Video review here! https://youtu.be/7A4CYLl5W5I
I know i’ve fawned over artwork and packaging before but just look at this thing, that’s how you do box art! There’s no other way to describe it, this is a masterpiece. It immediately reminds me of Temple of Doom. It’s got that old adventure serial look nailed down, almost like the fantastic artwork by Drew Struzan, he’s the artist who painted the Star Wars, Blade Runner, Indiana Jones, Goonies and Back To The Future posters, to name but a few. “Defy danger to capture the bloodstone!” Blood, danger, curses, this game knows how to lure in it’s audience!
The quality of the theming and artwork doesn’t end with the box, the board and game pieces are phenomenal. Honestly, I can’t think of a single board game from this era that paid this much detail to theming, this is a work of art.
Thundering rapids tear through the dense jungle, crumbling ruins and broken statues are strewn about the once glorious temple.
The board is full of wonderful details like snakes, pits of skeletons, secret staircases, it’s marvelous.
Assembling the board can take some time if you’re not familiar with how the components all fit together. I can get this done now in around five minutes or so. Yeah, this is such a gargantuan task that the assembly instructions take up the entirety of the inner box lid! There’s four plastic corner pieces, that hold the the outer temple walls, two clips that slide under the rear wall and another two clips to hold the inner temple walls. The frame for the Wheels of Death slides into and under the board, this also helps with keeping the board solid. The discs are fitted to the cogs, the cogs are fitted to the frame, the plinth added and the golden sword put in place. The inner temple door is also fitted to the small rear cog. The back to the idol is put in place and the bloodstone inserted. Giving the idol a shake and a good turning over helps the bloodstone fall into one of these six segments, this is important and will become clear when we start the game. The idol is carefully placed into the inner temple and-PHEW!- we’re done!
Just take a second here to admire this, it really looks impressive.
The graphics to the walls are completely different to one another and different on the inside too, creeping vines snake all over the outside whilst ancient torches still burn on the inside. Talk about immersion!
The artist was clearly proud of his work, in fact, he sneakily hid his name in the game! I see what you did Don Lawrence, you don’t get past old Lukey!
Looking up Don Lawrence, he was a fairly prolific and infamous comic artist from the UK, his style was oil painting and he worked on the long running SPAWN comic. Amazing to think that MB hired on an artist like this to theme their game, I can only wish that this still happened today.
The game pieces are similarly very well made, the miniatures are nicely detailed. The idol feels robust and has this dull bronze/gold finish to it.
Looking at the manual, it has a great adventurer’s journal/ comic book feel to it.
Starting the game, you pick your favourite colour figure, everyone starts at the base camp, the villain starts in front of the sword plinth. Ah yes, did I not mention this game has a villain? We’ll get back to him shortly.
Your objective is to obtain the golden sword and make your way to the inner temple via the Wheels of Death. Once in the temple, you then have a one in six chance to correctly insert the sword into one of the slots on the idol. Guess wrong, you go to the PIT OF BONES!
Guess right however and you’ll free the Bloodstone! Then it’s a race back to the basecamp, but all the other players are trying to steal it and the glory from you! You role a dice to determine how far to move but you have the option of either moving your piece…or the villain!
The villain has some interesting play mechanics to him. Firstly, he cannot leave the temple, nor can he enter the inner temple where the idol is. This is a good thing as someone would have the idea to move the villain in there and spoil the game for everyone else. Secondly, he acts as a dead end to any path he is on, player pieces cannot pass him and must find an alternate route around. Third, if the the villain lands on another player, that player is cast into the Pit of Bones!
There’s two pits of bones, either side of the idol, it’s player choice which one to put the play piece in. The pit of bones doesn’t require a specific dice role to get out of nor any turn loss, but it does take that player out of the action and away from the entrance to the inner temple. Additionally, if the the villain lands on a player carrying either the golden sword or bloodstone, they go to the player who moved the villain. A tremendous amount of strategy is added with the inclusion of the villain and you'll often need to think carefully about whether it best to move your figure or the villain. Do you move closer to the temple entrance or move the villain towards your opponents? Do you block their path with him or move yourself closer to getting the sword or the bloodstone?
Throughout the course of the game treasures will change hands constantly, whether through using the villain or landing on the treasure holder with your own game piece. With everyone out for themselves, it’s adds a frantic pace to the game, I like to think of the pieces fist fighting over treasure, like Belloc and Indy fighting over the ark of the covenant!
