Im Reich der Jadegöttin translates to “In the Realm of the Jade Goddess” which is a tile-laying, exploration game.
It had little Jeep Meeples (Jeeples?) so I was looking forward to it.
Having only recently played Carcassonne for the first time I was into the whole tile laying thing.
The first game in the new trilogy based upon Teuber’s classic exploration game Entdecker.
In the Realm of the Jade Goddess leads the players into the jungle in search for rare artefacts like the Jade statue of the title.
The system of placing tiles is similar to the original game, but players are driving around in Jeeps instead of sailing. The 18 artefacts (each consisting of 4 parts) that needs to be discovered adds a new twist to the game.
I haven’t played Entdecker so all I knew was you drive around, drop off your Archaeologists and drive around again.
Archaeologist pieces come in various sizes, 3 x 1’s, 1 x 2 and 1 x 3.
Your Jeep can move along a connecting white line as far as it goes. You can stop at any time on that line while exploring Im Reich der Jadegöttin.
Brown lines cross difficult terrain so you can only move down one brown line per turn so you have to be sure not to block yourself in.
You then place a tile in a space next to your Jeep and move the Jeep onto it. You can place one of your Archaeologists in a city space.
Cities
The cities have a number of Artefact and Gold icons. When a city is complete you gather a number of Artefacts and Gold from the bank depending on the number of logos and how many Archaeologists you have in that city compared to the other players.
- The player with the most Archaeologists gets as many Artefacts as there are symbols
- The player with the second most gets half as many
- Third place gets half as many again
- If you have no Archaeologists you get nothing, obviously
All players receive the amount of Gold equal to the number of Gold icons. Gold can be used to trade your collected Artefacts or once per turn, you can buy an extra turn for one gold.
The way Artefacts work is interesting. You’re trying to build a complete set but they contain Good and Bad Pieces labelled A, B, C & D.
For each piece, you end the game with you get 1 point.
For each set that contains bad pieces, you get 3 bonus points.
Each set that contains all good pieces gets 5 bonus points.
Im Reich der Jadegöttin Summary
I’m not a huge fan of being able to just jump in and steal someone’s hard work. They could spend a few turns excavating an area and you can jump in, finish the area and one up the Archaeologist count.
One of the things I like in Carcassonne is that if you want to take over somebody’s Road, City or Farm you have to EARN it.
All in all, I really liked this game. It’s super rare so I’m hoping the guy that owns it brings it back to the games club at some point.
pdate 18/05/2018
I managed to get a copy of Im Reich der Jadegöttin and played it a couple of times. But, I got it at a time when I was buying a LOT of games and it got lost in the mix and moved on. Still, would play it again.
Jesta ThaRogue