In Endeavor: Age of Sail you expand your harbour as well as your knowledge of the world.
You just need to put all those disks out first.
Players strive to earn glory for their empires. Sailing out from Europe and the Mediterranean, players will establish shipping routes and occupy cities the world over. As they do so, players will leverage their growing industry, culture, finance, and Influence, building their engine and extending their reach into the far-flung regions of the world.
Endeavor: Age of Sail Game Play
OK, here is an overview of the gameplay. I’ll keep it as brief as possible. A round is played over 5 phases: Construction, Growth, Salary, Action, and Discard.
A lot of the game depends on where you are on these tracks of your board so keep these in mind.
1 – The Construction Phase
Build a building from the supply equal to or lower than your build level, that’s the Orange track.
Buildings give you additional actions to take throughout the game.
2 – The Growth Phase
Gain disks from your supply (off the board) to your harbour (on your board) based on your current growth level, the Green track. Disks in your Harbour will be used to take actions in the Action Phase.
3 – The Salary Phase
Move disks from your Buildings to your Harbour based on Salary level, the Gold track. This not only gives you more disks to use, but it also frees up buildings to be activated again this round.
4 – The Action Phase
Players in turn order will take 1 action. Actions are taken by activating a disk by putting a building from your harbour onto it. The other way to take action is to discard a blue disk which can be gathered during the game.
The action symbol on the building or the symbol on the blue disk will show which actions you will take.
Here is a brief look at each action
Shipping – Add a disk from your Harbour to a Shipping Track, Fleet Space or Open Sea space on the board. If adding to a Fleet Space or a Shipping Track, exchange it with the Trade Token from the board.
The blue disks go to the harbour to use later, the brown disks will allow you to move up on your various tracks.
Occupy – Add a disk from your harbour to an unoccupied city on the board and take the Trade Token.
Attack – Allows you to discard a disk from your Harbour as a casualty to take over a City or Fleet from another player.
Draw – If you have enough presence in the region, meaning you have enough disks there, you can take the top card from a stack and add it to your board. These cards have attribute increases and end-game points.
5 – The Discard Phase
Discard cards so you have as many as your influence score, the Blue track.
After the 7th round, the game ends. You score points for advancing on the attribute tracks, for Glory symbols from the board and on buildings and cards.
Theme
The theme in Endeavor: Age of Sail is OK.
You see your harbour develop round after round. This gives you more actions so you feel that expansion there.
A region on the board only ‘opens’ if its shipping track has been depleted. This gives the feeling of expansion across the world.
Slavery cards give you a bonus as you can imagine, it’s extra ‘help’. But, the risk there is are they worth negative points at the end of the game should slavery be abolished. People look down on you causing you to lose the end game Glory, makes sense.
I don’t know much about the Age of Sail but that’s the bits I can get from it.
Setup & Rulebook
Ouch… Putting all those disks out takes AGES.
Then there are the stacks of cards and little things. This doesn’t even include all the exploits and expansions etc The building and player piece containers do speed it up a fair bit, but it’s still slower than it needs to be.
The rulebook isn’t great. It explains the setup and actions well and everything else. But it doesn’t explain HOW to take an action very well.
Not to me anyway, it wasn’t clear.
There are two rule books, one for the part of the game you don’t need to play with in your first game which is nice.
Components & Artwork
The components are phenomenal. Everything, except for the player disks is great. The start player crown, all the expansion pieces and the game trays are great.
The game has excellent production quality, including the insert.
The artwork is nice and has a classic feel to it.
Ease of Teaching & Accessibility
Lots of rules. I’ve skipped A LOT of rules in this overview to keep it as brief as possible.
The game is complex, above gateway levels of play. So it’s not really that accessible. However, ALL information is open so players can be helped and coached along with the options they have to them on a turn.
So it all depends on the experience of the players and the number of people new to the game along with how patient you are 🙂
Endeavor: Age of Sail Summary
Weirdly, the closest game I can think of to this that I’ve played is Blood Rage. You have tracks you’re trying to boost for improved abilities and end-game points.
The buildings and cards aren’t quite as effective as the upgrades cards in BR but they have that feel. The way you place them on your board and they improve your stats etc. It’s a loose connection but the closest I have.
Game Play Summary
I’ve gushed enough about the component quality enough. But the gameplay in Endeavor: Age of Sail is OK too.
The flow of the resources is an interesting resource to manage. You have one track that brings new ones in and one track that brings your used ones back to your available pool.
You want to make these disks available to take as many actions per turn. But you need to be able to get them back from your buildings so you can use the building ability again.
Balancing this resource gives you plenty to think about.
But, I found the game far too restrictive and the early rounds too quick and dull. The game is only 7 rounds long but it doesn’t pick up until round 5.
You need to open regions to get access to more trade tokens which takes 7 actions by the players. In the first round, you only get 1 or 2 each so this process takes a while.
So Endeavor: Age of Sail is a good game with very good production, but not good enough for me.
Jesta ThaRogue