Players:2-4
Playing Time: 90-120 minutes
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)
This game was simultaneously released in Germany by Kosmos as "The New Entdecker".
The Components
Entdecker comes with a large set of nice components:
- 1 gameboard
- 180 discovery tiles
- Wood Bits:
- 4 settlements
- 8 forts
- 67 scouts
- 1 explorer's ship
- 1 die
- 9 produce tokens
- 1 cloth bag
- 7 native huts
- many gold coins
- 2 instruction books
Gameboard: The gameboard is a large six-panel board. It's linen-textured and very sturdy.
The main part of the board is taken by an empty grid of "undiscovered territory". Gold coins along the edges of the territory clearly mark how much it costs to start exploration from each side.
A serpent along the top is used for a scoring track. It's very attractive, but a bit hard to use, as the space divisions are sometimes too subtle. As with more scoring tracks in games, it should also be longer.
Finally, to the right, are a set of 7 jungle paths which lead to spaces for the cardboard native huts. Very clear icons mark a couple of "special" spaces on these paths.
Overall, the board is well-produced, attractive, and easy to use other than minor annoyance with the scoring track.
Exploration Tiles: Each of these thin cardboard tiles shows a full-color depiction of a small area of ocean & land, with ship paths (which divide the land and allow for travel) very clearly marked. These tiles are extremely attractive, especially when all laid out in the board. There are only six main variants of tile type (each with 0-4 sides of water and 0-4 sides of land), but there's a lot of variation on each tile type, which is very nice and makes the overall map look constantly unique and refreshing.
Some of the tiles are marked on the back with a numer from "1" to "7", which are used for "open stacks" and some are marked with a "?" to mark an event. These are all obvious and easy to use.
Wood Bits: There are a number of wood bits in this game, all good quality, painted wood. These include large houses, square forts, and cylindrical scouts, in yellow, red, white, and purple. In order to keep the price of the game economical, there are more of the pieces in the colors intended for the two player games (red and white) than those intended for three (yellow) or four (purple).
My only complaint among these pieces are the cylindrical scouts; they tend to roll around and try to explore the floor, under the couch, down the heating duct, etc. I'd be happier if publishers stopped putting cylindrical pieces in games.
The explorer's ship is a nicely cut ship shared between all the players.
The die is a wooden die numbered 2-6 plus a captain's wheel, with each side's text indented and inked in black. These numbers won't fade.
Cloth Bags, Produce Tokens, Native Huts: These are all nice components, but a pain. You see, the produce tokens (each a circular card stock piece, printed with a value from 5-15 and a picture of some produce) are placed in the black cloth bag and during the game drawn out and put in the native huts (a two-part cardboard construction, where you slide the produce token in between the roof and the floor).
It's all very elegant, and the pieces are good quality and attractive as the rest of the pieces in the game, but it's also all very clumsy. You have to fumble the huts open, then slide the produce in, and to view it later you have to pry up the side of the hut. Much easier, cheaper, and better would have been produce tokens that just showed a hut picture on the back.
This set of pieces was overproduced to the slight deficit of the game.
Gold Coins: These coins are in denominations of 1 and 5, with slight variation in size and coloring to help tell them apart. They're printed on cardstock.
Instruction Books: As with many of Klaus Teuber's games, this one comes with two instruction books: a 28-page tutorial and an 8-page rulebook. They're both full-color, printed on glossy, thick paper stock. The rulebook is full of examples, and manages to easily lay out some pretty subtle rules; it's overall well done. The tutorial book looks nicely done as well, though I actually learned the game from the online tutorial.
Overall, the components for Entdecker are good quality, and there's a ton of them. The usability is decent, but where the game really shines is on its pure beauty; it's really nice to look at. Putting that all together, the game earns a full "5" out of "5" for Style.
The Game Play
The object of Entdecker is to plunder a New World by laying claim to newly discovered islands and scouting out native produce.
Setup: The setup of the game is slightly complex.
