Darwin's Journey - 2-Player Playthrough & Review (Kickstarter)

hi everyone my name is moani and i'm naveen from before you play and today we have another playthrough for you this time it is for a game that is coming to kickstarter called darwin's journey this one's published by thunder griff games and it's designed by two different designers nestor mangone and simon lucioni they are very very widely known for newton uh luciani also worked on sulkin grand austria hotel lorenzo magnifico voyages of marco polo so lots of euros and this is also a euro and we're gonna play it today yeah that's right and so this is a game that is coming to kickstarter on january 5th we are very excited to be able to showcase it because it is a euro game at the heart the theme centers around charles darwin and his um adventures in the galapagos islands kind of trying to track his memories as it paved the way for the theory of evolution and so it is still a euro worker placement game at at its heart it is with some unique mechanics that we are hoping to showcase today and so as per usual we're going to start with a general overview of how the game is played we're not going to go into every specific detail because there will be a tutorial video for this game and then we're going to go into our two player playthrough as well as the review at the end if you're interested in skipping around we are going to include timestamps down below but we also did want to mention that this is a prototype copy of the game high quality prototype that's right but there are still some graphic design changes that are definitely going to be made for the final copy and before we begin if you guys can do us a big favor and turn on your klingon subtitles just in case we make any rules mistakes we can correct them there and if you also like content like this please consider subscribing and with that we are going to get started so if you would please direct your attention to the center of the table we are all set up here for our two player game of darwin's journey this is a very large board with a lot of stuff going on there's a lot of colors a lot of different pathways and uh a lot to to talk about yes right it's a big board it is uh we also have our own individual player boards as well as a lot of different types of components and so in this game we are recalling charles darwin's memories as he went through his adventures in the galapagos islands that eventually led to him publishing his theory of evolution and so the game lasts five rounds and whoever has most points at the end of the game wins like we were mentioning earlier this game is a work replacement game at its heart and so these work replacement spots are primarily going to be centered around these four diaries that are over here on this side of the board you'll also have some spots on this area as well as this area of the board but a majority of the actions are going to take place here now prior to the start of the game there's actually a little bit of setup that goes into play each player starts the game with a hand of three of these crew cards which you draft before the game starts and it's significant because at the top right hand corner of each card it shows you which starting colored seals that you start the game with if you notice on our player boards we place those colored seals to the right of our workers because this is actually going to dictate which worker placement spots you're going to be allowed to place these workers on so if you'd notice each page of the diaries has a colored seal at the top left-hand corner and so those are the requirements that you need in order to place your worker there yep purple seals are considered wild now the top four pages of these diaries here all work very similarly in that they each have a large magnifying glass and they also each have spots that need to be discovered in order for you to take them anytime you see the large magnifying glass that means any number of players can place their workers there as opposed to these small lenses here which can only hold one worker each and the other really important rule is say i have my worker here already from a previous turn and naveen wants to take an action either here or here sure let's say i took this one one over here then naveen would have to pay a fee and that fee depends on player count so if we're playing a two-player game just like we're about to it's three coins which is quite expensive in a four-player game you only pay a fee if it's the same page of the diary but because we're playing in a two-player game it's the entire diary so if i was already here and naveen decides to go here he still has to pay a fee it would be three to the bank not to money and that holds true for all three of these diaries as well as this small one right here now the last type of work replacement spot are going to be these square or rectangular spots and you'll find them in three different areas for those spots you never have to pay a fee and any number of workers can go there this first diary page over here has the red seal requirement and this page is meant for acquiring more colored seals the benefit that you get in each of these spots is on the right hand side over here and this stands for just taking one seal from this area now each row has a certain price associated with it the very top most row here is free uh the second row is it cost the coin two coins three coins so if i were to take this one it would be free and then you place it on your player board in one of the rows and so the second seal that you place in each row is free but after that you're going to have to pay a certain amount of money these seals are great because they help unlock other types of actions for you so if i were to place this blue seal here next to my yellow one this worker can now go to say this spot over here that requires a blue and a yellow seal some other things that you may see on the page are two other action spots we're gonna get to this later when we get to the small diary spot the last thing that you might notice is at the top right hand corner here it shows additional benefits now these benefits are granted to you if you are able to fill up that meeples row with enough seals to get you to either the silver spot or the gold which is a very last spot here so in order for you to unlock that gold benefit you would have to have six total seals on this row this page of this diary has to do with these uh correspondences as well as the stamps that are on the right hand side of our player board now the right hand side of your player board you have three stacks of stamps i believe there are four stamps per stack and so if you are able to completely remove an entire stack at the very bottom here it'll show a benefit and so taking this action here allows you to put two of those stamps out into onto the board but they must all go onto one of these three envelopes and so this is going to act as a as an area majority kind of scoring at the very end of each round we're going to resolve each of these spots to see who has the most number of stamps in each envelope exactly and whoever has most number of steps gets to do whatever it says in the number one spot second most gets the number two spot etc now the next diary over here has to do with moving your explorer as well as your ship so if you notice at the very bottom of the of the player board over here we have a map and the map is divided into three different islands we have one two and three at the start of the game you're only going to have an explorer on one of these islands which is the left most spot here at the very bottom of this map you'll also notice that we have kind of a path for the ships to go across including the hms beagle and so at the end of each round the hms beagle is actually going to be moving further and further across this map providing specific end of round scoring conditions depending on the round that you're in so this page of the diary lets you move your ship up to two spaces as soon as your ship crosses any of these markings on the board then that'll unlock the next island so as soon as my ship gets here then i would place one of my explorers onto the starting spot of that second island and so now whenever i take this other action spot over here which is moving my explorer i can choose to move either this explorer or that one moving my explorer works very similarly except it's obviously all the green spots that do it and so the default spot is also up to two spaces but the difference is that no two explorers can share the same spot uh except for the starting space yes oh yeah unlike the ships the ships can all be in the same spot the explorers on the actual islands cannot yes and so if naveen were already here because he was able to move his explorer on a previous turn and i were to move mine i would hop over his for one and then two each space of the explorer track here is going to offer you a specific type of benefit sometimes you'll get points whenever you see these books those are points sometimes you can get money you only get the benefit of the spot that you leave your worker on i also want to mention that the explorer is the main way to get these tents off of your board if you notice on your player board we have five of these tents and you must remove them by going to spots that look like this there'll be literally a tent on the explorer board and that allows you to remove the topmost tent because you have to go in that order from your player board and place onto one of the two available spaces one space is free the other space costs something and then you not only get to take the benefit of the spot so in this case it looks like i can put out two stamps out onto the correspondence area but you also get the benefit of whichever tent you uncovered so the very first tent gives you no benefit and then the second tent gives you two coins etc kind of just go all the way down that way yep and the last type of benefit that you'll get from this entire map are these specimens and so this is kind of something we didn't really mention but it's a really really big part of the game and that is this museum area here this museum area here is divided into rows and columns of 16 different specimens total and so this sort of represents the different types of species or specimens that charles darwin studied while he was on the island and so what we're going to be doing with this area here is we're going to be collecting specimens by landing on them so see if i were to land on this specimen right here i would take a clear token from off the board and place it on its designated space of the museum area on my player board so this is literally a shell a shell of some sort this green shell right here signifying that i have studied that particular specimen and so on a future turn i can go to the museum which we'll talk about later and deliver that specimen to the board if it has not yet been delivered and so we will get to that in a second now the last diary over here is comprised of six special tiles now the game comes with several of these special tiles you kind of populate it with six random ones yeah this is all randomized yes and so this is going to change from game to game we will talk about uh this what the specific actions do during our playthrough but just know that the difference between these and these is not only does it not have the large magnifying glass so only one person can go to each of these spaces but the requirement to go to these spaces is actually a lot more demanding this one requires a green and a red this one requires a blue and yellow and then all these four spots down here require several of a specific color and that is for the particular crew member that you're using so you cannot split them up saying oh i have a green and a red here yes it must be in the same row as one of your meeples exactly now the last diary spot is actually a very small diary over here this allows you to discover more of these action spaces so that you can unlock them for the rest of the game so if i were to go here there is no seal requirement i just kind of have to place a worker there and then i would pay the price of whichever spot i'm unlocking you have to unlock each page from top to bottom so i couldn't go directly to this this five coin one i would have to start with this one but after i pay my money to the bank then i would take one of my own player lenses and place it right there so that from now on an opponent were to go to this spot i would get one coin from the bank if i were to go there i don't get anything but if somebody else were to go there i would get paid yeah so this is one of the main ways to populate for sweeter actions now yes it is a sweeter action but it also does cost more in terms of the seal requirement on your board and this is also how you go about unlocking the other special tile spaces the most important thing about unlocking these areas is once i pay the price and i put my own lens here i now get to take the action regardless of whether or not i meet the requirement and that is a one-time only benefit in the future i must meet that seal requirement and so those are all the diaries now the other actions like we're mentioning has to do with the museum as well these spots