Title: Quests & Cannons: The Risen Islands
Designed By: Eric Geller and Shannon Geller
Published By: Short Hop Games
Released: Coming to Kickstarter September 21, 2021
Player Count: 1-6
Time to Play: 20 minutes per player
Ages: 10+
Quests & Cannons: The Risen Islands (hereby referred to as Quests & Cannons) is a sandbox-style game where players take on the role of champion adventurers from three different nation's who are working to settle on the mysterious new islands that have risen in the land of Miraheim. Strange happenings begin with the rise of these isles and suddenly the once flourishing kingdoms of the Dwunny, Porcs, and the Delves are struggling to survive. Using action points, adventurers will attempt to ensure their home nation is prosperous in these new lands. Will you solve map clues to uncover treasure, discover new lands, or fight with your rivals to ensure your victory? The choice is up to you!
How to Play:
Quests & Cannons can be played individually or on teams. The goal of the game is to have the most prosperity at the end of the round. Prosperity will ensure your nation's survival.
To get started, have each player roll a die to determine the order that they choose their champion (if playing on teams, teammates need to choose champions from the same nation) and get ready to set sail. Each player gets a ship board, their player piece, ammo dice, coins, and a traveler's die. Ships are set up depending on the style of the champion. Some champions are naturally more likely to attack, collect resources, or travel farther.
Set up the game board according to the suggested maps, or go wild and make your own!
Players will take turns beginning with the starting player (who was the last player to pick a champion). Players have three action points that they can spend during their turn. Action points allow players to move, gather, or attack. Various items in the game allow for these actions to be enhanced. For example, sails let you move farther.
Throughout their adventure, players will explore islands, finding valuable resources for the nation's survival. Items like canvas, gems, and lumber, will be used for upgrading their ship, getting map clues, or obtaining loot cards. Players will also take on quests, which will grant rewards such as loot, coins, and prosperity.
Working, to slow down other team's ascent to victory sometimes means playing dirty and going to war. Player's can also spend action points to attack their rivals. Attacking can cause enemies to lose essential items, helping get you one step closer to victory!
Be the first person (or team) to reach the prosperity goal for the game and you win!
You can check out the full rulebook for more details.
What's purr-ty cool:
As you can see from the photos, Quests & Cannons is stunning, but it is more than just another pretty game. Quests & Cannons is the kind of game so many gamers can enjoy. It works great for those that like to play individually or on teams, but it also has a solo and a co-op mode for those who prefer to work alone or together.
Even though we are reviewing a prototype copy, Quests & Cannons has so many impressive components. It has dual-layer boards, with pieces that slide in and out of them. It has a modular board, so you can mix up your games and not have a single map that gets stale. It has super cute little boats for each champion. And in case you missed it the first time, the art is amazing. It is so bright and colorful. It really just looks so good all set up! With how much effort went into hand-crafting the prototype, we cannot wait to see what the final version of Quests & Cannons looks like. We have no doubt it will be spectacular.
We appreciate the slight asymmetry in the game. There are boatloads of champions to pick from (pun intended), each with their own special stats. With so many champions to play, you can play Quests & Cannons many times and get a slightly different experience each game. We appreciate all of the considerations to make Quests & Cannons a highly replayable game.
Quests & Cannons is a good part strategy and a good part luck. We would consider it a gateway-plus game. With the variety of strategies that players need to use in order to be successful, Quests & Cannons can be a good game for those that are looking to branch out into slightly more complicated gateway games. It is simple enough to teach and easy to get to the table.
The cat's meow:
"I couldn't stop hitting the boats off the board. Mama said that is not how attacking works, but hey it was fun," - Pudgy Cat.
Disclaimer: Pudgy Cat Games was provided a copy of this game in exchange for a review, however this review reflects the honest thoughts of author.
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