- “Road Trip Europe”: Review of the draft-and-write game
- This is how the journey through Europe plays out
- Information, evaluation and conclusion
A scoring pad showing Europe on the left and scoring points on the right. 28 maps, each representing a country in Europe. Plus four pencils. At first glance, this is the meager content of the “Road Trip Europe” box. But don’t worry, the material from “Road Trip Europe” is an entertaining game that tacticians will also get their money’s worth.
This is how “Road Trip Europe” plays
At the beginning of each round, all players are dealt seven cards. You can choose one of these and place it in front of you. They pass the remaining cards on to the next player, who also chooses one and discards it (“draft”). The cards go in turn until each player has seven cards in front of them. Only the first card is face down, the others are face up on the table. Now the journey through Europe begins, i.e. through the countries that are shown on the seven maps.
Road Trip Europe: View the deck of cards on Amazon
There are points for “Road Trip Europe” for
- visited countries,
- fully visited regions,
- culture and nature,
- local cuisine,
- Means of transport,
- covered track,
- Variety of regions visited.
Better not a pencil
You mark your results with the enclosed pencil on the map of the scoring pad. However, those who have should use a more conspicuous pen, as the pencil lines are often difficult to read.
The face-down first card can be quite surprising for the other players in the final scoring and whirl the expected points quite a bit. Enjoying the local cuisine and the means of transport used earn experience points. You collect both with the travel cards, the means of transport only count as doubles. For the points from the culture category you need the other players. For this you need a corresponding symbol on your own cards and many more symbols on other cards of the participants.
Then each player counts the points they have achieved in this round for the above categories and enters them on their score sheet. A total of four rounds are played. Then the total is counted, the winner is the player who achieves the highest number of points in all categories.
The game has more depth than the little extensive material suggests, with the seven categories there are a lot of details/options to look out for. In order to achieve the highest possible number of points, it is necessary to consider all categories at the same time when selecting the cards. At the same time, opponents have to keep an eye on their game plans in order to snatch cards that they may urgently need to achieve a category. This makes the game always exciting – even if it doesn’t last for a whole evening.
Tactical trip to Europe
To do this, it’s good to keep track of what cards you’ve already seen through the draft, as they could potentially be available for your deck this turn. Pursuing a truly winning tactic takes a tremendous amount of effort and brainpower initially. With a bit of routine, it becomes easier to keep track of things – but the inexperienced player will be overwhelmed by the details when playing for the first time. Since there are so many categories to consider, players should be at least ten years old. For the eight years given by the publisher, it simply takes too many tactics to be successful.
For “Road Trip Europe” you don’t need any knowledge of geography, but you can learn a lot about the countries if you have enough leisure. The maps are beautifully illustrated and each one features a landmark from that country. But often you are so busy with game tactics that you don’t really pay attention to which country you have in your hand. Rather, one usually only looks at the arbitrarily chosen letter with which it is abbreviated.
In our opinion, the draft-and-write game “Road Trip Europe” is suitable for hardcore tacticians who want to tease out the last point with clever moves. On the other hand, it is just as entertaining for players who are just discovering the countries of Europe for fun and meanwhile don’t think much about the final score. The point calculation is clearly shown on the score cards. The small box is well suited to take with you: everything you need is included and no major set-up is necessary.
- Information about “Road Trip Europe” at a glance:
- Number of players: 2 to 4
- Age recommendation: from 10 (publisher information from 8)
- Duration: 30 minutes
- Publisher: Game Factory
- Author: Scott Almes
- Per:
- Cards beautifully illustrated
- Scoring is well represented on the scorecards
- high interactivity between players
- good for take away
- Cons:
- Many rating options slow down the entry
- Pencils not ideal for marking
- Monotonous in the long run
- Editor’s rating: 7 out of 10 points
Conclusion: Road Trip Europe comes with little material, but it is a surprisingly interesting game that also plays well with two people. However, it is more exciting with three to four players who like to be somewhat tactical.
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transparency notice: To test the game, the publisher provided us with a review copy without further conditions.
