Luxor

I wrote about this game in a previous post about introductory games. So lets talk a little more about why I think that.

In Luxor you essentially play as grave robbers. You are delving deeper and deeper into the grave of a Pharao. The game ends when the two sarcophogi in the middle has been picked up. This can be done by two different players or the same player. When you go deeper into the grave, which is a a winding square that gets smaller and smaller, some things happen. There are three places where you get more wooden figures that start at the entrance of the grave. You do this by going past the spot where they stand. You also can pick up some treasures. There are three types of treasures. Which are worth a different amount of points depending on how many little figurws of your have to stand on it to get it. In the end of the game you get more points if you have sets of these different treasures 1 set gives you [insert points up to three sets] and so on.

When you get a treasure you simply grab it off the board and give yourself that many points on the point tracker that goes around the map. (We do it a little different, we place the points from the treasures at the end of the game, because we think it is more interesting to not know anyones points befirehand.) If you see a little picture of an animal on top of the square where you picked up the treasure you lay down a corresponding tile from that animals pile. This is where it starts to get interesting. [Shift Enter] There are many different things that happen on these tiles. Some lets you get a scarab with some points on them. There is one with a kind of parchment on it that you can use in place of one of the treasures. Some have a a little key on them. You need a key to enter the room with the sarcophogi, if you have more keys than you use they are each worth 1 point at the end of the game. There are hidden passages that always brings your people to the hidden passage door that is rhe furthest down in the grave. If there is no other door, nothing happens. Then there are the tiles that lets you get a special movement card. Which leads us in tonthe movement part of the game which is very interesting.

You start with five cards on your hand. And you remove a card from your hand to do the movement on said card. But here is the kicker. Of the five cards on your hand, you can only use the two cards at the edges. And when you pick up a new card you have to put that in the middle of the cards on your hand. [Shift Enter] The standard movement cards are one step forwards or backwards, 2, 3, 4, 5 steps and roll a dice and take that many steps. Then on the tiles there are symbols that lets you take special movement cards. There are many different cards which have different functions that helps you on your quest to rob a tomb.

The last way to get points is by getting deeper into the tomb, the deeper you are the more points you get and each meeple gets these points.

This is basically the rules. But there are more things to say about this game. [SHIFT ENTER] I talked about this game in the post about introductory games. And to me this is a really good one. You get to learn movement, hand management in an interesting way, set collection and tonread iconography. Because that is somethibg this game is really strong at. Once you read the rules there is almost no reason to looknat the rulebook. Everything is clear, except maybe the special movement cards. But they are pretty apparent to.

I don’t think I ever won in this game but if there ever is someone who have never played a board game that want to try one out when they are at my place, this will almost certainly be the one we play. Easy to learn rules, good iconography and not much else to learn than the basics of board gaming.

What is your choice of game to introduce someone new to the hobby?

Play more games!!!