An exciting outdoor adventure awaits! Build kayaking, hiking, and biking trails in this challenging tile-laying game of Trailblazers by Bitewing Games. Players start with three camps from which they try to build the longest matching nature trails that loop back to their base camps. There are three colors of camps and trails; orange for biking, blue for kayaking, and brown for hiking. Gain points for the length of each completed matching trail that loops back to its base camp. It sounds simple, and although it is rather easy to learn, the challenge soon presents itself as your trail network builds!
Over four rounds of game play, you will place all three of your colored base camps and draft cards from a trail deck that contains paths in different mixtures of colors, configurations, and trail directions, choosing those that best enable you to create trail loops back to base camps of the same color as the trails. In addition, there are two in-game and end-game goal cards presented in each game that add more challenge and complexity to creating trails that not only have long loops but ones that also meet goals! At the end of four rounds, the person with the most points from trails and goals wins the game!
Having only played this game a few times, I am still becoming familiar with its flow and the various shapes of trail segments, but I see a game that is at once beautifully designed and produced and is easy to learn, but also has much depth and challenge to keep me coming back. The added value of two included expansions (animals and adventurers) brings more components and modified rules with new ways to earn points. There are also stand-alone solo rules and multi-level goals. For 1-8 players with a 30-minute game time. ~ Marsha.