First, the board is laid out. It contains an 8x12 grid for exploration and 7 jungle paths for scouting.
Each player selects a color and takes an assortment of wooden scouts (many), forts (2), and settlements (1) in his color. Each player also gets 7 gold starting income.
The tiles are laid out in 13(!) different piles. First all the tiles with numbered backs (1-7) are laid in their appropriate piles, then flipped face up. Each of these piles contains a specific sort of tile (all sea; 1 side land; 2 opposite sides land; 2 adjacent sides land; 3 sides land; 4 sides land; and special tiles); together they're everything that could be needed on the board. These 7 piles are "open stacks" (though #7 is actually only used for scenario setup). Then, all the remaining tiles (some with blank backs, some with question marks) are shuffled together and placed in 6 stacks. These piles are the "hidden stacks".
Finally, a scenario is laid out on the board. This means that about a dozen tiles are placed on the board in specific locations. Some of them are special, bonus tiles (worth +5 or +10 for scoring) while others are open sea tiles, meant to divide up the board. These starting scenarios help ensure that different games play differently. (I've only played the basic scenario thus far, which has kept me entertained for three games; there are 3 other simple scenarios laid out in the book.)
Finally, everything is ready to play.
Order of Play: Now the players go in turn, taking the following actions on each of their turns:
- Roll for Income
- Determine Starting Location
- Purchase Tiles
- Explore
- Place Unit (optionally)
- Fill in Tiles
- Score Explored Islands
Roll for Income: If a player has less than 4 gold he must roll the die, which will result in a 2-6 or a wheel. The player takes that much gold from the bank (or his choice from 2-6 in case of the wheel). But, there's a catch: every other player takes the rolled amount plus 1.
(Clearly, money management is thus an important issue in the game, because if you continue to roll the die, everyone else will continue to have more money to spend.)
Determine Starting Location: Next the active player must determine the starting location for his exploration. This may either be an edge of the map, or a tile from which a line can be traced through the ocean back to an edge of the map. In addition, the tile must allow for legal exploration (meaning that there must be at least one water side which adjoins an empty space on the board).
The player must then pay for his starting location. Depending on which edge he traces his path back to, this is a cost of either 0, 1, or 2 gold. He also must pay other players 2 gold for each of their forts or settlements which the path back to the edge of the board crosses.
Purchase Tiles: Next a player decides how many tiles he will reveal, maximum, in his exploration. These may either be "hidden" tiles, which cost 1 gold each or "open" tiles, which cost 4 gold each. The player decides his total and pays the appropriate amount to the bank before he does any actual exploration.
Explore: Finally, a player begins his exploration. He takes his first tile (either selecting an open tile or flipping a hidden tile, depending on what he paid for). He then must place it adjacent to his current tile if there's a legal placement (water and land edges must always match each other).
If the tile can't fit, it's wasted. If the player paid for more tiles, he may then select another one.
If the tile can fit, the player must place it. He then moves the boat on to the new tile. If there are no legal directions for exploration from the new tile (meaning, again, a water edge next to a blank space on the map), the player's exploration is done. If there are, the player can choose either to end his exploration or to continue, provided he still has tiles that he has purchased and not used.
This exploration is a core of the game, and it's hard to fully explain it just from the rules. Basically, you'll be trying to fill in tiles so that you can get scouts and other pieces on to valuable islands, and so that you can "finish" your own islands while you're still in control. Often, tiles that can be placed will be constrained, because of land or sea edges that are already adjacent. Also, you can run into troubles because tiles that you've selected in exploration can send you off in directions you don't want to go (typically meaning, away from your island) because of the ways the tiles must be placed.
Choosing tiles from the "open" piles gives you considerable ability to define exactly how things look, but it's very expensive, and thus you'll often go with "hidden" tiles instead and cross your fingers. Trying to fit a very specific tile into a partially surrounded space can sometimes be accomplished by buying a number of tiles, but that doesn't protect you from a tile that sends you off in a direction that wasn't where you wanted to go.
