Tales Of The Arabian Nights
Tales Of The Arabian Nights
Travel to the lands of Aladdin, Sindbad and Ali Baba in Tales Of The Arabian Nights, an epic storytelling game of viziers, princesses, and sultans.
$104.00
Tales Of The Arabian Nights allows you to recapture the wonder of 1,001 Nights as you travel across Arabia, seeking wealth and good fortune.
Encounter treasures and tales of a mystical land as you make choices that may define your future in this remake of the 1985 classic.
Will you rise to be a powerful sultan? Or will you finish as a lowly beggar? Will you even be human by the end of it all?
With more than 2,000 tales to be told, Tales Of The Arabian Nights is very much a game that is as much about the journey as it is about the destination.
- Players:
- 2-6
- Ages:
- 12+
- Playing time:
- 120 minutes
- Contents:
- 1 Rules Booklet
- 1 Book Of Tales
- 3 Sheets Of Cardboard Counters
- 6 Character Stand-Ups Plus Stands
- 1 Deck Of Encounter Cards
- 1 Deck Of Treasure Cards
- 1 Deck Of Status Cards
- 1 Deck Of Quest Cards
- 6 Player References
- 1 Destiny Die
- 2 6-Sided Dice
- Our thoughts:
- If you like the idea of being immersed in a storyline with plenty of plot twists, you’re bound to love Tales Of The Arabian Nights!
- User Reviews:
Review by Alistair from the North Shore
In Arabian nights players take part as a hero or heroine in an epic story of adventure in a strange land filled with a whole host of weird and wonderful characters and creatures. The world draws on Arabian, Persian, Indian, and Chinese folklore. Players spend the game wandering around a map of Eurasia, and Africa trying to accomplish quests, create a fantastic story, and fulfil their destiny.
The goal of the game is to score an amount of ‘story’ and ‘destiny’ points and then return to Bagdad. However this goal almost becomes secondary when playing as exploring the world and seeing what happens is the true joy of the game.
What’s in the box?
The first thing you’ll notice about this game is the weight of the box. It’s heavy and full of stuff.
- A large beautiful board.
- Tokens to keep track of quests and points of interest on the map.
- Skill tokens to show what your character is adept at.
- Nicely illustrated cardboard playing pieces.
- Several decks of cards – Treasure, Quests, Encounters, Statuses
- Some dice (for encounter randomisation)
- Player reference boards
- Rule book
- A reaction Matrix
- And most importantly The Book of Tales
What happens?
The game plays out in a similar fashion to a choose your own adventure book. Every turn a player will move their piece based on how wealthy they are and then draws an encounter card. Another player (the reader) will then look at the paragraph in the Book of Tales and tells the current player what they have found.
Eg: You are Sinbad. You move to a sea space off the coast of Sri Lanka. On the ship is a beautiful Enchantress…
The current player then decides what they wish to do by looking at list of options. For the example above the options are Grovel, Aid, Avoid, Bargain, Attack, Trick, Hire.
The reader then looks up which paragraph in the book corresponds to the reaction using the Matrix. They then read the first part of the paragraph.
Sinbad decides to ‘bargain’ with the enchantress. The reader tells them:
The enchantress is surprised at your interest in her belongings, for they are merely things she has gained here and there. She listens politely to your offer…
The reader then list the skills that can be used in this encounter. In the example here Sinbad may use either no skill, luck, bargaining and evaluation.
Sinbad decides to try his luck with the enchantress:
You are most persuasive, and convince her to sell you a number of rare and interesting items.
Sinbad then gains a reward from the paragraph. In this example he gets a destiny point and either more wealth (thus increasing his ability to move and buy items off some characters) or a treasure (which grants a special, usually powerful, ability to use during the game).
After encounters players can then deal with any quests that they may have on the space they are on or play a city card if they have the card for that city. These will result in more rewards and encounters.
What’s bad?
The game is very random. If you are not happy with making what you perceive as the ‘best’ decision and then getting thoroughly punished for it then it is probably not the game for you. Weird things will happen to you.
Downtime with more than three players is large as you must wait for each player to be told their story from the book before it gets around to your turn. On some players turns you will be reading from the book or checking the reaction matrix, but if there are a lot of players then you will be waiting, sitting, and listening for a while. This issue is mostly solved by playing with a small number of people and then the game ticks along nicely.
There is quite a lot of checking up on your current status and referencing little bits of information written on cards in front of you. If you forget it’s no big deal but it could become frustrating to some players.
What’s good? If there is one thing this game does and does well it is tell a story. The example I’ve used above is not the most exciting and is a pretty average encounter. Often encounters will be of the wild and wonderful variety.
My group all remembers the time I tried to ‘drink’ my way out of a storm and ended up being thrown up on a beach somewhere only to encounter another horrific storm where I decided to ‘cry out’ only to get beaten by a large troll like thing, accosted by some wolves and then robbed blind by a small wild child.
Or the time that Keys decided to ‘enter’ an elephant?! He wandered into the jungle equipped only with a spear and we heard a trumpeting and thrashing, he emerged dazed, confused, insane, and looking slightly dishevelled.
Or the epic experience of Garth who decided to ‘aid´ an evil effreteh in attacking Mecca. He was thrown over the walls shattering both ankles. He crawled to the city gates opened them and let the entire army of magical creatures destroy Mecca. Then Allah granted many rewards for completing a ‘holy’ pilgrimage.
That’s pretty much the best thing about the game, it creates the feel of an interactive story and can often surprise you in what comes up or results from a seemingly inconsequential decision. In most board games you are rarely ‘surprised’ in the way you are with a book or a well scripted video game. This game succeeds in that. It surprises you, it does the unexpected, it makes you laugh, it makes you cry as you realise that you are in fact a sex changed grief stricken blue monkey trying to find his long lost cousin in the deserts of Africa whilst being pursued by an angry merchant whose bride you stole. How many games give you that experience? ….hmm…I thought so…. Exactly…. Go experience it. :)
Overall:
Strategy: 1/10
Fun: 9/10
Components: 8/10
Experience: 10/10
