The Liberation of Rietburg

The Rietburg is occupied by creatures and must be freed by brave heroes. In addition, it is rumored that the dragon Tarok is on his way to finally destroy the castle of the old king Brandur - so much for history. The Liberation of Rietburg is an independent game in the world of Andor. Here, too, the game is played cooperatively, but the game mechanism is completely different from that in Legends of Andor.

Game setup

First, a random task card is placed face down at each of the six locations on the game board, and a face down encounter card is placed on top of it. Then, narrator cards are read aloud. The number depends on the number of players:

• 2 player - 4 narrator cards
• 3 player - 6 narrator cards
• 4 player - 8 narrator cards

This brings additional face-down or face-up encounter cards to the various locations. The heroes start their adventure at the gatehouse.

How to play?

Each player has a character-specific deck of cards at their disposal. The active player must perform one of the following two actions:

1. Play and execute a card from your hand (usually running or fighting)
2. As a Hero revitalization, return all played hero and friend cards to your hand

In addition to these main actions, there are a number of free actions that the player can perform afterwards:

• Pick up an item at a location
• Pass friends and items to another hero
• Reveal a face down task card
• Fulfill a revealed task card

During the game, the character-specific deck of cards is expanded with items from the encounter cards/friend cards. Unfortunately, the piles of encounter cards also grow above the tasks, so that the players have a good job to do to clear them. With many creatures and tasks it is worthwhile to go into battle together and coordinate planned actions. Since it is not known in advance which tasks are to be fulfilled, it often happens that a task is not pursued further in the course of the game.

Players must complete at least four of the six tasks to win the game. They should always keep an eye on the pile with the narrator cards - if no more cards can be drawn, the game is lost.

Our opinion

The Liberation of Rietburg is a nice game with a refreshing new concept. The rules are easy to understand and quickly explained. Thus the game can be played quickly in between or as a warm-up in the players' group. There are several ways to adjust the difficulty of the game: for a game with children, the easy mode can be used well. The luck factor is relatively high due to the randomly drawn tasks - this makes the game a bit unbalanced at times.

The great illustration and the familiar characters make you feel immediately transported to the Andor world. It doesn't matter that you are not guided through the legend by a narrator, but try to achieve the same goals over and over again.

For players who are planning an entry into the world of Andor or at all an entry into cooperative board games The liberation of the Rietburg is - also in terms of price - optimal.