Amber Road 2012

A "race game" placed in the ancient Roman Empire. Each player leads an expedition along the "Amber Road" to gain worthy resources along the travel.

Moving along the Road consumes resources such as water, food, etc. The first thing an expedition needs to do is fill up its supplies. While still in the starting area, a player may take up to four resource tokens and/or coins; he may stay as long in this starting area and take resources as he wants. When a player thinks he has enough for the journey, he takes off. In a turn, a player has three options: spend two tokens and move one step for each ox you have; move one step without spending tokens; or remain where he is. If a player moves to a new mapboard, he has to roll the stick beforehand to see which board is placed. After this each player has the option to place a village marker. On each map section the terrain changes; on a number of special places a player may perform different useful tasks, such as refilling his supply of water, food or acquire an ox.

Villages are useful to buy supplies. Markers that show the 'pax' side consider the village to be friendly, however, when the village is hostile, it attacks the expedition. All oxes and scout then are placed in the bag together with three neutral green tokens. Two tokens drawn from the bag are considered lost. If the village is friendly, the stick is rolled. The dots shown is the number of resource tokens a player gets for each silver coin in this village. When the first player reaches the end of the road by exact count, he wins.