over here we're just going to kind of go over them briefly this spot here allows you to deliver your specimens to the museum and that's what we're kind of briefly alluding to in the explorer section you can only deliver specimens to the museum if it has not been delivered yet so you may notice that we do have a few specimens already populated on the museum and that's because we're playing a two-player game if you're playing a four-player game this would be empty and so the way that it works is say you know referring to my previous example of this specimen over here if i were to deliver this specimen right over here then i would look at the row and the column that it's in and i would get one coin for each spot that is not currently filled as well as one book point for each of the spots that are filled not including the one that i just placed so in this situation i would get one two three four coins from the bank and one two book points and those book points are tracked along this track right here i believe it's called the theory of evolution track exactly so i would just move my my uh cube two spaces now you'll notice that there are actual book symbols on this track it's not two book symbols it's two spaces because at the end of the game this is going to count as a multiplier for the theory of evolution scoring which is basically two plus the number of completed rows multiplied by the number of book symbols that you've acquired so if the game were to end right now and i were here at two book symbols it would be two times the base of two which is four right because no rows have been completed as right now correct and so this is a large part of your endgame scoring so do not ignore the museum this spot over here allows you to discover an already discovered specimen for whatever reason you may have and these last two spots are pretty straightforward this spot here allows you to take a new objective tile from one of these four offerings at the start of the game we're going to start with one gold and one silver objective these are just objectives that you would meet just in a standard euro game you know it just tells you what it wants for example this gold one right here wants me to have at least two yellow seals as well as four book points so if i was here and i had two yellow seals anywhere on my player board then i would have completed this and then i would go and fill in one of these gold sections here taking the benefit that's shown to its left that's right and so the top row is for the silver objectives and the bottom row is for the gold objectives and that we will also explain as you play the game and going here allows you to reserve turn order divided place my worker out here i would put it in one of these three spots and now for the next round i get to go first if nobody takes this action spot then turn order will never change lastly both of these spots get you two coins for going there and those are all the different types of actions that you can take in this game each player has four workers you may have a fifth worker by unlocking it at some point in the game uh once everybody has put out all their workers and taking their actions then the round will end at the end of the round you will do some cleanup uh you will change turn order you will resolve all the correspondences over here move the hms beagle and also score for the the tile depending on what round that you're on as well as the penalties that you'll receive which we'll talk about later during the playthrough at the end of the fifth round the game will end and we go into end game scoring end game scoring is just going to be the theory of evolution scoring as well as any of the points that you earn on your player board there are several ways to earn points on your player board basically putting out an objective on any of these spots will earn you points because you'll see the book symbol on the very left hand side here you'll earn points for putting out your fifth camp site and you can also earn points by reaching the fifth and sixth spots of each of the rows on your board and at that point whoever has most points wins the last thing that we didn't go over are the crew cards that we referred to at the beginning of this teach each crew card is pretty powerful they let you do a one-time action an immediate action that is highly variable depending on the crew card that you have but in order to resolve your crew card you have to have the combination of seals in one row of your player board they all add up to five seals so you're definitely gonna need to have at least five seals in one row to complete them but then you get to do its effect immediately and that is pretty much everything we did leave out some tiny details here and there that we will explain uh during the playthrough and so right now we are going to do a little bit of setup and then we're going to get into the playthrough okay so we have uh reset the board made sure that everything looks good and we've already done the draft ahead of time and we'll talk about our crewmates okay um so we have to figure out who goes first ready ready oh wait one two three oh you okay go first okay so i'm gonna slip i'm yellow today and monique's blue so i'm gonna slip there and then monique will be second okay so yes we did do the draft already and these are our uh crewmates uh they also dictated our starting colored seals so i have green uh yellow and blue yep uh yeah so i have a green red and yellow and just really briefly just so you kind of know what these do this person is going to allow me to take any specimen that i don't already have this person allows me to take the effect of one of naveen's crewmates who he hadn't already completed and my last one here allows me to unlock one of these spots just like this action does except i don't have to pay any money yep sounds good okay so mine over here uh this one it allows me to put out a camp on one of the designated campsites and take the benefit immediately if there is a cost associated like this one right here i would have to pay it this one right here allows me to put one of my explorers on one of the two other galapagos islands where i'm not already uh and this one right over here allows me to take one of these objectives and complete it immediately without actually satisfying what's on the tile and so the last part of our setup is going to be claiming these objective tiles so because i'm going second i get to choose first and you're choosing a pair of gold and silver yeah so it's this pair or this pair it's up to you and there's more uh that come with the game this is just what happens to be here okay i'm gonna take this pair right here okay and i'm just gonna place them over here typically you're supposed to put them to the right of your player board but because they don't have that kind of a visual space i'm just gonna place them right there okay so that leaves me with these so i'll take these my silver and my gold and i'll put them up here like she said i can't put them here so my gold bonus tile requires uh me to have two green seals in a row as well as one of my lenses out and this one over here requires me to completely empty one of my stamp stacks and have a reptile specimen in my on my player board yeah mine uh require uh two temporary purple tokens as well as one of these uh pickaxe um type of species i think they're called fossils fossils okay and then uh the other one is two yellow seals and four book points i happen to have one yellow sealer wow halfway there halfway there all right no book points though and that's pretty much it that's a lot of setup but we're gonna get started uh with naveen so first action first worker where are you gonna go okay for my first action uh i am going to take my explorer with the green token right here and place him out over here on the exploration track and it's gonna allow me to move two spaces so i'm gonna move one skipping over this plus four coins and go here so i'm gonna discover this species uh right over here so this comes out of the game and i get to put one of these nice little clear tokens over that said species so it's right there and the reason why i wanted to do that is part of my objective of course is i need that specific type of species so that's like that the fossil yeah exactly and so that is my action and i don't have to pay anything because i'm the first one on this diary and this token that i just removed i just showed you for demonstration but it actually stays here because monique in the future can go there yes okay so seeing as naveen went to this diary i probably don't want to go there right now because it's gonna cost me three coins and we only start the game with four so i'm going to place my worker on this diary it requires a red seal which i don't have so i'm forced to place my topmost worker which is a purple seal because it's considered wild so i'm going to place this here and going there allows me to take one of the seals from over here to bring to my board so i do need two green for my gold bonus tile so i might as well take that green free one from the top most row here and place it next to my other green one green one since i'll also need more green for this crew card right there okay and that is my turn so it goes back to you okay very good uh i am going to i'm going to take my red crewmate and i'm going to put them over here we're going to discover or create a new worker spot so the one i'm gonna do is i'm actually gonna do this one right over here and the reason why i'm gonna do it this way is if i was to take my red worker and place out here it's gonna cost me three anyway so i might as well discover and create a new spot for just one extra buck and then be able to take the benefit that i see over here so i'm gonna do that right now so i put out one of my personal lenses it's gonna go right over here and it's gonna cost me all four unfortunately all four of my monies they go to the bank so that goes out and by putting this lens out i can ignore this requirement right here this one time i do get these two benefits here so i get to take two seals from this board and one of them is a one discount so i'm gonna go ahead and take i'm gonna take this red one right here uh that'll be my free one and i'm gonna put it here and then the second one i'm gonna take i get a one discount so that means i can take this one or i can take any one of these and not pay so i'm gonna take the discount is either on the price of the row or the price of the player board exactly and it's actually a one discount for the entire purchase so it doesn't have to be just for that second one yeah exactly i have no more money so that's why i'm only focusing on these and not these two rows over here uh let's go ahead and i will take i will take this blue right over here i'll take the cheap one though even though i have a discount i would like it to be expensive for money just in case in the future yes and i will place it over here i don't have anything that requires blue but that's what i'm going to do all right yeah and so now everything is really expensive for me the only places that i can really go to that won't cost me any money is this diary over here but i don't have the required seals for it so what i'm going to do i'm going to use this worker to change turn order so i'm going to place it right there and at the end of the round i'm going to be able to move my turn order to first i guess and i take two coins that is the big kicker with that spot right now yeah this game money is very tight and also just a few housekeeping things we didn't uh remove it during the teach but this shouldn't be here oh yeah yeah or else naveen would be kind of stuck there and also we didn't mention that at the end of this round our our hms beagle scoring condition is six points for every bird specimen that you have so i have not yeah neither do i so we're equal there okay and you're going to get minus points from that bonus for each spot behind the beagle that you are yeah so if you have caught up to the beagle by that point then you'll get the full amount so back to you yeah back to me okay so i have two more workers to place uh let's go ahead and okay i'm gonna go to the museum i'm gonna take my uh this one right here and i'm gonna place it right well let's put yeah let's put this one over here okay okay so i'm gonna do the delivering to the museum action so i can do it up to two times if i had two different species the second time you do it it's gonna cost three but i only have one species to deliver it's gonna be that one that i discovered by exploring here and it's gonna be the one that monique so yeah pointed out the one that's gonna go right there so now i'm gonna get money as well as book points so let's go ahead and get the money first i get one two three four because it's the same uh column in row so i get four dollars back which is great i need that money and then also um i get book points equal to the amount of books that were present in the rows and columns so it's just one and one so two book points total one two yeah that's it yeah that's me all right so i am going to seize the opportunity seizing the day i'm seizing the day i'm going to take this person and i'm going to place them right there so that will allow me to take