El Dorado Reviews

4.8 Rating 8 Reviews

Reiner Knizia is a well-known name in the board game world. A prolific designer with some of the best games ever made coming from his huge brain. The Quest for El Dorado is a racing game that uses the card-based mechanic of deck-building.
In a deck-building game players all start with the same hand of basic cards, that they improve throughout the game - leading to drastically different decks between players. The fun comes from reading the situation of the game and building a deck that efficiently deals with it.
Your deck in El Dorado will do one of three things:
• Move you across terrain.• Buy new cards.• Activate an additional power.
To move you need to play a card with the same terrain and a power rating that is equal or higher than the hex you wish to enter. Terrain types are jungle, water, and gold(!) but there are also special spaces that require you to discard any card you play or even remove it from the game. If you decide instead to improve your deck you can use cards to buy from the market. Gold cards are worth their power, and every other card is worth half a gold.
Purple cards introduce powerful actions, such as moving onto any hex or drawing more cards, which can be incredibly useful. However, don’t be drawn in too far by shiny upgrades, as this is a race and you still need to move! The Tracks are made from modular double-sided boards which gives you an array of races to create and try, with a guide to how to get the best experience from the game.
El Dorado straddles the line between an approachable family game and an enjoyable game night game with ease. It is simple enough for younger players but with enough options to keep hardened gamers involved!
Player Count: 2-4Time: 30-60 MinutesAge: 10+

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“Great game for up to 4 players!”

Helpful Report

Posted 2 years ago

“Fantastic race game / deck builder. Entry weight but plenty of strategy and loads of replayability through modular map. Brilliant!”

Helpful Report

Posted 2 years ago

“I played this for the first time on Saturday night and absolutely loved it. I only played the two player version with a friend but we both really enjoyed it. The game seems really well designed for both instant gratification and longevity. Do set the board up before reading the instructions though as it makes them much easier to understand. Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!”

Helpful Report

Posted 2 years ago

“Excellent entry-level game. Really accessible for players who balk at overly-complicated games but still lots of strategy and enjoyment for more experienced gamers. I've been wanting to play El Dorado for nearly a year now and it lived up to my expectations. This game has rocketed into my top three favourite games (between Cosmic Encounter and the Crew). Would definitely recommend.”

Helpful Report

Posted 3 years ago

“We have been wanting to play this game, thanks to a recommendation, for a while and it DID NOT DISAPPOINT! It is really great as a two player game :) It was really easy and quick to learn, yet complex enough that after two game it was still interesting. The game has loads of cool elements including adds on that you can progress too and different boards that you can play to make the game harder and easier. I would highly recommend this to anyone looking for a good 2 player board game (we are excited to try it as a 4 player once social distancing has been released). The "small cards" mention above were very useful as the game was able to fit on our coffee table (any bigger and there would have been no room).”

Helpful Report

Posted 4 years ago

“This game, and it's expansion Heroes and Hexes (which is now how I play it every time), is the one in my collection that people most often want to play when they come round. There is some strange magic in the balancing of the game that means, even in different groups and larger number of times I have played it, every game ends with a photo finish. This combined with you always being interested in the opposing players turns and the range of choices in the game's marketplace being limited at the start means it moves at a good clip and you rarely get that moment where everyone at the table is looking down lost in their own decisions. The modular system for setting up the boards gives the game a huge amount of replayability...though because a completed board is often quite a table hog I did find myself often favouring some of the more compact suggested set-ups. While the expansion is definitely not an essential purchase if you do fork out for it you will struggle to ever go back to a time where you can't cross the mountain tiles or have the incredibly powerful hero cards. If I was to ignore my experience of playing the game and look at it purely critically it can be frustrating later in the game when you can't move because of the random element of drawing cards and there are few additional cards you would want to bother adding to your deck. For me this hasn't felt like an issue because I always feel like a solution will turn up in my next drawn hand but for others this might be the complaint that detracts from the experience the most. Also I find people that have played the game with me a few times will still check the manual to work out what some of the cave tokens do; some are immediately obvious, others much less so, though this is likely compounded by playing with the expansion. Again for me this hasn't stopped me enjoying the game or felt like it holds the game up because the manual is well laid out and a masterclass in being concise. Games in my collection I would get rid of before El Dorado include Galaxy Trucker, Sushi Go! Party and Bargain Quest and those are three games I am very fond of.”

Helpful Report

Posted 4 years ago

“The Quest for El Dorado is quite simply a game I think every gamer should own. Suitable for both families and game night El Dorado teaches deck building mechanics in a pleasing graphical fashion which makes sense with your task - namely hot footing it across various terrain types. Being a race, you'll need to strike a fine balance between moving and improving your cards. I have played this a ton and I'm yet to win a game but I still want to play it a ton more. Great stuff.”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago

“Good gateway game. Fun and accessible. Always manages to be a very close race”

Helpful Report

Posted 5 years ago