Event Tiles. Some of the tiles are marked with "?"s. These are special event tiles. They have land and sea edges just like the normal tiles, but they also have icons for four types of events, slightly less than half bad. They are: storm (end your turn immediately); pirates (lose half of your money); gold mine (gain 3 gold); and native huts (place a free scout on a jungle path).
Place Unit: The active player may now, if he chooses, place a unit on a land portion of the last tile he moved to. If he never got anywhere, he's out of luck; if his final tile is all water, he's out of luck.
Units cost money: 1 gold for a scout; 3 gold for a fort; and 6 gold for a settlement. The latter two unit types are also in extremely short supply (with just 2 forts and 1 settlement per player).
These units help determine majority scoring. In addition, scouts will later move into the jungle for additional scoring and forts & settlements will force other players to pay you gold if they try to move through them.
Fill in Tiles: Finally, the active player fills in any surrounded tiles.
If a single tile space is surrounded on all four sides, the appropriate tile is placed there from the open stacks.
If multiple tile spaces are surrounded all land edges then those spaces are filled in with all-land tiles.
Score Explored Islands: Finally, any islands that were completed (meaning that their entire contours are now known) are scored. This is determined by majority control. Whomever has the most settlements is the winner; or in case of a tie whomever has the most forts; or in case of a tie whomever has the most scouts. (For less valuable islands, scoring may be determined entirely by forts or scouts, if no one has placed the more expensive units on the island.) Note that each unit type clearly trumps the one below it: 1 fort, for example, is better than an infinite number of scouts.
The value of an island is equal to the number of tiles it contains plus the value of any special tiles (typically +5 or +10). The majority controller gets that full value; the next player gets half, rounded up; the next gets half of that rounded up; and the next gets half of that, rounded up. Players only score if they were actually on the island, of course.
Afterward, all units are removed from the island. Forts and settlements go back to their players for future placement while scouts go to jungle paths.
Jungle Path Placement. There are 7 jungle paths, each leading up to a native hut. The players place their scouts one at a time from the complete island, beginning with the player who completed it. Whomever places first on a path gets to take a produce token from the bag, look at it (it's valued at 5, 10, or 15), then place it in the hut. Additional players can place on the jungle path, but only the third or fourth placer (depending on the specific path) gets to look at the hut's contents. Every one else is placing relatively blindly.
These jungle paths will be scored by majority control at the end of the game.
Ending the Game: The game ends when the last tile is placed on the map. Any final island is scored, then the jungle paths are all scored.
The player with the most scouts on a jungle path wins that jungle path, with ties going to the person who placed first. He gets the full value of the produce token in the native hut; losers get nothing.
After adding on jungle path points, the winner is the player with the most total points, with ties being broken by money. (My third game of Entdecker was, remarkably, a three-way tie in points before that money tie-breaker!)
Relationships to Other Games
Entdecker is a majority-based area-control game built on exploration and edge-matching tile-laying. It's thus a pretty amazing synthesis of a number of major elements of game design.
The exploration aspect is the clear thematic core of the game. As such it can be compared to games like Nautilus (2002) and Anno 1503 (2004). Exploration games are usually built on some inherent randomness, such as tile-flipping (as in these games) or even rolling on a chart (as in the much older Source of the Nile (1979)), and in order to make a good exploration game you have to figure out ways to control that randomness. Most exploration games do that by letting you preview tiles before they're revealed; Entdecker instead takes a tact where you can control what tiles are revealed, first by constraining which one can appear and second by allowing the purchase of specific tiles rather than random ones. As a result the exploration system feels much more strategic than that allowed in most similar games.
The edge-matching tile-laying goes hand-in-hand with the exploration, though it's a less important aspect of the game. Unlike most edge-matching tile-laying games (including the archetypical Carcassonne (2000)) there's not much room for free placement. You choose a starting position and then may have just a couple of different possibilities for how to place a tile. As such, the tile-laying is really just the mechanism by which the exploration works, as opposed to an important game system on its own.
