No Pot of Gold

I've recently found another board game in my collection that's headed for the "get rid of me" stack. It had been a long while since I'd last played Goldland, since I'd remembered not enjoying it much the last time around. But I'm on a strange quest to play every game I've got at some point in 2009, so that meant this had to have its day.

It's a fine idea for a game. You play an adventurer, trekking through jungle territory in search of treasures from lost civilizations. Along the way, you must uncover paths through the territory, and overcome challenges that block your way.

The game captures that theme through tiles, played in a 7 x 7 grid to represent the territory. But the game begins with only 13 tiles in play -- two edges of the total area. Your goal is to get to the far corner, and once during each of your turns, you can "discover" a new tile adjacent to your adventurer token and journey further in.

Most tiles have one of a half dozen or so "adventure" types on them. They require you to be carrying certain combinations of items in your backpack, and discard them to overcome the challenge -- rifles to deal with wild and dangerous animals; beads to trade with primitive natives; provisions to get your through harsh terrain; and so on. The more you carry, the better prepared you are, but the slower you move each turn.

Where it all seems to come apart is that the game has a heavy component of luck, mixed with a lot of "riding on others' coattails." Let's say you're first to discover a new tile. If you've got what it takes to continue through it, well, lucky you! You're in great shape. But if you don't? Well, you're going to have to backtrack to pick up the gear you need.

There's a point reward in being the player to overcome more of each category of "adventure" than any opponent -- so it isn't good strategy for ALL the players to cluster together and try to use one path toward the goal tile. If you all keep going over the same adventures, then the player who gets there first will be the one rewarded. This encourages you to find your own path. But not completely. You do want to be near another player to seize on any adventures he uncovers but doesn't have the gear to do.

In practice, this seems to pretty well separate the players into two groups, each trying to come from a different border toward the goal tile. And by sheer luck of the draw, one of these paths in can be incredibly easy, while the other proves impossibly hard.

To translate this, when I played recently with four players, two players scored in the low 20s, both working a similar path. The other two players, struck down with bad luck in tile draws, finished with under 10 points. One had 4 points at the end of the game. There's just a futile lack of control here. And it doesn't move quickly enough or generate enough fun to make up for that fatal flaw.

I believe the game is out of print, which might have helped my planned attempt to sell it -- except that my copy is all beat to hell with the box caving in. Still, the real reward will be getting it out of my collection.