Waypoints: Review
Information:
Mechanics: Roll and Write, Print and Play
Player Age: 8+ Player Count: 1 - 100 PlayersTime to Play: 20 - 40 Minutes
Game Designer: Matthew Dunstan, Rory Muldoon
Player Age: 8+
Game Designer: Matthew Dunstan, Rory Muldoon
Introduction:
Over the space of four hikes (rounds) players are going to journey across the outdoors visiting key waypoints including animals, mountains, and lookouts.
Waypoints:
There are several waypoint tracks that players will fill over the course of the game, where each waypoint on the map can only be visited once. Below is an explanation of waypoint scoring and any bonus abilities they activate. When each waypoint is visited the leftmost point on the track is circled and the player will either gain points or an ability to be activated when they chose. Each track will score the rightmost circled point value at the end of the game.
Bear:
The bears are great for helping you move far across the map. Twice on their track there is a kayak ability that can be used to enter a river. The river is entered during movement and the player can move through the river, passing up to three grid lines for free, then exit the river and continue their movement turn.
Rabbit:
The rabbit provides a nice warm coat twice on their track. This coat allows you to add three movements in unfortunate weather conditions (weather that allows players to only move one or two paces).
Bird:
Birds are avid flyers and to share this they provide a glider twice throughout their track. After climbing a mountain, a glider can be used to immediately sail from this mountain waypoint to any non-mountain waypoint, either sharing the grid or in an orthogonally adjacent grid. Drawing a line to that waypoint counts as visiting that waypoint but it doesn't count as passing any lake or woodland feature. This is a great way to pass a river stream and ignore the bridge.
Campsite:
At the end of each hike, one of the journal entries will be scored. If you end your hike at a nice cosy campsite, you will be able to double the score you fill in the journal entry. These journal scoring are based on how many times you visit a certain waypoint, how many grids you move through or how many times you visit different waypoints.
Mountain:
Due to the contour lines that increase with elevation, mountains are often difficult to enter and leave. Whenever you visit a mountain, fill the leftmost empty spot on this track with the underlined number representing the height of the mountain. On this mountain track, there is an opportunity to multiply the number twice or three times before entering the value. At the end of the four hikes, all values on this track are added together.
Lookouts:
Lookouts are a way to advance on the animal tracks without visiting the animals on foot. Upon visiting a lookout you must use a camera to take a snapshot of an animal waypoint that you haven't visited either within this grid or an orthogonally adjacent grid. That waypoint can be marked off the map and advanced in the animal track. At the end of the track is 5 points and 15 points based on how far the player progressed.
Gear:
Whenever you visit a gear waypoint you gain a backpack that can be used for any of the three animal bonuses. The last two locations on the track will score you either 5 or 15 points at the end of the game, otherwise you gain no points from this track.
Trig Points:
Trig points are a big source of points at the end of the game. The challenge is that they are spread out on the four corners and the middle of the map. The kayak ability of the bears is a handy one for this task.
Features:
There are several key features on the map that is relevant for players to understand. These include the lake, woodland, bridge, and water bottles.
Lake and Woodland:
The player will gain one water bottle when passing through a lake between waypoints. This will only occur once per lake, so they cannot be visited multiple times for multiple waters. The woodland works the same as the lake but will instead advance your choice of one of the animal tracks by one space.
Bridge:
The bridge is the main method to pass the river flowing throughout the map. It doesn't cost movement to pass over but players will often have to go out of their way to reach the bridge.
Water Bottles:
Water is used to give you more energy on your hikes. When spent, you gain one more movement for the current turn. Water can be gained by forfeiting movement on your turn, travelling through lakes, or two bottles will be gained at the end of each hike.
Setup:
- Give each player a sheet and pen, one dice will be needed between players.
- Determine which goal is being used in this game. This can be achieved by spinning the pen and the corner the pointer ends at will determine the goal.
- Roll to determine which campsite players are starting at.
How to Play:
During the game, you are adventuring on four hikes. On every turn you roll one dice to determine the weather conditions, where the sunnier it is the more movement you get. Once the die is rolled, move that many spaces on the weather track bordering the page. Starting from the edge of the track on the first turn and then moving from the last weather condition on each subsequent turn of a hike. There are four weather tracks, one for each hike along each side of the sheet.
After the amount of movement has been decided players can either move or rest. Moving has the player trekking from one waypoint to another, possibly passing through map features. Every time the player moves past a line, whether it is a contour line or a grid line, they must use one movement. If required, a player can spend water to add one movement per each water bottle spent. Once reaching a waypoint the player crosses it off, along with the next space available on that waypoint track. If they cannot reach any waypoint with the movement available, or chose not to, they can rest and gain one water bottle for another turn. If a roll exceeds the last location when rolling the weather the last weather location is used and this will be the last turn of the hike. Once all four hikes have finished the end game scoring will commence.
Scoring:
The waypoints will score as outlined in the waypoint section. There are two additional areas to score; the journal at the end of every hike and the goal determined at the start of the game.
There are four journal entries and at the end of each hike each player chooses one journal entry to fill. Each journal entry may only be chosen once so at the end of the game all journals will be filled. The way they score is shown in the image below.
Goal:
At the start of the game, one out of four potential goals are chosen. These goals score points for every time the player meets the condition throughout the game, plus a bonus of 10 points if they manage to complete all of them. The conditions relate to the map features such as crossing lakes, bridges and woodlands. The last goal relates to the number of grid spaces a player had gone through for one hike.
Final Thoughts:
- Very thematic.
- Excited to see what they do with future content.
- Inexpensive as it is a print and play.
- Variable rounds.
- Interesting movement.
Postmark Games keep knocking it out of the park with their easy-to-play but crunchy roll and writes. Waypoints has a very engaging movement system, where each round has a random amount of turns based on how the die rolls and a unique output of movement available based on the weather track. The actual movement a player does from one waypoint to another is even more challenging due to the contour and grid lines. If you want to explore large mountains you will need to move through many contour lines, although the glider is very useful in reducing movement costs for the following turn. To score effectively you will want to pass through the woodlands and lakes which will often be out of the way and cost more movement through the use of water bottles. This may cause you to rethink your next waypoint. Balancing the right waypoints to optimise scoring and gaining the right benefits during your hikes is key to scoring well in this game. In this way, planning the movement efficiently so options are not so limited is paramount. Postmark Games are known for their continued support towards their games so I can't wait to see what other maps and rulesets are introduced to this engine. They have captured my attention with Waypoints so it is gaining a seal of Kickstarter Excellence. With the small price barrier, learning ease and great depth you cannot go wrong with Waypoints.
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