The Adventures of Robin Hood

This week we sat down with Nicky from Kosmos games to discuss "The Adventures of Robin Hood" the board game! In this article you will find out everything you need to know about Robin Hood and his merry men, and reveal how you can get your hands on a free copy at the end!

Are you ready to defend Nottinghamshire from the clutches of King John and his evil cohorts?

The Adventures of Robin Hood is the long-awaited return to Kosmos of Michael Menzel, well known for his Legends of Andor series of fantasy euro games. The Adventures of Robin Hood arrived in an English language version already with the pedigree of being nominated for Spiel des Jahres 2021 and a buzz about its innovative gameboard, character movement and stunning art work.

The gameplay works through a choose your own adventure style narrative supplied in a hefty hard back book. There are several adventures to play through as one of the four characters, Robin Hood, Little John, Maid Marion and Will Scarlett, with the first adventure being a form of tutorial so you can jump straight into the action! The game is a co-operative 2 – 4 players but it also works well if 2 players take 2 characters each!

Each character has 5 playing pieces, 2 standing, 2 movement and one long movement piece. Unlike normal boards, these characters are allowed to roam free in more of a real world experience, as long as they do not travel over houses, trees or other objects. Movement is achieved by laying the pieces out end to end in the direction that the character is moving, with the final standing figure placed at the end. Once the desired movement has been achieved, the final standing figure remains on the board and the other figures are cleared away. The player does not need to use all of the figures and, indeed, there are bonuses to not using the long movement piece in particular.

The board is divided into different areas of light and shade that affect how the round plays out if the player decides to leave their character out in the open. As well as featuring the stunningly beautiful artwork of Michael Menzel, the board differs from other games in it’s advent calendar like tabs. These are flipped at various points of the story when either a character has reached a numbered tab and wishes to investigate, or when a red disc has been drawn.

Every character has a coloured disc that indicates their turn in the game. Green for Robin, Blue for Little John, Yellow for Marion and Teal for Will Scarlett. The Red disc is also in play and usually indicates that something bad is about to happen! As the adventures progress, more coloured discs will be added that affect the adventures. Discs are placed into a cloth bag and drawn at random. Also in the bag are small cubes that are used for combat. The story will tell you when to place a cup into the bag and which colour it should be. Victory depends on the player drawing a maximum of 3 cubes from the bag. If no white cube is drawn, the player is captured. Whilst this is fairly simple at the beginning of the first adventure, players will find that the likelihood of pulling 3 purple cubes increases as the game progresses. Not using a long movement figure during your turn allows you to add a white cube to the bag to increase your combat chances later. This may be a family co-operative game but there is a lot of strategy involved.

The stories give every character one or more objectives to achieve in order to move onto the next adventure. Sometimes you will need to investigate the game board tab of a certain person or place to gain information. Each of these tabs has a number which corresponds to a page in the game’s hardback book. It may be that your path to a certain area will lead you to other numbered tabs that you can investigate at will. Some may assist you in your quest and some may not be quite so friendly!

As each round of character movement is completed, time passes – literally an hourglass is taken off the board - and the need to complete the objectives becomes more urgent. If all the hourglasses are removed and the hope in the land reaches 0, the game is over.

This game is absorbing and so much fun. It benefits from throwing in a touch of the dramatic when reading out the story entries! The initial tutorial adventure works well to gradually introduce the rules in a way that brings joy to players who dread long and involved rule books! Although it is co-operative, each player has control of their own character and this eliminates the Alpha player issue present in many co-ops. If The Adventures of Robin Hood follows in the same vein as Legends of Andor there will be a number of expansions heading our way in the future.

If you like your games super crunchy and involved, this may not be the game for you but if you want a great all round, swash buckling adventure for all the family, The Adventures of Robin Hood brings all of that, and more, to the table.

If you would like to get your hands on a free copy be sure to check out our giveaway here: https://gleam.io/competitions/qqQbO-robin-hood-board-game-giveaway