up to two of the specimens that have already been discovered and placed in the museum so um considering what this round's scoring conditions are i might as well spend the three bucks to take a second one can take both bird species i'm taking two bird species that's right smart so it's gonna be these two so each row by the way if you haven't noticed is a specific type of um of specimen like the top row or the the reptiles and we have fossils birds and i think these are plants plants yeah so i'm gonna go ahead and uh discover these two now these are gonna be useless for actually going to this spot and placing them into the museum these are literally for the the scoring conditions and actually before i end my turn i'm going to say that i put out the the green person instead so i'm going to move this person up here okay to represent that it was that person taken yeah because this spot does not have any criteria or requirements so i respect it it makes sense oh good all right your turn okay well i have one last uh crewmate that can do actions it's gonna be this one and that's the one that has the universal all knowledge one seal symbol that's the purple symbol right here that's printed on our board um so i'm gonna go and unfortunately because monique has already gone to this diary i'm gonna place it right over here this requires a yellow wax seal again purple is wild it acts as anything it's gonna cost me three bucks but i get to put out two of my uh postage stamps out onto the board so i'm going to put out these two right down here and i'll put them well i get to i get to choose where i get to put them so i'm going to put one here and then i'll put the other one this one just is straight up four points this is going to get me another one of these uh purple things which i really need for this and two bucks and this one allows me to move two on the exploration so you have to put them all in one on one envelope all in one envelope so choose one envelope since i really need uh this to be happening for me i'm gonna go ahead and put it right over here then okay i respect that i have two there okay and so for my last action i have this one last worker here with a blue seal next to them so i'm gonna place them over here where the blue seal is required because naveen has already been to this diary i have to pay three coins which are my last three unfortunately and it's going to allow me to move my ship up to two spaces so i'm gonna move my ship uh here for one and then i'm gonna land here for two which allows me to discover this floral specimen sure which is this one technically so may i have a times the same cube thank you very good and because i moved my ship here i'm not going to get docked any points for this uh this round scoring yeah in between where your ship is and where you see these little negative books here that's how much you get docked yes and so i went ahead and placed my specimen over here um and now if it wasn't obvious from when naveen delivered to the museum these don't actually ever leave your player board once you've discovered them you've discovered them it's not like knowledge was lost so that is what is uh done to to show that and that is the end of the round so now we're going to do some some and around stuff the first thing that happens is we move the turn order so i'm gonna move naveen over one and my cube goes right there the next thing that happens is we do the correspondence section here which is uncontested it's just naveen so naveen gets the benefit of the first place here which is one of those temporary purple tiles as well as two coins uh nice and typically we're supposed to go from top to bottom but because there's nothing else there then that that's pretty much it and after that everybody's stamps gets divided uh it up in half so half of your stamps are going to go into this area here before we continue i have just satisfied one of my objectives we are in the rewards phase and you're allowed to satisfy one of those during the time so i have two of these purple temporary knowledge tokens as well as one of these fossils discovered so this has been satisfied so now i can place this on one of these five spots in the top row because it is a silver objective and i'm gonna go ahead and place it right over here uh and that's gonna allow me to discover one of the species it's really tiny here on the island that i'm already on so this is the one island that i'm on i'm not in these two so i get to choose any one of these three over here so i'm gonna take this one it's the furthest away and i'm gonna put this over here showing that i did it nice and that is a reptile and to be clear you can fulfill any number of these objectives either during the actions phase of the round or during the rewards phase like naveen is that right now and that actually gets flipped over yeah that's right so i did it and the reason why is because you can actually only hold one of each type off your board that are uncompleted if you pick up another objective in the future and you still have these uncompleted then one of them must go onto your board and you'll still get to complete it in the future it's just that you have to already assign it ahead of time so i might put it like that and i leave it face up yeah so in the future i can now still complete it but it does take up that spot until it gets completed right so okay so that was that all right so after the correspondence we now score the beagle tile and so the benefit this round is six points per uh bird fossil that you have so i have two of them which is going to get me 12 points typically you would subtract penalties if my boat is not cut up to at least where the beagle is but i was able to catch up in that moment so i'm going to get 12 points can you please move up the track 12 points monique oh boy all right and so now that this has been scored we flip this over and the beagle is going to travel so next round the scoring condition is uh six points for each fossil which is good for you because you have one already and now we do some clean up so we're going to take back all of our workers two three four and then we are going to flush the objectives all four objective tiles that are that have not been taken get removed and another four come into play and then the way that the seals work is you're supposed to remove the whole top row and then all the seals get pushed forward and you fill in any empty spaces with random seals from the bowl we have here which we probably should have all kept faced okay just kind of close your eyes grab three yep go for it i'm not looking okay so these i'm gonna keep these off and we're gonna get four new objective tiles just like that oh interesting so we've got a red and blue and three tenths wow it's going to be hard three tenths huh yeah all right and that's it so now we go into round two starting with me okay i really need some money pretty badly so i'm going to take this uh green explorer type and we're gonna go explore for up to two now i'm not gonna take the full amount because i need money i'm just gonna go up one spot there and that's gonna get me four coins nice so one two three four and that's me your turn well seeing as i didn't like that you know like that no i didn't like that i barely would anywhere apparently okay so i'm gonna take my double red here okay and then go to my special little place over here because the requirement is double red so now i get the benefit over here which is taking two with a one discount total so let's see what i want to do okay the first one i'm gonna take is this red one for free and i'll place it right over here with this red and green okay and then the next one i'm gonna take uh it will be it'll be this yellow over here because part of my gold objective is to have at least two of these seals so i definitely want this uh anywhere up now that i'm gonna place it it's gonna cost me one but because i get a one discount due to this i'm just gonna place it for free and also because naveen went to his own lens spot he doesn't get the benefit of the coin unfortunately not okay so back to me i am going to use this worker yellow okay and i'm going to put my lens somewhere i was really jealous when naveen was able to do it last round so i made it a point to do it this time sure so i'm going to go ahead and unlock this spot and it's going to cost me four coins so it's everything that i own all your money for all my money and it's going to allow me to move my explorer up to three spots immediately yep so let's go so you skip over me i do i'm not a spot so i'm gonna go one two three uh these symbols right here give you points depending on if you're the first person to cross that that that symbol that's you so i get one point before crossing this looks like she burns the bridge i did that's it and now i get to collect that specimen nice which is yeah sure thank you which is this one right over here very good and that's it okay so uh what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna sell to the museum we're gonna use my super one knowledgeable purple okay i'm gonna put it over here and then the one that i have is this one that's discovered and i'm going to place it right over there all right guys this is going to get you three coins one two three yep and then also i believe three book points coins and one two three yep three book points one two three perfect oh and because i did that that now satisfies this one right over here so i have two yellow seals one two and then i have at least four book points one two three four showing right there all right so this gold one so now i get to put on any one of these over here this one just straight up gets you eight points at the end of the game this one right here is it's an ongoing benefit at the end of every single um round when you score the hms beagle the most you'll get is a minus two even if the gap is really wide because all these penalties are additive uh so that's possible this next one though is really nice and it is uh you get a one discount on going to a space where there is a meeple already there so right now we're paying three if i put this down right over here i would only pay two every time i go somewhere where i was or monique this one right over here you immediately take one of these permanent seals these are a permanent wild seal and then you get to place it down and not pay the fee that you see that's there so if i were to take this and put it here i would not pay the two and i'd become silver certified this is also another option yeah now those purple seals do not get factored in whenever you try to resolve these crew cards they have to be the specific colors right and then the last one here it costs five but it basically gets you your extra worker yes for the rest of the game uh i don't have a clue as to what i want to do but i think i'm going to do this one i'm going to do the one where i don't get the penalties on this beagle because i'm so far back and i don't want to deal with it so i'm going to put it right over here at the end of the game it is going to get me four points which is nice but now my permanent penalty is just minus two i don't have to deal with it anymore nice i like it so uh that was that and now i must flip this over signifying that i've completed all right there you go so now back to me i totally forgot that i actually completed one of my bonus tiles as well nice it is this gold one it requires two green seals which i have right there and one of my lenses to be out which i did on that last turn yeah and so i'm gonna place it on one of these um spots i think i'm gonna put it here yeah the penalty free yeah no it's a one dollar discount whenever we share a diary because that three that three coin penalty is pretty painful it's atrocious it is it is so that's that cool and now i'm going to do my actual turn okay so this is probably as good a time as any i'm going to go ahead and put this worker into the museum as well okay and i'm going to deliver two of them really yes so the second one costs three coins so i have to earn that first in the first delivery anytime you take any of these actions you can use the benefits that you gain for completing the action right so you're going to gain three coins hopefully show us let's do the best yeah so the first one i'm going to deliver is this species right here which is this floral yep uh one right there and it's going to get me one two three coins that's exactly the three coins i need to do the second one sure but before i do that i get the book so it's one two three books thank you and then the second one i'm gonna deliver is this one so it's this one right here now that's gonna get me two coins okay and that i actually get to keep yeah that's profit and another four books another one two three four books yeah so one two three four and that's it killing it well i did a thing you did a thing so now it's back to you okay for my action i'm going to take this uh worker and i'm going to place it over here i want to get another objective so i'm going to go there and i'm going to take this one so i get two coins for going to this spot can i have two coins please and then i'm gonna take this one right here because i have it satisfied already so i might as well do it now nice so this one requires uh