ELFENLAND
Amigo spiel+ Freizeit GmbH | £19.99 | Family 2-6 Players | 60 minutes age 10+ | amigo-spiele.de
What’s perhaps most interesting about re-visiting Alan R. Moon’s Spiel des Jahres winner Elfenland via this reprint of the 1998 classic is seeing the early origins of his later tabletop evolution (and, arguably, perfection) of the travelling salesman problem in Ticket to Ride.
Like Ticket to Ride, Elfenland tasks players with collecting cards in order to travel from point to point around a grand map. However, unlike in the later title, Elfenland players are making the journey themselves, represented by a wooden elf boot. They pick up cards and tokens reflecting six fantastical travel options– giant pig, dragon, troll wagon, unicorn, magic cloud and elfcycle – with the seventh card type, raft, not requiring a token to move but costing extra cards to cross lakes or head upstream.