Recently my family, and especially kids – Natan, 12 and Kuba, 10 – appreciates more and more family games which you can play in some way of campaign mode; sometimes the adventures could develop a coherent story – like we experienced in The Adventures of Robin Hood or Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West. Sometimes the scenarios will be disconnected, however happening in same world with similar characters and challenges.

The latter is exactly the experience which Chronicles of Avel brought to us during eight session we had a pleasure to have with it. This beautiful and engaging game from Polish Publisher – REBEL – and Polish Designers is a very interesting combination of Role-Play, Adventure and Tower Defense genres.

Let us talk now a little bit more about the game details, present its great component, say couple of words about game play and conclude with the set of impressions that game left us with. Enjoy!

The game

Let me start with a couple of introductory words, which will set the context. Chronicles of Avel is a cooperative board game for the whole family. You take the role of brave heroes and heroines with a mission to save your magical land. For this you will have to Create your character and give them a unique name. Then, you shall get your equipment, upgrade it and prepare for battle. But remember to wisely choose what you carry as your backpack has limited space. Armed and ready, you will explore the land in search of adventure and fortune.

How will it happen? In Chronicles of Avel players will be exploring the world of Avel, moving on a modular board created from hexagonal tiles (different every time, great for replayability). On their journey they will encounter dangerous monsters to fight and roll dice to determine success. Each victory leads to a prize – new weapon, armor, potions and gold – which will make heroes more powerful and unstoppable. But to earn equipment players will have to search through magical bag and choose using only their sense of touch. Victory awaits for those who will cooperate, prepare themselves and defeat the Beast and all his servants.

The gameplay

In below section I would like to present some of the key moments from our plays as well as important elements of design which draw our attention. Each play was different – both in size, length, difficulty or the way things unfolded – remember, map varies significantly from play to play.

However, it was the experience of unknown, discovering new map tiles as well as fighting the monsters and getting the upgrades which was driving us forward – not to mention kids begging & urging to play another session as soon as possible! This is probably the best recommendation I can give for this game.

PS. You can click on each of the images to enlarge to full screen in new window.

The game is composed from various, modular hexes which you do not see at the beginning – only its generic, reverse side. As you explore world, you will encounter monsters, places where you can buy traps for the Beast, enhance Walls of your Castle or Upgrade your weapons.
Why do all of this? Because at a predefined moment in time a Beast will awake! And it will start slowly (1 hex / turn) approach the castle. Once it reaches it and destroys – game over! The more difficult the scenario, the closer Beast will spawn… PS. Above we see the moment of Beast reached hex with multiple traps prepared by us for it…
But fear not! Our well equipped and experienced heroes will do whatever possible to stop all the monsters. They will never yield, even after losing all heath and becoming temporarily unconscious!
The way to resolve the battles (each lasts 3 rounds) is via numerous dice. Black (hard) and violet (normal) are for monsters. The green (regular) for Adventurers. The red (attack), yellow (magic) and blue (defense) you can get thanks to various upgrades and potions. Cool stuff!
However, we were not always successful – especially on super-difficult levels. As seen above, we killed the Beast but one of the monsters managed to slip-through. Yes, you need to get rid of ALL the monsters, not only Beast, to win.

The impressions

Playing Chronicles of Avel was definitely a great time spent with the family. Let me now share my experiences, observations and simply – impressions from the game itself:

  • The role-play element is great in this game – you create your own character, you develop it during the session, upgrading and equipping properly only to face the evil which will come.
  • Now, for the Beast, the time pressure element is simply great. You cannot just sit and leisurely explore the world. The Beast will come and there is an exact time when it will happen! And then it will start its march towards the Castle to destroy you and everything precious. So get prepared and do not waste time!
  • What is cool and appreciated is the replayability of the game – even with Base Set – due to eight scenarios and map being different each session.
  • When you look at above pictures, you shall also appreciate the beautiful components for this game – they attract both young and old to this title. At the same time they are functional and well designed – no need to all the time look-up the small rules in the rulebook.

Summary

That was definitely great experiences for our family – maybe a bit more for me and the kids, a bit less for wife (not so much fan of fantasy and role-play games). So much fun with fighting against time and the Beast, discovering new tiles, getting new equipment and especially upgrades – boys loved it. I can wholeheartedly recommend this game as a great starting point for the cooperative games.

And… this is not the end! There is already an expansion – Chronicles of Avel: New Adventures – which brings a lot of novelty, including the real, linked campaign, new monsters, special rules, equipment as well as New Beast…. We shall start soon playing this too!