two red seals i have two red i have more than that and then at least uh discovered or research one species of yellow type and i have that one right there so this comes satisfied and now i get to place it on any one of these spots over here so i am i'm gonna take it but i'm actually not gonna satisfy it yet i'm not gonna satisfy it yet okay i will i will leave it there okay so i have one last uh person and i think i'm going to go over here because i actually do have an objective that needs me to deplete one of my stamps which i haven't done anything yet so in order to go there i have to pay the fee for me it's only two coins now because of my benefit of this space right here and now i get to put out two stamps from any of my stacks in one correspondence location so i think i'm gonna take the two stamps from the middle stack here which is eventually gonna get me a colored seal yeah once i'm able to deplete that at a two discount it's really tiny but yes if she depletes it she gets a seal for a two discount that's right i'm going to put them both on this envelope so hopefully if i'm uncontested i get to move my explorer of two spaces sure and that is it i am done for the round okay so uh my last one is gonna be this one it's a red and green i'm gonna put it up here now i don't have the sweet discount like monique does so i have to pay the three so there goes my three okay and that allows me to move twice up to two times so i have this one and here so i'm gonna go one two i do not get the points here because monique already got it but now i get to put out one of my camps so i'm gonna go ahead and put out my camp here i don't want to pay the one fee so i might as well do this and that allows me to put out two of these uh mail envelopes so i have a stamp sorry here so i i'm gonna clear this one off right over here well actually i'm going to leave that there since i have the benefit of only getting a max 2 penalty i'm going to take from this one over here the exploration and i'm going to just dump it right over here this will give me four points at the end of the round and if i can maintain it i can get four points again so i'll do that uh now i will go ahead and do status do this and satisfy this the two red and the one yellow we spoke about earlier i'm gonna put it right over here flip it over at the end of the game it's worth one but it also allows me to copycat on a campsite that i already have yep okay and then i'm gonna tap the one that i just had which is put out another two envelopes so i'm gonna take i'm gonna take from here and completely clear off this uh so i'm gonna put them here now these are friendly at the end of the round so monique and i will both get the benefit um so what it does is it allows me to move my explorer where i have one up to two spaces so because he completely depleted that stack correct that's the benefit that he gets exactly so um i'm going to go ahead and leapfrog you and i only get to get the benefit again of where i stopped so i'm going to go one two i think i'm going to stop here placing out a camp so this camp is going to go over here and blocked the campsite from me oh is that what you want that's the whole purpose of that good job and then that gives me now the benefit of moving my ship up to two spaces so i might as well go one two even though the penalty whole thing is yeah yeah but it gets me on the board nice uh yep so and because i move that camp off i get two coins that's the benefit there oh my gosh i'm so um that was very completastic you uh i'm impressed that you're able to keep up with everything because i think that was everything i had to withhold that's why i didn't satisfy it right away because i knew i wanted on my next move we needed to put out in order to double that tenth uh benefit so that was me good job thanks and uh that's it so do you put envelopes on your envelopes stamps on the envelopes you know it's true yeah uh so that's the end of the round because neither of us have workers you still stay as first player that's nice that is nice with no money that's not nice okay so now that we're at the end of the round first thing is turn order but neither of us took this spot so nothing changes uh next thing is the correspondence track so starting from the very top naveen has the majority he's uncontested so i get a purple and two coins two coins as if you needed more money i this money is very valuable you can do yeah yes it is it's very valuable uh and then we do this middle section here and we are tied and ties are friendly like navino was mentioning so we both get to do the number one spot which is moving our explorer up to two spaces your first player and first third so i get to go first and unfortunately naveen took that sweet sweet tent spot from me so this means i can either go here take an objective and two points or i can hop over naveen and just take two coins which is not bad because i don't have any money yeah money's good let's just do that okay so i'm gonna go one two and i get two coins that's me so now you get to move your explorer well i'm glad you did that why because now i get to leapfrog you take the two points here and discover a new species are you sure you don't want to go one step further and uh it'll always be there in the future maybe you'll leapfrog me but i'll take the two points okay i need to get on the board here and you discover um that fossil which is it looks like this one yeah i'll take it yep so go ahead and take a yep a clear clear and i put it right over here token there we go perfect and then the last thing is this third correspondence so you are the only one you get four points so now i get six there we go and now that we've completed this we have to discard half of our stamps round it up yeah one goes out one goes out and another one goes out we are mailing things home we are i think you are mailing more than i am and now we are going to resolve the beagle goleta which is six points per fossil i have zero so i don't get any points for that i believe you have a couple yeah i have two of them so i get uh 12 points but it's minus two points because naveen hasn't caught up to the beagle yet yep and so it's 10 points which is still awesome 16. look at you oh man you knew that i have zero so i don't get any points i also don't get doc points either because it's minus two points towards the bonus points that you're earning yes yes and so now we're going to progress the beagle see you later all the way over here and this gets flipped over the next round our uh scoring condition is four points per red seal so i don't have any of those either wow naveen is is planning plotting and planning yeah good job okay so clean up so get your people back to that's yours thank you three and four all right so we have a couple of objectives here that you are going to be able to complete very soon so you should pay attention to these sure this is having ten monies which you might have nine oh my gosh and but you also need two of your lenses out which is very i think you only have one yeah that's expensive this one is 15 points and two of your uh stamps completely cleared off which you're close to doing this is uh two flowers and two tents out do you have any flowers i have one flower and this is two yellow two of the yellow row i do have that and 20 points so you're you're close to a lot of them i am not near it's interesting though because they're not going to be there forever so yeah this round yeah so hmm oh gosh i need to focus okay so that that's it we're entering our third round and it's starting with me uh what to do yeah okay so for my first turn i'm gonna take this person and i'm gonna go to the red diary over here i desperately need seals okay so um this is gonna allow me to take one seal and i think i'm gonna take this free red one and i'm gonna place it i'm gonna place it over here so it's gonna cost me a coin but at least it'll kind of get me along on this row sure so here's my one coin and that's my turn okay so for my turn i'm going to take this worker and place it over here and what this allows me to do is because i have a green and red which would be this green and red right here i can turn in one of these temporary tokens right here and get either seven coins or seven points i'm going to take seven points so we're going to go uh from 16 to 23. and that is my turn all right and so man that spot was blocked for me that's the whole reason why i went there and i need some money so then what i'm gonna do is i'm gonna go here take two coins i'm gonna take this and i'm just going to have it off to the side right there so eventually because i already have the two yellow i'd say 20 points so eventually i'll be able to fulfill that so we both hated hate drafted each other you got the red green combo so i took that and you've hate drafted exactly why i went there for the seven points you're enough to do that well hey you did what you had to do i guess we can call that even then but uh that's me and at least i have some money now that was my biggest concern shoot okay well not a fan of what you just did it was more i mean i was closer to doing to getting that than to getting this i have zero tents on the board and i had the only open spot i have is for a gold bonus tiles that's fair that's fair well uh since you did that i'm gonna take my universal purple guy and put him right over here i'm gonna discover a new uh location that we can go to a new spot awesome so i'm gonna take this and place it right over here so yeah omitting this i get to take this action here but it's going to cost me four coins that's a lot of money yeah a lot of money in this game so it's going to allow you to move your ship up to three spaces yeah so i will i'm gonna go one two three right here placing out another encampment so it's going to be this one that's going to go here it immediately gets me three coins and i get to take an uh an objective over here so this was i didn't want that objective that you took from me so yeah i really wanted it because i could have satisfied it right away well you can satisfy this one i i could but i really want the gold three four five six so this is gold right here this requires two flowers flowers which i don't have yikes you can easily take two flowers by going here and paying them that's that's what yeah i'm looking at that right there so and then the other is have two camps out and i have three camps out so uh i will take i will take that gold one and then i probably will end up doing exactly what he said yeah so this is going to come off the board right now uh the benefit that i just unlocked is i get to move my ship up to two spaces or my explorer one time so if i move my explorer here i get a book point and another objective or i can move one two and get my second explorer out there i will i will move the one the one space right here so i'm gonna take another objective and get a one uh book movement so i go one there okay and i will take i think i will take this objective right here this one is the one where uh ten coins and have two of these symbols out so i have uh one two out no lenses the lenses yeah so i can do that or i can do the one with the clearing off i think i will do this one right here so i'll take that i'm so sorry not not this one what am i doing it's this one oh it's gonna mention yeah this one requires you to be at 15 points i already have that and to have two of these cleared off i only need two more to get cleared off this makes way way way more sense yeah i'll put that i agree yeah definitely okay so that's you i think that was everything what am i gonna do with three coins this guy's hanging out here yeah before we continue we just want to remedy a little situation here so uh the first person who who places a specimen in each of the rows of the museum actually gets this coin yeah that's at the end of the row we haven't been doing that but we can easily remedy that we can yeah nabeen was the first to place this one right here this one that was the very first one place at the beginning of the game so you get this coin and he placed this one that's right yeah this one right here so then you get this coin okay i place two specimens this one and this one so they're both uh on this row so i get that and the person who completes each row gets that extra book so that's what these symbols mean right there right and then that we did not we know this because you bought these two birds right i didn't went here so that means no one has placed out there okay yes so that's remedied all right i'm glad you got that yeah that's a big thing yeah okay i think what i'm gonna do is i'm going to take this worker right here and go to this spot so this is the spot that um i control so i don't get the coin from the bank right and nobody is actually in this diary yet so that was free and so i get to move my my explorer up to three spaces i'm kind of in the mood to earn some money sure a little bit traumatized so i'm gonna go one two three because this is an arrow that goes this way it would be pointless for me to go up this way since naveen already discovered that specimen right this is going to get me five coins from the bank there's a five out there yeah this is this gold one's a five just like that now you got some cash i do not bad nice okay