Now onto the most interesting mechanic of the game, the WHEELS OF DEATH! Dotted around the board are these cog symbols, you land on the cog, you give the sword plinth one whole turn clockwise, or turn enough to 180 the temple door. As you can see, the three large cogs have different paths on them and you’ll find that routes regularly open up and close to you. Again, you can really be quite vindictive and prevent your foes from getting close to the temple door. You can also use the cogs to swing you closer to the door, or swing the villain closer to your enemies! Some player managed to land on the temple door and rotate into the inner temple? Rotate him out of there! There’s a lot of strategy to this mechanic and for the most part, it works well.
Getting to the inner temple with the sword, you then have to make a choice, which slot to put the sword into? Getting the guess wrong sends you to the pit of bones, the sword back to the plinth and the race starts all over again, with all the players knowing that was the wrong slot… you chose…poorly. I’ve played a few games where it’s been the very last guess, by that time, you’re more than relieved to see the bloodstone.
So, you have the bloodstone, you have to get out of the temple and back to basecamp to win. There’s only the one way into the inner temple, but there’s three ways out, these trap doors put you right near the pit of bones. You can opt to go out through the Wheels Of Death but this can end up being a long process with paths being constantly blocked off to you by jealous and greedy rivals. Once you clear the temple, you’re pretty much home free as players can’t use the villain as second option to capture you and the stone. You made it back, you won, fortune and glory are yours!
With all the action elements to this game and the superb theming and setting, you’d think I’d not have any complaints with this right? Sadly, this game has some pretty big flaws. Firstly, stealing treasures, it’s far too easy to do this and when you’ve spent ages getting to the sword plinth or retrieving the bloodstone, you can feel a little cheated by this, of course, that’s all part of the game, but using the villain to get treasures can really be exploited, especially when it comes to the blood stone.
A player can have his character hanging around the temple entrance and have the villain jump the player with the bloodstone, the bloodstone then going to him. With him being so far from the other players, there’s absolutely no chance they’ll catch him unless they get very lucky and roll a succession of sixes, six means you roll again. A house rule we implement is when a player lands on another player, we play rock paper scissors to determine the winner of a duel. The duel winner keeps the treasure. You could also do this by having the player roll a four or higher, bring it down to 50/50 chance.
Another house rule we implement is that when the bloodstone is free, landing the villain on the player holding the bloodstone doesn’t mean that the stone goes to that player. No, the villain’s objective in the manual is to guard the stone for himself, so the bloodstone now goes the sword stone in front of the idol. This does a lot to fix the end of the game, it ends far too quickly otherwise and using this house rule, it kind of extends the objective of getting into the inner temple seen in the first half of the game.
Aforementioned, certain games have had the bloodstone drop on the final guess and this can get really tedious with everyone battling to get into the temple, stealing the sword of each other, sending each other to the pits of bones. Players seem to forget that letting others get to the temple helps them! If they guess wrong, well, you know not to put the sword in that slot if you get there, if they guess right, well they saved you a job. But a game where it can take six attempts to free the objective, it can feel long in the tooth. I’ve implemented a rule where you role the dice to determine how many attempts you get at guessing which slot the stone is in. This does wonders for speeding the game along, the first time replaying this game without this rule it lasted two hours! I’m not kidding!
The Wheels of Death and the temple door are a particular pain in the backside. Just when you think “yes I’m in!” Some spiteful player will spin you out again. Seeing as it takes an exact number roll to land on the temple door place to get rotated inside in the first place, this can take forever. In fact you’ll be long in your own tomb before the game ends! It’s like the fireplace out of The Last Crusade, this is intolerable! A player will patiently sit hoping that they’ll get rotated back in before their turn comes around. My thinking is that, you’ve made it this far, you got to the temple door, you’re rotated in and that takes effort. Just move the player off the door and into the square inside the inner temple. This again does a lot to speed the game along and keep it fun, it’s not fun being span round and round that temple door like a rotisserie chicken.
In conclusion, Curse of the Idol remains a forgot game from yesteryear, I think personally it deserves more recognition that it gets, there’s absolutely no denying that this game looks terrific, there’s some interesting game play and mechanics to it that really set it apart. As mentioned in my Labyrinth review, I love games where you get to pull the rug out from under your opponents feet and this is one of them, there’s backstabbing and strategy to it in spades. It’s just sad that the rules which come with the game are so flawed, that’s the real curse of Curse of the Idol. There’s a really excellent game here if you’re willing to think about adapting rules and instructions though. I’ve played this game with 2, 3 and 4 players and have found it massively affects the way the game plays, there's A LOT more strategy involved with more players. You can find copies of this game quite easily on eBay, if you’re up for an adventure, considering picking this one up. Fortune and glory can be yours!
No comments:
Post a Comment