Endeavor
This review is part of the 2009 Game Cryer Holiday Gift Guide.
Once upon a time, the planet was a blank canvas with many areas waiting for discovery by the seafaring people of Europe. Endeavor asks players to cover the globe with their influence, using a simplified system for colonization and conquest. Spreading across the seas, men move from their homes, across the continents, and into the history books. Seeking the highest glory, players parlay their successes into overall victory.
As they pass through multiple phases for developing their empires, players build and use buildings; attract new subjects (and soldiers) through cultural improvements; pay out moneys to run the machinery of government; and use the tools of their society to move into new lands through conquest and political favor. They may even resort to slavery to mold their new government, though this costs them in the end. As they exert control over regions and cities, explorers are in a position to collect the many Trade Tokens from around the board. These are useful for both victory and in-game advantages as they give a nation options for attacks and additional trading. The player who claims the most glory points wins. By weighing political influence against outright war, and direct transactions against control of the sea lanes, a player chooses the path he thinks can win it for his country. It’s a simple but gameable system, accessible to most tweens and adults, that sums up a sizable chunk of human history into about 90 strategic minutes.
The object of the game is to amass the most glory by the end of the game.
A game runs over the course of seven turns, with three to five players vying for control of territories worldwide and the sea routes connecting them. Each player gets a set of tokens in his color and a mat that tracks his actions and progress. The unexplored world is an abstract map of far-flung locations; their Shipping Tracks; and their card decks. Liberally dotting the board are Trade Tokens that give players more glory points and a host of actions with which to build up their faction. Just about anywhere a player might put his token has a counter on it – if he claims the space with his wooden token, he may take and keep the counter that was there for later use.
Each turn the action plays out in sequence, with a build, grow, salary, and action phase. During the build phase explorers erect infrastructure, creating Warehouses, Museums, Barracks, government buildings and so on that give them abilities that decide the course of nations. During the grow phase, culture increases, drawing in new settlers. Represented in the game as wooden tokens, these are placed in the harbor where they stand ready to activate the powers on the various buildings. The colonists are then paid salaries for their work, which brings them back to the harbor and readies their building for reuse. Finally, the meat of the game is the action phase wherein players take turns performing actions to increase the size and scope of their empire.
Players can ship, occupy, attack, pay, draw, or pass. They ship materials to newfound ports, and in doing so build up cachet with the local population and colonists. For each such action the Shipping Track for that region of the world fills up with players’ population markers to show the influx of his people. Any number of explorers may send goods to these new lands, but when the track fills up it determines the outcome of an election: the player who contributed the most to that territory’s development is made governor (and he gets the last card of the deck).
As the area swells with newcomers, those contributors draw cards from its deck. These offer a boost to the player’s statistics – his ability to build buildings may jump up, or his finances could improve and let him pay for the services of more colonists. These same cards can be drawn from the home area, along with Slavery cards. If someone needs a quick infusion of materials they can take this unfortunate step and build on the backs of forced labor. Once an area has a full Shipping Track it is “open” – it is a fully functional outpost and it can be used (or exploited, if you prefer) for other things.
Regions have cities that can be claimed for the glory of the empire, and if someone else owns them then they may be attacked. While occupation is as simple as putting down one’s counter, attacks are more costly – it requires two tokens, one of which is lost in combat and sent back to the supply (as opposed to the harbor; the player must spend precious time and effort to reintroduce that piece back into play). Should a nation gain the cities on both ends of a sea lane, they control that route as well and again get any Trade Tokens that may be there.
Although payments are usually made during the salary phase of the game, some buildings or Trade Tokens allow a nation to open up one of its buildings for use once again. Numerous strategies may hinge on this mid-phase calculation, and the timing of the various available actions can make or break a fledgling superpower. Unlike the other phases where players perform actions together, the action phase lets players do one thing at a time in order, and some folks may have more actions open to them than others. Those with nothing to do are forced to pass while the more capable nations continue until they’re done. Once the seventh turn is executed, the players count up their Trade Token bonuses, cities, worker pools, and cards to see who has amassed the most points. After any subtractions for resorting to slavery, the country with the most glory is the winner.
The components are equal to that of many a Euro-style game, with wooden pieces, mounted maps, and full tiles and player aids, but perhaps it’s not the pieces that deserve the honorable mentions so much as the rules and graphic executions (for which it would appear Joshua Cappel deserves most of the accolades). Not only are the mechanics pleasantly intuitive, they’re complemented by the rules and the player mats. Both are arranged in the same manner, so that the first phase, build, is placed at the top of the sheet and subsequent phases descend in order. It all works together so the rules are easily digested and self-reinforcing. Even the timing of the game comes down to use of the pieces: Since everyone must take a building each turn, when you take your seventh structure you know it’s the last turn of the game.
Endeavor is too abstract to provide an effective learning experience as far as subjects like geography or politics are concerned, but this doesn’t prevent it from being a solidly enjoyable strategy game. Designers Carl de Visser and Jarratt Gray’s use of slavery as a temptation to those looking for a quick fix is an interesting twist that gives atmosphere, if not depth, to the play of the game. It’s easy enough for youngsters to pick it up while challenging all comers. With several viable paths to victory, replay value is high, and a 90-minute playing time makes fitting it into any game night’s schedule a breeze.