i'm gonna send my uh worker out and i'm gonna go here and i'm gonna discover or i'm sorry i'm gonna do research on uh the two flower species that uh that i don't have so um i will just research i guess it doesn't really matter what does this need yeah i will research um i'll just take these two right over here these two yeah okay so i'm just gonna put these out one and one and that's gonna cost me nothing for the first one i researched and three for the next one so one two and three very good goodbye thank you but because i did that that now satisfies this gold objective very good have two flowers researched and at least two camps i have one two three camps out so this is done so i can place uh any one of these spots here uh do i want an extra worker it's gonna cost me five for an extra worker wow that's all my money goes bye-bye i will take it i will i will place this gold over here it's gonna cost me five bucks three four five and that goes all out okay but now i have an extra worker to work with for this round and all rounds going forward and it's going to go right over here now this worker can only go to spots that do not have a seal requirement this worker does not have any specialty in any of the wax seals of any yes it's in unwaxed unwanted i can however use one of these towards it though okay for my last worker i'm going to go and deliver some mail and now i can put out two stamps i'm definitely going to put the last two stamps that are in this middle row here so that it reveals you know a benefit for me sure yeah i don't put them both on this spot right taking away some points that's good well you get two points yeah let's go and so the benefit of that spot is i can take a step at a sorry i could take a seal at a two coin discount i think i'm gonna take this free blue seal and place it right here so that is the two coins that i'm getting a discount on and so now this unlocks the silver benefits so whenever i put out this worker i can take the the silver benefit whichever spot i went to so i don't know if it's a little bit late in the game i'm not really comboing that well this game which is fine it gets you an extra movement point i mean you're gonna be moving yeah or it gets me an extra um it gets me the silver benefit wherever i choose wherever you choose if i go to the blue one it'll get me that silver or the red one that's silver right right because you can't go to the yellow because there's no yellow seal with that worker exactly okay so that's me i'm actually out of workers entirely so you get to go back to that back to back so i'm gonna send this person that i just newly acquired to go to the museum okay and i have this species here discovered um so i'm going to go ahead and do it so it's uh deliver it deliver yeah deliver so can you see this one yes that one okay so this one's gonna go right there and you're going to get one coin because this column is completely filled unfortunately there's no um column bonus for for completing it but you get a bunch of books so you're gonna get one two three four five so one two three four five which puts you at the seven book mark right so wow that's that's already uh fourteen points mm-hmm i think it's gonna be two times seven we have not completed any uh rows so the multiplier is not as sweet as i would like it but it is what it is you're doing really well as it stands right now it's a little bit hard to calculate scores in game but uh naveen is definitely in the lead currently so i'm actually surprised that you didn't use that worker to take first i still have this worker i could technically do it i shouldn't have said that yeah yeah next time i'll wait because end of the round you know because i only have three bucks so but that worker has so many seals attached to it that would be such a waste well anywhere i go with this worker um it's just expensive it cost me three to go anywhere the good thing is uh i'm so glad i earned one dollar or one coin by placing this out here because it's gonna cost me three coins to do this so there's a yellow associated that's why that worker gets to go there um i'm gonna pay all my money goodbye all three coins yeah all right so i don't know if i should have hired that guy we'll see okay so um what that's gonna let me do is put out two of these and uh i might as well put them here to get some money in the in the end yeah because it's gonna give me two bucks to start the rounds purple one of those temporary tiles i'm not really using that's gonna clear off this right here so i get to move my ship twice so i'm gonna go one two so now i'm caught up with the beagle yeah because i did that i crossed this little barrier here and that allows me to have another explorer out on the map on this island the second island the bean is going to get 12 points without any deduction yes from that so i'm a little upset i put this one here now that i think i wouldn't be i think you're doing really well well i mean i could have gotten this one here with the benefit but you never know how the game's gonna go it's true uh so you know and then because i cleared off two uh whole stacks of stamps and i have at least 15 points the silver objective is completed so now i have the choice of here here or here this one gets me the benefits of no price on the seals this one gets me an extra book at the end of the game plus two points and this one gives me five points and if i chain it with this i get an extra four points plus the eight points there so i yeah the 17 point uh pairing right there and the reason why if it's not clear is this spot itself is worth five points at the end of the game this spot is worth eight points if you do both there's a middle spot right there that gives you an additional four points so it's 17 points total the problem is i don't have any gold i'm working on and i have no idea what's going to come out all right i'm going to take my chances i'll i'll put it right here so i'm going to put that there and put this over so it's going to be five points at the end of the game and then if i can chain it with whatever gold eventually comes out that i take then i'll be worth something so we'll see all right that's me at the end that's the end yeah okay and also i don't know if we ever went over these but these are temporary uh purple seals they act as temporary purple seals which are wild so if i wanted to take my my worker who has only one blue seal attached and say put it in this spot that requires a second blue seal i could spend this temporary uh purple tile to act as that second blue seal exactly yep but that's pretty much the only scenario where you can use those besides going here right okay so end of round stuff okay so return order doesn't change because you never went there uh and now we do the correspondence area so starting with you you get a temporary yep another one one of those chits and two coins there you go thank you uh the next spot is this one and that's the same spot that we did last time it's two two explorer movements and so i'm going to go first and with my two points of aspiration i'm gonna go one two okay for three points okay so three points and if it's not clear there are these tiny arrows that i am certain you can't see from up there and that tells you the direction that your explorer is allowed to move in so that's me okay very good uh so i also get to move too so i'm so glad you cleared off that spot well you can move either this one or this one oh my gosh yeah you've you've opened up and you can i split up the no it has to be the same explorer yeah that is a very tempting thing to do so clever gosh five coins allows me to then do stuff you have a five coins right there i do you're right it'll get you closer to all this other stuff so knowledgeable of things i can just see it right there all right i'm gonna use my two uh explorer movement points to go one two and discover that particular species of plants uh because i cross this over i get two points so one two and that's the first first person to do that gets that yeah and so that is this one yep this one right here this one yep the one that we have not discovered at the museum so and that is that okay so then the last uh envelope here just gives you points so four points for me and two points for you okay so you're right at 20 and two for me and then these stamps get oh sorry i'll remove mine you have your stamps rounded up so this has to come out right i think that comes out yep yeah and uh since we're still in the rewards phase of the round i can complete this one so this required me to have two of the yellow specimens which i have right there and at least 20 points which is exactly what you got yes you know i've been thinking about this and i don't know and maybe you can tell me if you're following along but i don't know if it's really worth it to get that fifth worker this late in the game the second to last round so there's two more rounds the worker is at least good for four dollars if you go to this spot which anybody can go to or if you take turn order which is two dollars yeah but it's gonna take five dollars out of my current economy which is kind of a big deal so what i'm going to do is i'm just going to place it right here because i want my own chance at securing that 17 points like naveen did yeah so uh you're going to flip it over i'm flipping it over and that's that's me okay and so now we do the beagle the beagle rewards which you are just gonna clean up yeah so it's uh for every red seal i have three of them times four so it's twelve and then my ship is actually met up with the beagle so this whole minus point and so that gets me 12 points so 27 all the way to 39. nice yeah oh my gosh this is not looking good uh okay and then now well i typically get four points also but because my ship is all the way over here and i get minus five to that you never go in the negatives right nice so it's getting zero so we flip that over and we move the beagle see you later bagel over there and so next round you're gonna get five points for every uh one of your own lenses that are out on the board so you're doing well in that category as well let's do it all right and so now we're gonna do some cleanup so let's pick take back our workers my workers three you can pass me that last one over there sure so i have five workers now you do there you go gosh and then we also have to move the seals as well yep we clear off the objectives and we get four new ones this is the only seal that gets removed so it goes out and then we shift everything up yeah here you go if you want to choose the next three yeah it's just three we didn't go seal heavy this past round and the new objectives now there are the exact number of objectives for the entire game so it's going to be you know two of each type per round so that's another good way to keep track of the round that you're on yep okay and so the two gold objectives one is have your ship caught up to the beagle and have two of the blue the blue specimen not happening which is not yeah for anyone the other gold one is having two of the reptile specimens as well as at least nine books and then the silver ones is having three of those temporary purple chits but you must also be caught up to the bagel and then the other one is two yellow and at least one of the blue gosh these are all hard very hard all right then so i was really hoping for that gold you know yeah i know i'm sorry didn't work out but uh i get to go first because we still haven't changed turn order sure and trying to think of what i wanted to do here okay and so for my first turn i'm going to take this worker and i'm going to put out one of my steels out onto the board one of my lenses nice and i'm going to place it here so it's going to cost me five coins so let's do that and it's going to allow me to take two uh seals two two colored steel waxes from the board and at a three coin discount let's take a blue and a yellow okay so these two are free but i'm going to put the yellow one right here nice and the blue one right here and that's the three coin discount that i'm gonna take and so because i've reached this level on this row it's gonna get me three points at the end of the game nice okay so since you did that i think with my green red i'm gonna take this one over here and i need the money i'm going to turn this in for seven coins please nice yep six seven there you go that's my turn gosh i keep forgetting that that spot is there yeah hey i was nervous that you're gonna take it i thought you're gonna take it okay i'm gonna go here okay i'm taking two coins and an objective which is gonna be this one and because i already have a silver objective that i haven't completed yet i have to assign it to one of these and i'm just gonna put it right there okay once it gets completed then i'm going to flip it over nice yeah cool all right so for me i'm gonna go to this diary over here and i'm gonna use i'm gonna use my wild person and i'm going to put it right over here it's not going to cost me anything because nobody's there and i'm going to go on this island and we're going to go one two discovering uh this one over here so i get three points for crossing this little barrier do you mind moving me sorry sure one two three forty two and then now i've discovered uh this particular