A Wayfarer's Tale
- Board's Eye View
- Aug 28
- 3 min read
Published by Wayfarer Games, A Wayfarer's Tale: The Journey Begins is a roll & write game for 1-4 players. It's a game where players simultaneously make use of two of the dice rolled by the active player, with the active player having an additional red die available just to them. You are using your choice of dice to trigger the movement abilities of one of the companions on your board. The companions each let you move to a specific terrain type. Each has their own requirement; so, for example, when ascending a mountain the Adventurer demands a roll total higher than the previous roll used; lower when descending. And each companion can only be used a limited number of times.
You take your turns simultaneously - choosing the dice to use, activating a companion and marking off your movement on your copy of the map. The game is a physically heavy box because it comes with two thick wads of maps, covering four different layouts - each with very slightly modified rules. The game feels like more of a roll & write/traditional boardgame hybrid because instead of using your pen to mark off each use of a companion, you record each use by placing a marker in your separate dual-layer board. You have a set of cubes for this but for companions like the Adventurer, whose required roll is dependent on the previous roll you used to activate them, you get to place miniature 12-sided dice, tho' these can be a bit fiddly.
To an extent A Wayfarer's Tale is a race game, in that it ends when a player has visited all the towns on the map, but victory doesn't necessarily go to the first to finish: it depends on how many points you earn along the way. You can pick up points for connections made on your map but you'll also roll a d6 to determine the points gained for any treasure icon you encounter on your map or on a companion's track. Likewise you roll a d6 to determine the points lost when you encounter a monster. You can also collect tokens that can be used to re-roll a treasure die or to give you immunity from taking damage from a monster.
With A Wayfarer's Tale, James Emmerson has designed a satisfying puzzle optimisation game where players have meaty choices to make over where to move on the map and how to make best use of the dice rolled and companions. The whole thing could've been achieved just as a roll & write but there's no doubt that the dual-layer boards and Tristam Rossin's art add to the game's appeal. The exception perhaps are the chunky metal player mats. These seem absurdly overengineered, given that the only purpose they serve is to hold the four dice that are rolled by the active player. There's an indentation to cordon off the die that's only available to the active player but that die is anyway distinguished by its colour. In our plays at Board's Eye View, we wondered whether it might've been better to have given the active player a free choice over which die to reserve to themselves and so which should be denied to the other players; this option would increase the opportunity for player interaction by opening up the possibility of 'hate drafting'. It would be an easy option to house rule if you want to give it a try, and it would make better use of the otherwise pointless metal mats.
You can enjoy A Wayfarer's Tale as a solitaire challenge. There's ordinarily only minimal interaction between players in the 2-4 player game but tho' you're each mostly doing your own thing the fact that everyone is marking off their board and map actions simultaneously means that this has the great advantage of being a game with virtually no downtime!
