction, as in Endeavor – Age of Sails an important element of the game is the area control mechanics, it is present, but largely depends on the attitude of the squad that is involved in the game. There may be a team that pushes each other, especially it is facilitated by a game in which more than 2 people participate. In two-man duels it is a bit looser, but it is still mainly the players who decide on the degree of aggressiveness. You can play calm games, or deliberately strive for confrontation and step on the heels of the opponent, sailing to the same regions as him.

In general, this game is a big surprise for me. The mechanics have not aged and even stand out positively, given some highly complex games that promise more than they actually give.

Additional fan 3D figures are available for this game

pros ++++++

+ relatively short gameplay time

+ a lot of possible decisions to make

+ all accessories collected in one box – and these are accessories that you will not want to do without later

+ very nice board

+ cool atmosphere of conquest and sailing

+ additionally interesting historical context, given on the tiles from the appendix

+mechanically simple

+ cool theme of building more buildings and developing your pool of shares

+ fantastic molding, thoughtful and aesthetic

+ easily explains itself to new players – I checked!

Cons —

– at first it seems numb

– a lot of markers, few figures

– setup can be cumbersome – a lot of chips to spread on the board

0
Board Games Geek rating
Weight
56%
Fun factor
90%

Infos courtesy of boardgamegeek.com. More Infos.