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In the family cooperative game Chronicles of Avel, you will play as a hero who inhabits a land full of amazing places and creatures. Unfortunately, the Black Moon has appeared in the sky. The Black Moon is a harbinger of the impending threat from the Monster. Explore the land together and defeat your enemies to defend Avel Castle.
In Chronicles of Avel, players will travel across Avel's realm on a hexagonal tile-based modular board (different every time). They will meet terrifying monsters on their adventure and must roll dice to determine their success. Each victory results in a prize - a new weapon, armour, potions, and gold - that will make heroes stronger and more powerful. To get equipment, however, players must rummage through a mystical bag and choose objects using just their sense of touch. Victory awaits those who cooperate, prepare, and confront the Beast and all of his minions.
The Setup for your Once-in-a-Lifetime Adventure!
So, are you ready for your once-in-a-lifetime adventure? Great to hear that you are ready, but we need to set up our adventure first.
- Place the moon track on the table and place the starting tiles faceup as shown in the rulebook.
- Take all tiles that are not marked with a player count, shuffle them, and place them face down in a chosen pattern on the table. You can choose the pattern from the rulebook, or you can make your own pattern. Bring back the player count tiles and set them up according to the rule book or to your own liking.
- Choose a crater with a difficulty you want to play and place it where it is shown on your chosen setup.
- Shuffle the small monster tokens and place three tokens on the lair symbols on the starter tiles.
- Shuffle the big monster tokens and place them nearby. Also place coins, trap tokens, wall markers, moon seal tokens, damage markers, and all dice nearby.
- The equipment tokens are placed in the bag and the beast and toughness dial are put aside for later.
- All players take a hero picture, character pawn, five toughness markers, and three used equipment tokens. You can dress up and name your hero as you like before placing it on your player board.
- Draw one equipment token out of the bag and place it on your hero with the non-upgraded side up. Take a coin and place it in your backpack.
- Place all hero tokens on the castle tile and give the first player the Avel coat of arms. Now you’re ready to save the world!
Manual on Preparing Yourself to Save the World!
On your turn, you can do two actions. You can do the same action twice. You can do a move action, where you move to an adjacent tile or move through shortcuts. If two tiles have the same shortcut symbol, you can travel from one to the other. This is an excellent method for quickly travelling the map. While exploring the world, you will come across many different places that can help you prepare for the beast. You can find a location to set up walls at the castle for example, or place traps for the beast. If a tile shows you can take an action, you may do so by following the location rules in the rulebook. You can also choose to combat a monster if you are standing on a tile with it. You are never required to fight a monster. To fight a monster, use the two green dice and any extra dice you get from using equipment. The person to your left will take the appropriate amount of dice and rolls for the monster.
The Battle Between Life and Death!
A battle consists of a maximum of three clashes. During a battle, you can use three different equipment tokens that you have equipped. Some tokens give you the ability to reroll enemy dice for a better outcome, whereas other tokens can give you even more dice to throw with. For every clash, you and the player to your left throw the dice to see the outcome. If you have rolled a sword, you deal one damage to the monster. A shield means you defend yourself from incoming damage. The monster on his turn can also roll damage and defence.
After rolling, compare the results to see how much damage you have dealt and received. You defeat the monster if you deal more damage than it has toughness. When you defeat the monster, you may take the rewards shown on the tile. This can be new equipment, upgrading equipped equipment, or coins, for example. If you have not defeated the monster yet you can decide to clash again, unless this was the third time, or to stop battling. Note that big monsters always have an extra attribute that works against you. Like rolling fewer dice, for example. Always look closely to your health, equipment, and likeliness of surviving before you start a battle.
Oops, I shouldn’t Have Fought Them!
If you receive too much damage, meaning you must remove more toughness tokens then you have left, you get stunned. You move your character to the castle tile, lose one piece of equipment and all your coins. Then regain all of your health and immediately end your turn. You are healed by the magic of the healing jewel. Thank God! for that. But if you defeat the monster at the same time, you get stunned you still gain a reward. When you are done battling but have received some damage, you might want to take a rest action. If you take this action, you regain two health. The last actions to take are tile actions.
The Goodies!?
To get our rewards from our difficult fight with the monster, players must dig through a magical bag and choose items using just their sense of touch. When you gain equipment or coins, you can place them in your backpack. You can stuff as many things in your backpack as you can fit. If you can’t place something between the borders of the backpack, you must discard it. If at any time you stand on the same tile as another player, you may freely exchange equipment if it fits in your backpacks.
What’s Happening Now…?
Once all players have taken two turns, the first player moves the astrolabe marker one space forward on the moon track. If the token stops on a space with a lair symbol, spawn all monsters on visible lair symbols. If it stops on a toughness symbol, all players regain one health. Near the end of the moon track, you will see the seal, trap, and wall tokens. If you have passed these symbols, you can no longer place seals, traps, and wall tokens. Make sure your preparations are ready in time. The last space on the moon track is the black moon rising symbol.
It’s Time to Save the World!
If you have reached this space, the moon has risen, and the beast arrives. When this happens, reveal all tiles and place monsters on any revealed lairs. Reveal the crater token and place all the monsters as indicated on the tile. Roll a die to see where to place the monsters. Depending on the symbol you roll, the crater token will show you where to spawn monsters. Place the beast figure on the tile with the crater token and remove the crater token from the game.
Set the beast toughness dial to the indicated health according to the number of players and get ready to fight. The game will continue in rounds where every player still takes two turns, but instead of moving on the moon track, the beast, and every monster still on the board, will move one step closer to the castle at the end of the round. If even one monster enters the castle, everyone loses. Any set traps and walls will come to good use now by stopping monsters from entering the castle for a turn or dealing damage to the beast. If you battle the beast, he will always throw five dice to attack you. You win the game if you manage to defeat all the monsters and the beast, without one entering the castle.
The Adventure Calls to an End
Above all, The Chronicles of Avel Castle is a title that is incredibly well-presented. Starting with the cover, which drew my attention right away, to the beautiful items within the box (and there are a lot of them), and concluding with extremely nice, mystical illustrations. All of this makes it difficult to look away from the Chronicles of Avel Castle. I'm particularly pleased that the moulded component resembles a treasure chest, and that the number of elements in this box causes the box to barely close. It is also worth noting that the game has a very interesting character creation element in which we will roll a die and the result will be a random name and surname of our hero, which in most cases are simply very funny.
Then we start the game, which consists in close cooperation of all the heroes participating. Our mission will be to explore the magnificent area by uncovering new tiles and fighting the monsters that inhabit them. Chronicles of Avel is built on a very basic, yet exciting dice-rolling mechanic. Each defeated monster is not just a temporary relief for the earth, but also a step forward in our hero's growth. We will acquire coins, potions, and equipment to equip our hero with. It also includes a backpack, however it has extremely limited space. It will be entertaining for the younger players to draw from a bag, as well as any attempt to fit everything into the backpack. It’s impossible to describe all the mechanics here, but the stronger the hero, the greater the chance of defeating subsequent threats.
Final Thought
Chronicles of Avel is a co-op adventure game in which you explore, fight, and defend Avel's realm. You'll only have a limited amount of time to set traps and protect yourself from the beast once you've mapped out the entire landscape. When the beast comes, the only way to survive is to fight. Chronicles of Avel's gameplay and aesthetics appeal to me, especially since you can build your own character. The artwork of the terrain and creatures' tiles is beautiful and fits in well with the plot. No two games of Chronicles of Avel will be the same because of the numerous scenarios you may play or build yourself. This game is wonderful to play with both none and experienced board gamers since it is simple to learn yet allows you to create a challenging scenario.
