Awaken Realms | Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon | Survival Miniature Game | Ages 14+ | 1-4 Players | 120-180 Minutes Playing Time

This is a board game which is very difficult to review properly in a short piece. Boradly, it is a board game adventure, set in the time of arthruian legend. A party of 1-4 adventurers, playing cooperatively, have to explore a dangerous damaged world to put things to right. The game map is divided into tiles which are placed gradually to form the map over which the 4 hero figures will travel. Therre is a lot of traditional roleplaying elements in this game around character development. There are also a number of decks of cards and other components. Some of these are used in combat and diplomacy, whilst others create random emcounters etc. Most of the game components are well made, although the plastic coins used to count down time in the game are not printer very clearly.The premise of the game is good, and the story has several levels, which can take the game in many diferent ddirections. So, it would be possible, to play the game at least twice and come out with a different story outcome. There are 15 chapters to the game --- some of these are long, some short, and some can get missed out depending upon what story choices you make. My friend and I have so far played up to chaper 8, and it has taken us over 10 hours. Thankfully, he has somewhere where we can leave this big game set out.The game manuals could be a little more clear in how they explain the mechanics of the game but you can generally make sense of them eventually. My biggest gripe about the game is that many of the mechanics are made to be overly complex. Instead of just throwing a simple dice, for instance, a coin sometimes has to be thrown, and we all know how this affect other game pieces lying in the vicinity. The combat system is, in my view, as a life time gamer of fantasy games, also more complex than it needs to be, involving cards embnlazoned with a range of symbols which must be matched up against your oponents.Overall, I have enjoyed playing the game so far, but you should be mindful that this is a big game, with a lot of processes to be learnt... not all of which are explained evry clearly

Well, this is the ‘old’ version of the game. There’s 2.0 which takes out the grind of the game. I only knew about this after I’d taken off the cellophane - don’t be me! You can buy version 1.0 on eBay for half the price. Sure the app and ‘new’ rules are available but not the ‘new’ cards for the ‘old’ version of the game - there is an update box you can buy, but good luck with that. I feel that Amazon just did a number on me. Don’t let them do it to you!