one which is kind of like a i don't know what that looks like it's a puzzle a little fossil like a molly like a mollusk like the other mollusk okay so that's gonna go right over here and that is my turn all right so with this person i'm going to go to this spot which allows me to take a specimen that's already been researched researched so i'm going to take this one okay so i might have one of those please and that is going to allow me to complete uh both of my silver objectives nice put that right there because this one just requires me to have a reptile and a one completed stack this is actually one of my starting objectives that i'm now only completing in the fourth round and so i've completed one stack and i have this reptile right there so this gets flipped over and that's gonna secure me this pairing right here and the second objective tile is the the one i newly acquired that requires me to have two yellow wax seals which i do and any one of the blue column which is the one that i just picked up nice so i completed this and now i can put it out so i think the best thing is to go here because the last one require lets me repeat a tent benefit which i did not get out at all so i'm going to put this here so seals will be so you don't have to pay this price i don't have to pay the road yeah the road price and it's going to get me two points at the end of the game solid that's it cool so back to you okay back to me so there was a reason ah yes okay so i'm gonna go i'm gonna send this guy off to the museum my uh helper okay and i'm going to uh do both of them but we'll do one at a time okay so let's go ahead and just do this one right here this green okay okay so that's going to get me one coin and then it's going to give me a subset but it's gonna get you one two three four five six six books because you completed the row right so one two three four five six and just make a note that this track snakes when you when you play this game okay and then because i'm here i'm gonna take the option of uh turning in three coins to do another one okay and i'm gonna do this blue one that i recently acquired when i went here and that's gonna go there this one yep exactly okay so this is gonna get you another coin one coin oh and then a set of books i think it's another this is one two three four five six oh my gosh one two three four five six oh my god i'm getting destroyed who knew that i learned from you you died expert right here i was a biology major of course if only maybe that's what it is charles darwin could see you today you would make him so proud okay and so with my last worker i'm gonna go over here to this spot nice it's my own spot so i don't get a coin from the bank and um because i've reached the silver uh spot in this row i also get this silver benefit which is one additional explorer movement so it's gonna be four total four total so i'm gonna go uh one two three four so i'm gonna get three points for crossing this first yep and then four points because that's what that spot is where i stopped seven so you're at 20 you're going to go to 27 yes okay and that's it that is my entire round all right so with my turn i am going to take this one and it's free so i'm gonna put it over here that is free i'm gonna put it over there and i'll put out uh two pieces of mail mail call and uh let's put the mail unfortunately i'll just put them right here oh you mean unfortunately well because that's great you know i just want one there and then one here to tell you but i'll put them here yeah and they have to go in the same yeah i gotta go there okay so i'll put them there if you were gold certified you could put them in different uh different environments i'm not anywhere close to certain well i guess i'm kind of close here to certification but i don't know if it's called certification by the way we'll call it certification why not all right so uh i think that was that term yeah you get to go again wow all right well i really like those gold uh those gold objectives so i'm just gonna put this guy out over here and take two coins and then i'll take a gold objective the one that i think i can complete would be that one exactly who's gonna catch up to the beagle well you know i'm not too far one two three four but my thing only gets me one two three it's gonna get me shy so there's no way i'm gonna do it so i'll keep that there uh this one requires me to have two of those like claw hands reptile reptile symbols and nine books i definitely have at least nine books uh in this area here and that's nine actual books right okay so i wouldn't have yeah that's all the way over here nine right there okay all right so that is the end of the round we are going to go into the rewards phase starting actually starting with turn order but that doesn't change so now starting with the correspondences you get two coins and one of those purple another one temporary i'll take it that you're just kind of cleaning up on i'll take it and then um you also get two movements with your explorer okay so with the two explorer movements i'm gonna go to this middle island over here and i will go one two so i'm gonna stop at this spot right here this allows me to take a seal and uh not pay any of the fees associated so i'll just take this really expensive green one here and place it on my most expensive spot right over here which gets me a green and now i'm silver certified that's me nice you took the most expensive one just to stick it to the man yeah i thought the man needed it i support that okay and the last male here is uh four points just four points one two three four and i'm in desperate need of points because naveen you're gonna get eight points with this i am ah okay so now we take out um half of our stamps round it up and then we go into the beagle so it's five points per lens that you have out i have two of them which gets me 10 points however my beagle or my ship is all the way over here so i'm gonna lose four plus three plus two which is nine points netting me one one point okay so you're at 32 boom and naveen okay and for me i have two lenses here and here uh so two times five is ten points uh normally it because where my beagle where the beagle is relative to where i am it's minus four but because i have this token here it's only gonna be minus two meaning i get eight points total yes because that is the reward of that uh bonus tile spot it's working out so eight points so you're right at 50. so you can't get you can't earn any more points or else you're not gonna have a place on the score track no no so anywho that's not true so let's do our clean up and take back our workers so this flip's over yes that flips over the beagle moves to the final spot and for the final round it's gonna be four points per tenth which i have zero on the board and you have three good jobs three not bad for more so let's take our workers back one two i think i have five three four okay four and five and that extra worker is working out and then we are going to switch these out so i'm going to remove these we just remove this one yep everything else gets pushed forward sure and our final bonus tiles come out anything we can do here well let's see they look kind of difficult so for the silver ones all you need is one flower and one reptile specimen for one and for the other it's a feather and a um fossil nice specimen so you can yeah either of us can basically just complete oh you don't know i don't know you don't have a feather that's not me actually i don't have a fossil what am i saying nice anywho so that's that and then the gold ones are this one requires three of those lenses a yellow and a green wax seal and this one requires two of the red column specimen and 14 coins so that is expensive very expensive okay so for my first turn i'm going to take this person and go to the green okay so you get that that's not a certified person no it's the wild yes so you get two movements two movement points i'm gonna move this explorer one two okay which crosses this uh threshold so i get four points for that and three points for the spot i landed on plus three coins yeah so seven points and three coins okay so 39 39 yeah and three coins so take five and get back two that's it okay uh i'm gonna do the exact same thing i'm gonna take my purple and go here and i'm gonna pay three one two three there you go and then i'm gonna move just across this border so i can discover the species of reptile here and it's gonna give me four points so we're gonna go here and then i discover this species right over here and so let me go ahead and take a little there's a little 50 marker chip that we have here i believe in the final version of the board there's going to be um like an area where you can put a cube on there to to signify that you've earned at least 50 points yep exactly yeah and our version of the board it's not not like that we don't have that no speaking of our version of the board the final version i believe is going to be double-sided so that you can play depending on player count because in the uh only in the four-player game is this red kind of ribbon down the middle of the book significant because it helps divide the two sections in in terms of paying the the penalties okay and so for my next turn i'm going to put this person uh over here before naveen gets that spot so that requires the green and the red and i have uh the green thread here i have earned the silver distinction ah so i also get this benefit here which is two additional coins but first i have to spend this okay to get seven points yeah so i'm gonna go to 46 and i get two coins nice and that's me all right i'll take my guy over here the one that um doesn't have any distinguishments that has no seams we're gonna go over here okay uh because i just recently discovered this one i'm gonna place it right over here this one nice so it's going to be this one that's a lot of this one yeah this reptile and there's no money associated because everything's full but i'm going to get one two three four yep five six seven in terms of uh the books so you're gonna go one two three four five six seven oh my gosh okay scores are looking closer but nabin is going to absolutely clean up with the theory of evolution i'm trying which is funny because i know i warned in the beginning that like you need to not ignore this and i totally ignored it mm-hmm so i guess i get what i just do yeah that's me right there okay so for this worker i'm gonna put this worker here okay which lets me uh put one of my seals out on the board unfortunately these reward tiles were flipped that would have been nice oh yeah yeah so i'm gonna put this one here which is gonna cost me five coins and this lets me take the benefit of um take the action does we take the action of a spot that has not been unlocked with a lens tile yet so i'm going to take this action which lets me just dump four uh stamps in one and one envelope so i'm gonna do this top one here and dump all four of these stamps right here and because i completely depleted one of my stacks i get to move i get to take the benefit which is moving my explorer up to two spaces and so will you so you can go here or here basically i don't really care about moving my yeah the ship doesn't really help you too much i think i'm just going to go one two and get the six points so this is going to go to 52. yep you move me over there please you're right behind me thank you there you go tell you that's before this kind of scoring okay for me i'm gonna take this uh this one down here and i'm gonna add one of these to represent a second blue because i'm gonna put it here onto my own thing so it's gonna cost me three because we're all in this diary right there so that's my three uh this is gonna be that extra blue that i don't have with this person right there okay and so that allows me to move my ship um i'm not distinguished or anything here so i get to move my ship up to three times so i'm gonna go one two three and put out another camp nice i'm gonna put out this camp right over here and put it on this spot it's gonna cost me one extra dollar because there is a cost to do this camp it's gonna go there and the benefits i have as i get one victory point i also get to put out up to three of my mail into space uh i'll just put two here because there's no way it can beat you there you completely depleted all of your mail i did wow and so now um the benefit i get is i get to take one of these at a discount of two you know this is a game where you can't do it all but it seems like naveen is doing it all i'm trying with the exception of your crew cards that's literally the only thing so i will uh dip in i know yeah the crew well now i'm actually going to dip in right now no way yeah yeah so i'm going to take that it's over go home bye go home everybody i'm going to take this one and i'm gonna put it right over here to to get me three points at the end of the game okay it's gonna cost me three but i get a discount of two so i can get one dollar back please no it's gonna cost you three mm-hmm but you discounted two so you give me a five yeah so i can't get one dollar back i'm sorry four dollars back okay yes i apologize yes yes i wasn't sure uh if i was missing something there yeah you keep one i take three yeah i will keep