Conversely, the majority control is the absolute core of how scoring is done in the game. Majority-based area-control is a mechanism that we find in many German games, starting with El Grande (1995) and going up to more recent games such as Mammoth Hunters (2003) and Maharaja (2004). Because of its limitations on how much you can build in a turn (one unit), Entdecker is a relatively staid majority control system. The high costs of the settlements and forts allow for some possibility of getting ahead of the initial leader, but barring cost overruns (or clever closing moves) it's relatively hard to beat out someone who's already entrenched on a high-value island. As such, the majority control of Entdecker is more similar to that of simpler systems such as Medieval Merchant (1998).
Entdecker was designed by Klaus Teuber, the designer of the famous Settlers of Catan (1995) series of games. When he originally conceived of Settlers, he saw it as a three-part game, centering around exploration, settlement, and conquest. Eventually Settlers evolved to include just the second of those three game systems, while Entdecker became his game of exploration and Domaine his game of conquest.
This is actually the second edition of Entdecker. It was originally released in 1996. The new edition has been modified quite a bit, including the addition of the jungle paths, the addition of the open tiles, changes in how gold is allocated, the addition of starting scenarios, and more. I've never played the original Entdecker, but the general consensus seems to be that the newer one is better, though longer. Reading over a description of the original gameplay, I agree.
The Game Design
Entdecker is a game that integrates a number of different types of gameplay (exploration, majority control, tile-laying) in an interesting and cohesive way. Here's some of the best game elements:
Great Aesthetics: This is partially the components, but the gameplay method where you lay out parts of islands which slowly connect up with each other is very aesthetically pleasing.
Well Done Exploration: The exploration is well-done becase of the fact that it carefully controls randomness. There is still a lot of randomness from the fact that you're drawing blind tiles, but you can also control it pretty well based upon where you do your explorations from and when you decide to buy the 4 gold open tiles. (The fact that the event tiles are marked with "?" offers another nice control over the possible randomness of the game.)
OK Majority Control: I think the best majority control games are those that allow the possibility for a large amount of swing in an area of control. El Grande is a great example of this, because various cards can allow a lot of change, but you also have the option to "bid" higher on cards you want to stay out of enemy hands. Entdecker is staid in some ways (namely the turn-by-turn unilateral increase of units), but does allow some possibilities for surprise, through the play of more expensive units, particularly as an island closes, and through either cutting off islands that another player had thought would be combined or else putting together islands that had looked separate.
Good Control of Complexity: The complexity of the game is well controlled by the fact that you make several singular decisions--where to start your exploration; then where to place the new tile; then whether to continue--one at a time.
Good Strategy & Tactics: Finally, there's also some good opportunity for both strategy and tactics in the game. Strategically, you get to decide which islansd to contest and which not to. Tactically each turn you get to made individual decisions about how much money to spend, where to explore, and what islands to try and close. As a result, there's a lot you have to think about every turn, and that you can try and use to your advantage.
Here's some of the game design elements I didn't like as much in Entdecker:
A Little Long: the game clocks in at about 90-120 minutes, and that's a little longer than I'd like to see for the variety of decisions available in this game. In addition, the very end of the game can drag a bit, as it becomes difficult to close up the spaces for the last 4 or 5 turns because the tiles are totally blocked in.
Entdecker is one of the best exploration games I've played, and it's considerably enriched by the inclusion of good majority-control and tile-laying systems and by the impressive aesthetics of the game. The game gets a little repetitive toward the end, and personally I would have liked a more robust majority-control system, but I still think it's overall an excellent game, and thus it ekes in a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.
Conclusion
The new Entdecker has been out for a couple of years now, and I'm amazed that it hasn't gotten the respect that I think it deserves. It's one of the best exploration games on the market and also one of Klaus Teuber's best designs. Well recommended.
