Journey to the Promised Land - Review

Journey to the Promised Land

Designed by: Mike Drysdale

Published by: Pioneer Plus/Cedar Fort

The Game

Journey to the Promised Land is a board game for two to four players and can accommodate players as young as 5 years old (with a little parental help). The game sets up quickly and plays in about fifteen to twenty minutes (great for shorter attention spans).

(Setup)

In Journey to the Promised Land players are trying to be the first player to get from the Starting tile to the Promised Land tile. This is accomplished by sailing, swapping, and rotating your way across the modular board.

After randomly setting up the nine water tiles in a three by three grid players choose a starting player. On a player’s turn they get a total of three rolls of the five game dice. In between rolls he can choose to keep any number of dice and re-roll the remaining. On the final roll he must keep all the results shown. Any time an “X” is rolled he cannot re-roll that dice and must set it aside.

(Dice)

The player then resolves the dice rolls by taking the corresponding actions on the dice. There are four possible actions; Sail, Swap, Rotate, and Faith. Sailing allows the player to move his ship one or more spaces. Swapping allows the player to swap one or more adjacent tiles. Rotating allows the player to rotate a tile 90 degrees or more. Lastly a player can collect faith tokens for their Liahona tile. A full Liahona (five faith tokens) is required to make the final move from a sea tile to the Promised Land.

Play continues in a similar fashion until one player has made it to the Promised Land and that player is the winner!

(The image is flipped around - Red is the winner!)

The Review

As mentioned above the game sets up quickly and plays quickly. It is also easy to teach and easy to play making it a great game for the whole family.

Although the game is primarily luck based - due to the dice rolls - there are elements of strategy as you decide what dice to keep and what tiles to manipulate.

The game also offers a degree of replay-ability as the board is modular and sets up different each time.

My only complaint about the game is the components. I wish there would have been ships (I may pick some up) and the box is kinda flimsy.

This is a great game for the whole family and I would recommend it. I am giving it 4 out of 5 stars.

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