one there you go i'll take it and because i cleared off this tent right over here i get one of these two benefits i can either put out stamps which obviously i don't have anymore or i can uh get a discount of the seals of two which is what it says right over here so take one seal once you'll have a discount of two so for the whole action so i will do that i'm gonna take this one right over here so my discount will be instead of paying this 2 i'm just going to say i don't pay that and this green seal is going to go right over here it's going to cover up that 3 which is good because it's going to be a 6 at the end of the game that's going to cost me now though three so it leaves me with just one buck so that goes out nice and i have a couple different things that have been uh completed so this one right over here is completed i have two uh reptiles and at least nine books so i'm gonna put that right over here and then secured it i secured it it took you to the to the end there but you know i actually did it on the last turn but but yeah so you know you know yeah okay and uh funny thing is by doing this i have completed both of these but i will take the benefit of this one you cannot double dip on these cards uh this card these cards cannot represent you know all the makeup of just one row so this row right so what he means is it must be different rows each card can only be for one specific row exactly yeah so it's going to be this one right over here three green one yellow and one red three green one yellow one red this allows me to take one of these objectives and just immediately have it completed so i'm gonna go ahead and flip that over flip this over and so i'll just take this one right over here and say i completed it and i'm gonna put it right over here so at the end of the game what it is it's two points plus one extra book for that whole multiplier that we have out here uh so that is that that book is going to get you take five three five points yeah okay for my very last move here i'm gonna put this worker who has a blue and a yellow seal over here which i've been ignoring the whole time because i i do want to go up on the multipliers but i don't want to add more stuff i don't add more stuff because it's just getting to me more points so he went there and i get to go one two three so it's at least it gets me uh two more books that's nice yeah and that's it that is my entire game it did cost you two to go there because this diary that's right because not bad i almost didn't pay it yeah you did great okay so i have two more workers um wow if i go here it's free that's true and you have uh you get to do the gold and the silver distinction wow but i don't think that's really working yeah it's not much going on over there yeah uh i need some money so because i really want to go here to move along this exploration track so i'm just gonna go get some money uh let's see so if i take this one and i'll take i'll just go over here and i'll get two coins i will take one of these and let me see do i have this you don't have a oh actually yeah it this requires a flower and a uh claw reptile which i have uh one of these and i have one of these so it's gonna come and i'll just say it's completed it's gonna go here now it's to make seals uh free in terms of these prices because that's what this benefit is but it's two points at the end of the game is really why i'm i'm doing it so uh that is that turn and now for my very last turn yeah i'm gonna go up here okay and i'm gonna pay the three dollars that i have to do this you don't wanna go here uh no so the reason why is because i only want two movement points one two and then i am losing here so i get one extra movement and i'll go here if you go here because you have a goal distinction you get three four movement points plus you can stop because usually when you do the explore track you have to use up all your movement points and you get the benefit of wherever you stop but because this goal distinction exists here you can do like a stopover where you can stop a little bit early take that benefit and then continue your full movement you get one stop over i would definitely like to do that yeah that's way better yes okay i totally i've never been distinguished in this game congratulations thank you you earned it well yes i will take you up on that offer thank you for pointing that out so this is three so three goes to the bank so you put your person there instead yeah so this person's actually here monique gets a dollar oh yeah i get a dollar i've not been able to use it but it's still okay so let's uh so what this means is i get one two three four movement points and then i can stop along the way normally it's where you end up but this time now it's where i stopped so um so i can go one i'll this will be my stopover and then i'll stop here yep so because you did a stop over here you get three one two three and that gets you to that next uh threshold and then your true stop was here for six points and i go to uh 61 yeah okay nice very good and that's it that is the end so we still do the rewards phase we just don't do the cleanup because it's the final round so starting with uh turn order was never moved since the beginning you made it work we're being second you know what player the whole time you're right yeah bob thanks so nobody's here i have the majority here so i get two movement points on the explorer track which i'm just going to take to go all the way here so this final spot on this island gets you four points and anybody can take the four points but if you're the first person to go there you get three additional points right so seven yeah you're at nine so uh you get your one my one yeah this is perfect so now i get to slip in here so this gives me five plus i'm the first one there's three so i get eight points so very similar to my spot 19 better and then you are uncontested here so you get an additional four another four okay one two three four okay and then now we do the uh the beagle so the beagle gets you four points per tenth i have zero i did not put any tenths out onto the board i have four tenths one two three four so it's 16 but because your ship is here but you have a max penalty of two so it's uh 14 points so 14 plus 23 is 37 so that's really 87 yeah 87 going into the uh the final scoring so that's really good so now that that's done we have completely ended the game we are now going to go into final scoring which is just going to be all the points that we have on our player board and all the points that we get from the theory of evolution so let's start with the player board um since i was first player going into the last round i'll just go first and so first thing that i want to score is our objective tiles so i get two points for this one two points for this one so it's four and then 17 total for this one because it's five plus eight plus four for getting both so 19 21 so you're uh this uh so you're adding 30. so you're at 80 total uh-huh okay and then i believe the only other points i did not get the five points for for putting out my last ten put out any tense but i do get three points for oh for having that card this yeah for this seal yep so it's just an additional three points so one two three okay and you okay so for me uh okay so i have four so one plus three so four five six seven eight nine ten eleven twelve thirteen plus seven plus seven thirty thirty point seven oh my gosh so it's gonna be 67 so fifty so 17 17 yes but you get another one of those 50 flips over to 100 so you have 100 117 117 so far okay and then uh you also get points for oh yeah so i have a the three and the six i get another nine points so yep so it's gonna be 26. okay okay and then now we're going to score the behemoth that is the theory of evolution track so first thing is we need to calculate our multiplier there's always a base of two plus one per row that's been completed so we have three completed rows so it's five times the number of books that you actually have on your book track now you also have the initial book i do have an additional book here yeah so i do not have that but i have the seven books so it's seven times five is what we said thirty-five so thirty-five thirty-five plus thirty-three is sixty-eight that's fifteen eighteen eighteen eighteen so you're 118. that's my final score i believe okay so 126. so you're 14 plus 1 is 15 15. 15 times 5. 75. 75. 75. yeah oh my gosh all right then so that is 75 points that will get you to right there yeah plus a hundred yeah so that is uh so 201. 201 wow you obliterated me by what's what's a hundred minus eighteen eighty-three point three [Laughter] i did something wow let me see if there's anything else nope that's it so there's no other score if you have any leftover coins they are actually a second tiebreaker second time right not even the first the first time breaker is whoever is further along on the theory of evolution track which still would have been you and so that's the final score it's um me i am at 118 to naveen's 20101 i did it i finally beat you good job i finally beat her charles darwin would be so proud he would be very proud anyway well that was it okay one more high five good job all right so we just finished our two-player playthrough of darwin's journey this is uh a newer one coming to kickstarter from thunder griff games uh what do you think it's it's a doozy i really really enjoyed it yeah it's uh it makes my brain hurt you know there there's so much to do and like trying to figure out how to do them makes me feel good when i'm doing well and terrible and i'm not yeah but it's it's it's quite interesting uh i feel like i haven't played maybe enough of these designers games to do like a true comparison of the designing style we have played a handful of their games but just not a lot in secession i mean yeah like we haven't been completely engrossed by their games so we played like marco polo ii um sulkin sulkin yeah renaissance right none of them really bear any resemblance to this one so it's it felt refreshing to play this game what about you yeah i mean it's a work replacement game uh you know you can see everything that you need to do it's one of those games where money's tight and it gets really difficult so i think it's really really interesting i um i set out thinking i was gonna just do kind of one or two things and i ended up finding ways and combos where i could do a lot of things and i thought that was pretty interesting yeah that's that's that's an interesting point so this is one of those games where it's hard to do it all i mean i know we played a whole game where naveen pretty much almost did it all and that's not usual i it's probably partially due to my the way that i played and how i probably just didn't defend enough but this is a game where it's hard to do to do everything and you're going to try and uh if you can great doesn't score you a lot of points but it's it's tough in that regards but it's also not very punishing so it's it's an interesting balance so anyway let's start with theme so this is about charles darwin but also kind of only about charles darwin's about his dreams right yeah you're uh you're documenting his adventures in the galapagos islands his journey but um how did you feel about the theme you know i like this theme uh i'm uh i'm a biosci major in college and so my whole education is basically around biology so this is the guy this is the one that you you learn about so um of course it's a euro you know you're putting out little meeples and you know you're doing things but it's fairly thematic you know you're documenting things in your in your journals you are writing letters probably about your adventures you are exploring these different islands discovering species and then uh taking them to the museum so you can showcase these species and eventually formulating some sort of theory so there is a theme in there um i am very loose when it comes to themes so you know for me i like it and yourself yeah we are eurogamers like true and true and so we don't mind it when uh themes are not you know exactly what they what other people expect them to be sure but i really like this theme because it's different you know it's it's very cute but it still works you know as much as of a theme that you can apply to charles darwin they were able to do in this pretty dry euro game fairly dry it's fairly dry but it's not as dry as some of your games can be sure and if you you know follow our channel especially naveen we really like dry yogurt he loves them and so this is probably one of the drier ones that we've played in the past six months i want to say sure so when we pulled this out and started playing it this was really quite quite a joy i feel like nowadays especially the games that are coming out are a lot more rich you know they put a lot more emphasis on on that kind of stuff and they kind of went away from the dry euro background but a lot of the games that are a little bit older yeah are kind of like this right it's like mechanics just like a lot of mechanics on a board and we we really kind of missed that yeah about gaming in the past year so this is the first one that we were like wow this is this is like the older stuff yeah yeah right yep totally it's like a revamped uh but