Near and Far

Near and Far is a board game with a story element to it – the players are adventurers, and as they explore the lands of the boards (there’s more than one!) they have encounter quests, where they have choices as to how to proceed.

You start the game with minimal personal effects, and on your turn you can go to town, or go adventuring. In town there are buildings that allow you to do various things – recruit companions to your party, add a pack bird (good for carrying stuff), get a coin, get some gems, and other things that basically amount to prepping for your adventure.

Each adventurer recruited to your party has one or more symbols that help you during the game – swords with combat, hands with skill, eyes with finding coins or gems, and arrow to denote extra movement. A shield can help you negotiate your way past a threat on the map, whereas without one you must overcome it before moving on. Adventurers also have a heart score, which will collectively define the strength of your party.

Once you feel well equipped enough, you can take your party off on an adventure. You always start at the town (shown on the map) and as you set off, you set a heart score – defined by your adventuring party – that represents the health, determination and drive of your party. Passing by an empty space – one with no camp in – on any route costs you one heart, and setting a camp costs you three. So as you move around the map your heart score is slowly diminishing, until the point where you have little or none… at which point you return to town and start over.

So what’s the point in adventuring? Well, whenever you set a camp you can uncover more coins and gems, and the act of setting a camp also progresses play: as soon as any one player sets their fourteenth camp the game will finish at the end of that round. Camps can also form part of trade routes, which bring big bonuses at the end of play. But also, the intriguing part of the game is the aforementioned quests: when you finish your turn on a quest location, someone reads an encounter from a storybook and – subject to having enough skill – you can make a decision and have an influence on your story.

There are other elements at play too: Artifact cards can be purchased, giving you in-game bonuses plus points at the end. Each player is building – or damaging – their reputation; which has some bearing on play. You need to bear in mind your party can take at most four adventurers, one from each of the four factions. And crucially – players can’t share a building in the town without having a duel! So although losing a duel isn’t too punitive (it’s more a punch-up than a fight to the death) and the defender suffers no damage at all, you do need to factor in the chance you’ll have a non-productive turn as you spend the night ‘in jail’… When the game ends, players count up their points from artefacts, trade routes, and some other sources to determine the winner.