Trekking the World Board Game

 Trekking the World from Underdog Games is an excellent board game that we've recently played a couple of times with our friend Graham.  Each player has to travel the world, touring interesting sites and gathering souvenirs from their journey.  These earn you points, all of which are added up at the end.

The World

 You travel the world by moving along the lines connecting the different locations marked on the map.  The world is divided into continents, the significance of which will become apparent.  Each continent contains one airport and a number of other locations.

The card pool.

 Each turn, you choose an itinerary card from the row of 5 along the bottom.  Each card provides some income from odd jobs you do as you travel (in the centre), a distance that you have to move (in red at the top, you must move the distance shown), and some souvenirs you can gain if you end your move in the correct continent. The 4 top cards are tours that you can take if you end your move on the matching location and pay the required tour fee.  These earn you victory points.  The middle row are "encounter" cards which give all sorts of special effects, including bonus end game victory points if certain conditions are met, the ability to swap the colour of souvenirs earned, moving to any location in the world etc.  These can also be earned if you end your move on the matching location.  Whenever a card is taken, the space is refilled from the draw deck.

My suitcase.

 As you gain souvenirs, you add them to your suitcase.  Each column of souvenirs gives you 5 points at the end of the game.  As you fill each row, you pass markers that give you a little card chit marked in relation to the souvenir type.  Blue ones allow you to make a free move to any airport in the world.  Red tokens allow you to move an extra space.  Yellow tokens allow you to double the amount of money you earn from your itinerary card.  Black tokens allow you to double the number of souvenir markers you earn from your itinerary card.  One encounter card gives you extra victory points if you collect an entire row of souvenirs, another allows you to swap the colour of some souvenirs (handy for completing a column or two to earn extra victory points).  Graham's game is the second edition, which includes sturdy cardboard suitcases with little holes into which you place the souvenir cubes you earn.

 Assuming you have collected enough money on your travels so far, you can spend some of it if you end your move at the correct location.  More expensive tours earn you more victory points, I think the cheapest tour earns 10 points but the most expensive might have been 23 points.

Example encounter card.

 The encounter cards can be saved to play at the appropriate time.  Each one has a little description of the encounter that occurs, followed by the rules that tell you the game effect.

Angkor Wat card - tour side

  The game ends after one player completes a certain number of tours.  This number varies depending upon how many players there are, and whether you want a long or a short game.  With 3 players, we played our first game to 3 tours, but on the second game, we played to 5 tours.

Angkor Wat card - encounter side

 The game is very efficient in its use of cards.  The tour cards all have the encounter for the same location on the reverse, meaning that you only need 1 deck of cards for both the encounter and tour decks, saving space in the box.

My ending collection.

The game involves a lot of strategy and decision points:

• Do you concentrate on collecting souvenirs? 
• Do you concentrate on completing more tours?
• Do you try and complete the necessary number of tours quickly, completing low scoring but cheap ones in the hope you can end the game before others get many points, or...
• Do you try to score higher tours but risk missing out on one or two at the end because someone else has completed all 5 first?
• When do you play your tokens to earn extra money or souvenirs?
• Do you try to end your move to collect an encounter card, complete a tour or earn some souvenirs? (Can you do more than one?)
• Do you take an itinerary card to earn more money this turn, or do you need to travel further instead?

Because you have to move the exact distance shown on your itinerary card, you need to think two or three moves ahead, but beware!  One of the other players might pick the itinerary card you needed, or use one of their saved encounter cards to let them get to the tour or encounter that you wanted to reach on the next turn.

The final scores.

Laura won our game.  I completed the fifth tour first, the other players get a chance to take their turns if necessary so that everyone has completed the same number of turns overall.  Because I had rushed to get the last tour done, Graham was not in a position to complete more than 4 tours, but he had completed 5 souvenir columns in his suitcase and earned an encounter card bonus for completing an entire row.  I had my 5 tours and a bonus score from an encounter card because I had 2 completed tours from the same continent, but only 3 complete columns of souvenirs.  Laura managed to complete her fifth tour in her turn and had 6 columns of souvenirs.  Despite not having any encounter card end game bonuses, having completed the highest earning set of tours and the highest number of souvenir columns gave her a clear victory.

It's a really fun game, simple to play but with great depth, lots of decisions to make, and it's well worth a go if you ever get a chance!  (You can find it on eBay for about £22 at the time of writing.)