THE OH MY GOODS! SAGA CONTINUES - THIS TIME, AS A BOARD GAME
Immerse yourselves over the course of several scenarios in an overarching story. Each game represents one chapter. You can play the chapters in sequence as a campaign or on their own. Various maps with different events, game elements, objectives, and actions challenge you to adapt your strategy to the given conditions.
Your hands are dirty, the back is aching and the clothes are sweaty, but your work for today is finished! The new mill looms proudly in front of you and the soft groaning and fluttering of the blades sounds like a choir of angels in your ears. Soon the golden wheat of your fields will be ground to valuable flour which will earn you a fortune. Or maybe... building a bakery sounds even better! You could bake bread and buns from the flour and increase the value of your goods even more. And while you are thinking about it, you remember that there was a village, only about a mile away, which was literally begging for a bakery. The plan starts to form in your head and tomorrow seems to become another busy and exhausting day.Expedition to Newdale is a game from renowned designer Alexander Pfister. In this board game adaption of the successful card game
Oh My Goods, 1 to 4 players from 12 and up compete in different chapters to experience the world of the Longsdale kingdom once again. The story of
Expedition to Newdale starts about 5 years after the events from
Oh my Goods! Escape to Canyon Brook, but you don't need to know the prequels at all. Each chapter of the game lasts about 90 minutes which adds up to around 12 hours of exciting campaign gameplay. And when you found your favorite chapter while playing the campaign, you can always come back and play it again to have even more fun!
At the beginning of the game you have your personal board, a coal mine as your start building and 5 hand cards. Depending on which chapter you are playing, the appropriate game board sits in the middle of the table. Each round is divided into 6 phases which are played in order (or partially parallel).
- In phase 1, a new event is revealed which usually alters the course of play in this round slightly (e. g., by introducing new buildings). Additionally the event card shows a fixed amount of workers which are available this round. An information which is much appreciated...
- ...as you have to place your action markers in phase 2. The latter are numbered 1 - 4 which is important for phase 4 and means that you need to plan ahead.
- But first phase 3: in this phase, more workers are drawn from a bag and get added to the others. This means that productions which would have been impossible before (because workers were missing) are now easily done. Pushing your luck might be beneficial!
- Phase 4 is the opposite to phase 2. Instead of placing your workers, you resolve their chosen action in order of their numbers. We hope you had a backup plan in place if your desired workers were not drawn in phase 3, because this can trigger an unpleasant chain of events! Not enough workers could mean that a production does not happen, which then means that you might not have enough money to build the building with your second action marker. Oh, and your third marker was planned to directly produce in the newly built building? Well, where there is no building, there's no place to produce in, right? Clearly: planning ahead, a little luck and good alternatives are the way to success.
- In Phase 5, all players can either use a free building action or draw new hand cards.
- The last phase is used to resolve all buildings which do not need workers, e. g., an automatic coal production or a building which offers the conversion of a certain good to victory points.
Afterwards the next round starts, of which you play a total of seven. A final scoring at the end of round seven will then show if you win or lose.
Expedition to Newdale promises a lot of exciting game sessions. Thanks to its "legacy like" development throughout the chapters (e. g., different buildings, significantly changed game boards, etc.) nearly no game session feels alike. Even better: because the components are not destroyed or changed permanently, you can always replay your favorite chapter the way it's meant to be played. Thanks to an easy table in the rule book you will always know which cards, game boards, etc. are needed.
