El Dorado: The Golden Temples

The Quest for El Dorado – The Golden Temples is a stand-alone expansion for, no shock, the Quest for El Dorado the stunning classic from Reiner Knizia. This rollicking adventure through the jungles of South America got a 97% rating off myself when I reviewed it. In 2017 it came runner up to Kingdomino for Spiel des Jahres.

That’s all very well and good I hear you cry but what about Golden Temples itself? (note abbreviation even an acronym of TQFEDTGT is a mouthful) . Should you try Golden Temples if you’ve already got the original El Dorado and should you get it instead of the original if you haven’t? To answer this I’ll cover Golden Temples as if you were new to El Dorado and then discuss its relationship to the first game which dependent on the edition you have may have different card sizes.

Torch Light Parade

The Golden Temples pitches you and your fellow explorers on a competitive, not co-operative, quest to retrieve 3 Gems from three different temples and return back to your starting position, the entrance to El Dorado. The Temples are situated on three different edges of the playing area with you entering from the fourth. The terrain based map is built up from different hex based pieces and can be configured in a multitude of ways.

You move your fedora-toting meeple through the jungle,and native villages, over water and, unique to Golden Temples, down torchlit passages.

You achieve this by playing symbol-bearing cards from your hand. These will be: Machete for the jungle, Paddles for the water, Coins for the villages and Torches for, well, the hexes that need them. You may require more than 1 of a symbol to enter a particular hex and you can’t combine cards to “add-up” to enter 1 hex so you may have to go to the marketplace to buy higher value and special cards. The boards are cunningly laid so short cuts will require higher value cards to be played.

So how do you get higher value cards?

A Better Barter

Well, here’s the other use of your cards they’re worth money. You can buy 1 new card a turn by spending your cards rather than using them to move your adventurer. It’s not an either or and you can usually move a bit and still have enough for a purchase. Or looking at it another way it’s a good use of your cards if they’re no use in moving you on. These new cards will give you greater powers to move through the board or even more gold to buy more cards. The card bought will be put in your discard pile to recycle into your hand later. As you go through 4 cards of a deck of 8 each turn this doesn’t take long.

A third of the cards, the higher power ones, are single use only. The rest can be used as many times as they recycle through. This highlights another aspect of gameplay making your deck “lean”. This is done by entering the other type of hex the Base Camp. Here you must permamently remove the stated number of cards from your hand. Getting rid of weak cards this way will mean you see the good stuff more often.

Guardians of the Bounty

There are 6 Guardian spaces on the maps which are filled with 6 out of the 8 randomly drawn Guardian tokens. If your token ends a move next to one it is revealed and usually provides a negative effect for you by giving the other players a boost. Once revealed these Guardians stay in place and can be re-triggered by any player including yourself if you’ve moved away and come back.

The only other features are black mountain hexes which are impassable unless you have a Geologist card. Between the three large terrain tiles are, randomly drawn, Blockade strips. These each get revealed when a player tries to cross them and will have symbols that have to be met by cards the same as a terrain hex. The 1st person to do this takes the strip and this will be used to decided ties if you end up back on the entry hex with your 3 different gems at the same time as another player.

All Change

The four terrain tiles are double sided and there are 6 different blockade strips. Given this and the fact that the 3 temples can be added on where you like you have almost endless layout possibilities. Four different layouts are given on the setup sheet and you can have a lot of fun creating your own making them as easy or as devious as you like.

Given that this is an easy to learn game, yet has interesting decisions to make every turn and with the quick gameplay you can realistically have a game in under an hour. So you can play again and again with a different set-up every time.

Now let’s talk about it’s relationship to the original Quest for El Dorado. Golden Temples tiles can be added at the end of your original quest to give you a final aim to achieve and a longer game with more variability and a few new features. The set-up suggests new layouts with this and also the Heroes and Hexes expansion and, of course, you can dream up your own. There is a page in the rule book dedicated to how to play the two together.

Size Can Be Important!

However there is one major issue with the sets I have. Whilst the terrain tiles are completely compatible the decks of cards are two different sizes! My Quest for El Dorado is the 2023 2nd Edition with art work by Dutrait and all the cards are standard playing card sized. The Golden Temples is 2019 with art work by Vohwinkel, in a more naturalistic style and the cards are much smaller (67mmx 44mm). This is also true for my 2019 Heroes and Hexes expansion.

While both sets work independently if you try to marry them together you are going to have difficulty shuffling your decks. This isn’t insurmountable; you could sleve them for example and you may just want to add the additional terrain boards but you should be aware of the issue. I do not believe Ravensburger plan to release any of the expansions with the larger cards.

To Buy or Not To Buy

Yes!

I’m giving Golden Temples similar ratings to that I gave El Dorado. I dropped the score a few points because there are not as many terrain tiles even though you do have to travel both ways through this one and I do not like the smaller cards. I reckon that either of the El Dorado games are a near perfect example of what a medium weight board game should be.

Given that Golden Temples is currently being offered by ZATU at an excellent price I suggest it’s a no brainer. If you don’t have the original you can try out the system to see if you like it whilst getting a very good game for your money. If you do have the original this a good value add-on to give you a set of goals to achieve after your thrash through the jungle though you may have to work out your own solution for the card issue.