also new classic yeah it's like a classic but also has you know new innovative mechanics i suppose in terms of the components and the production value now this is a prototype copy but it's a very high quality prototype for speaking on a prototype this is very good so it tells me that they they are on the right track uh i will say in this game components are fine you know everything's fine the wood is fine the chits are fine uh iconography in this game uh is a little bit difficult um you're gonna be referring to the rule book a lot uh so far again this is all prototype stuff so they're gonna have some time to kind of hash this stuff out but on initial thoughts from what i see right here iconography could be a little bit better sometimes you get benefits that you're like i don't quite know what that benefit is so i don't want to tell or ask my opponent hey what's that benefit because clearly i'm looking into doing that action uh so you're going to constantly be wanting to refer to the rule book so i mean what would be ideal is if uh they they put out a kind of like a one pager or even just the back of the rule book that has a complete index of all the symbols because so far what we've seen it they doesn't seem like they have it yet you have to explo right now you have to explore in the rule book to find the symbols and it'd be nice to just have it clean and i'm sure after like a multiple plays you will be totally fine with the symbols but we played this a few times now and we're still kind of looking up these symbols so that can be a little bit tough but uh as far like like navin said all the components are fine the board is busy so you look at the board and there's just like a lot of stuff everywhere the diaries are are nicely delineated that's probably the easiest part yeah to see yeah so that's not a problem it's i guess it's more of a map yes this map gets kind of clustered it's very clustered it's a web they're trying to get a lot of information on a small area so they had things kind of looping back and forth like that and the arrows are tiny and you have to follow the arrows to see what direction you're going in right and then the other thing is the books you go up the book track some things get you an extra book which is different from just going up the book track because the actual book symbols are on the track i don't know that part is just a little bit uh inconsistent sure but otherwise everything else is fine in terms of player count now we've played this game at two and three yes we haven't had the opportunity to play at higher player accounts i believe they have this available just through their website on top simulator so if you wanted to demo it at different player accounts you can i will say that that penalty for going to the same diary is painful it's very painful and a two-player game it's three coins in a three-player game it's two chords which is easier i mean it's less open than a two-player game but like after a while you see the important spaces yeah you're gonna be going there anyway i think it still scales well between the two and three player game that we played yeah surprisingly when i first saw i was like three coin penalty oh my gosh but now it's like okay i find that it's harder to defend against your opponent in a two-player game sure yeah like uh once they start snowballing the thing about this game is once opportunities start to arise you kind of fall into this like reward system of more and more opportunities and so if your opponent is already on this track of rewards then it's harder to catch up especially if it's happening through the museum because if i've already discovered and and placed out the the species in the museum there's no opportunity for you now to go do that yeah it's been done if i continue to put more stuff in the museum i'm only going to continue to earn him more points so that is a little bit more of a runaway leader the museum aspect yeah any game that has a multiplier like a big multiplier like that at the end you know you know you need to focus on that but there's only so many opportunities so if you get cut off because you weren't able to go to the diary because you didn't have the money in time then i do go find that species and then now i'm getting these benefits you know cascading benefits so right there's a little bit of that so in terms of replayability the game is quite variable because the special action tiles uh there are a lot of them you know that the game comes with there's like 11 yeah and then you always pull a random combination of them for for that area of the board the the crew cards are also going to very well lead and these can have a huge impact on your game yeah they can these cards are drafted at the beginning of the game before before you even start the game right so that all of that can can change the way that you experience the game this game though can cause significant analysis paralysis because of every decision you make is so it's so tight because it impacts the rest of your game you're trying to get a certain combination of your seals to put out onto your board in order to satisfy these crew members but also in order to be eligible for some of these other action spaces which worker do you put out and when you know there's a lot of different um bunch of variables you know they have to come together the decision space is very complicated structure of the game the turn structure and the action spaces are not complicated at all they're actually quite straightforward but the decision space in trying to do your best can be complicated and because of that it can cause a lot of analysis process which can make the game go very long yeah and you can plan only so far because sometimes you're like okay i have enough money to do this so as long as monique doesn't go there then i can do this this and this but then as soon as monique does go there it's like okay now i have to really re realize like okay i have to go plan b which then turns into plan c so it gets it gets a little bit you know slowed down a little bit because you're thinking about these different possibilities and so you have to factor all of them in because you can't just be gung-ho on just one strategy and the reason why i mentioned this during replayability is because for some people that might be a barrier to replaying it over and over and over again right and or it might not matter to you but either way this game can be long and so in terms of the mechanics you know there is there's a lot going on uh every different action space is a different type of mechanic right you have the the different islands that you're exploring and each of these islands can do several different things for you including unlocking the other mechanics of the game which is putting out more stamps or putting out the tents yes which do not ignore the tents yeah don't ignore them they were really important in this game also because it was an end of round scoring so that's why i kind of made it like a thing like okay if i can get these tents going towards the end of the game because that's when it's really important then you know but yes the tents are very helpful helpful in doing all those other types of actions right uh the seals getting you know that that to me is one of the more interesting parts of the game figuring out what color combination of seals to put and where to put them in order to fulfill which crew card because you're not gonna be able to fulfill all three i don't know that i just feel like that that's not gonna be a thing unless you work on only that right the entire game yeah and so you're gonna you're trying to figure out which crew card is going to be most advantageous to you in that moment they not only do that but they also dictate which action spaces you're allowed to go and the strength of those action spaces so that to me is really interesting but at the end of the day this game rewards people who can find combinations so on your turn if you can do this thing that allow you to unlock this thing that allow you to put this out which is what an naveen was doing a lot of times and which you'll primarily find in the explorer the explora islands part of the board then you can probably do really well um the other thing is a theory of evolution track you cannot ignore it but you need to do it early you need to have a headache you have to be like head to head with whoever's in the lead kind of early or else they're going to keep pushing up on that track and you're going to keep earning them points by putting specimens that's a huge component of the points in this game but also the economy is really tough because not only are you paying penalties but it's just hard to earn money in general yeah you can earn money by going up on these uh on the explorer tracks but all of the other benefits are just so much more enticing yes that you almost always skip those spaces although i did it like twice hence the ap part that that's another aspect of it where do i go like do i really need this money now can i get it any other way okay maybe i should just stop here take the money yeah yeah in a four-player game you start the board empty in the museum space and so getting money is really easy to do if you're able to to discover a specimen and deliver it early yep because you pretty much only get money right you get the money for the row and the column that you put the investment in books yeah you're pretty much getting like six coins to start the game a lower player counts it's harder to do that it's harder to earn that kind of money yeah this game for a euro game is not really punishing and i thought that was really interesting because in a lot of euro games you have to feed your people or or you just have if you don't do this then you get docked points and that beagle track that you're referring to that isn't a very easy place where they could have uh docked you points where it could have been a penalty like if you're not at least as far as the beagle you get those minus points regardless right as of whether or not you actually earned those bonus points from that reward title it doesn't go into the negatives but they didn't do that yeah they made it so that you only get doc points from the points that you earn from the bonus title right so i thought that was interesting it's not a very punishing euro but also you still feel that sense of fomo when you see other people succeeding further than you the punishing part is the is the paying to go to a space that somebody's occupied before that is the most punishing part the economy with the money is the hardest part but in terms of the points not so much otherwise final thoughts yeah so final thoughts uh so the first time we ever played it it was super exciting like uh just understanding like what are the different pathways you can go down and seeing this you know widespread choices uh now that we've played it several times i've now honed in a little bit more on what's going on and how to kind of mitigate certain things so it is a game that has is even growing more and more on me and i'm excited to play it some more about yourself yeah yeah i agree i know you mean the very first time we played it it was like this fresh new design that we haven't really you know experienced a lot of these different mechanics so that that first play of a new game of something fresh definitely added to that like true excitement yeah um ever since then i think my enjoyment of it has only decreased by just a little bit and it's just kind of removed that that initial excitement layer but i still really like this game i think it is awesome i think that it's maybe slightly too too long like slightly longer than i would have liked when you hear five rounds you're like oh it's going to be pretty short but then for some reason it kind of goes just a little bit longer it goes really long and that's because of that decision-making it's because of the players at the table not necessarily the game so just a little bit longer than i would have liked but the mechanics and the and how i feel when i'm playing and this the way that i'm making my decisions i really really enjoy i think it's interesting that they made a theme about charles darwin after doing one about newton yeah yeah it's like who's the third one gonna be yeah yeah yeah right um so anyway that was darwin's journey published by thunder griff games coming to kickstarter on january 5th thank you all so much for watching the video we will leave all the information for the kickstarter down below as soon as we have it and if you'd like to see more videos like this please consider subscribing thank you [Music] bye you

Channel: Before You Play

Views: 23,977

Keywords: Darwin's Journey, Darwin's journey game, darwin's journey board game, simone luciani, how to play darwin's journey, darwin's journey review, Darwin's Journey playthrough, how to play darwins journey, darwins journey board game, darwins journey review, darwins journey playthrough, darwins journey board game review, darwins journey game, darwins journey tutorial, darwins journey gameplay, darwins journey thoughts, darwins journey runthrough, darwin's journey overview, boardgames

Id: hR5VCy7GUvI

Length: 100min 37sec (6037 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 04 2021