Treos

• Designer: Arne aus dem Siepen
• Publisher: Lookout Games
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 10+
• Time: 40-80 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

On a stormy night, rumor spreads about a luck potion that one can buy for 20 gold coins on the black market in TREOS. The realm is vast, its forests dark and the roads dangerous. Courier runs pay richly, so each one dares to venture outside the protective walls of their home town… Players have to choose among 4 asymmetrical characters, deal with highwaymen and other obstacles and – most of all – outmaneuver the competition.

The game is played over several rounds (called days), composed of 5 phases each. Movement cards are drawn and must be chosen wisely, because only the numbers on the cards will reveal the turn order. Each round you will be planning three turns, which you will then carry out one by one. This cycle repeats until someone collects 20 gold (or more), thus immediately winning the game. As if that weren’t enough adventure, the map offers a completely new world with every game: the game board can be arranged in more than 1.500 variations!

Construct the board by placing the 4 pieces in a 2×2 grid and then in each region place towns on the appropriate spaces, a secret place, a fort with weapons on it as well as an inn with a highwayman on top of it.  The fifth highwayman is placed in the lake in the center.  The quest card decks are shuffled and each deck is placed near the board section with the matching towns as the card back.  

Each player gets a random character board, all the bits of the same color, a personal quest and a cover tile.  The deck of personal movement cards is shuffled and put to the left of the player board.  Each player puts their character token next to the town matching their player color. Each player also puts a gold marker on the 0 space of the gold track.

The game is played in rounds, each with five phases. The game goes until someone has collected 20 gold, at which point the game immediately ends, and that player wins.  At the start of every round but the first, draw an event card and read it aloud so that everyone knows what rules have changed for the round.   Each round then goes through the same five phases, representing different parts of the day (Sunrise, Morning, Midday, Evening, Sundown).

1] Sunrise – each player draws 5 movement cards from their deck. One is placed facedown on the turn order slot, three are placed as the movement cards for the Morning, Midday and Evening phases.  The final card can either be discarded or it can be placed on top of your deck so that you draw it again next turn.  Finally, take your three intrigue tokens and place one face down on each of the movement cards. Whichever one of these tokens has the highwayman symbol on it – you will move a highwayman on that phase.  When this is all done, reveal the first card in the turn order slot; players will take their turns this round from high to low of the number shown in the lower left of the card.  Take the appropriate turn order marker.

2-4] Morning, Midday, Evening – In each phase, in the turn order just set in the Sunrise phase, reveal you card for the phase and carry out that action.  Each movement card tells you how many moves you get at the top.  If there is a compass rose, it tells you what directions you could move in (based on your orientation to the board).  If there are specific types of routes on the card, you can choose those routes as well.  For each movement, you can choose from any of the options available to you on the card.  If you move to a lake spot, you can move to any space directly connected to the lake.  You are not obligated to use all the moves given to you by the card.  You cannot come back to the space you started the turn on.  Also show the intrigue token, and if it shows the highwayman, you’ll also move one of those, using the same movement card.  Highwaymen may not move onto towns or forts nor onto spaces occupied by any player.

You start the game with one personal quest; this wants you to visit a town in a different region than where you started. When you complete this, you gain a gold and then you can draw a new quest from the region deck from where you currently are. The number of quests you can have is shown at the top of your player board. Each time you visit a town, you can complete all quests that you can; then you are allowed to get at most one new common quest as long as you have space for it. You can never discard a quest; the only way to move it is to complete it.   If you visit an Inn, you can draw a side quest. Also, if you are the first person to visit an Inn, you gain the gold that was placed on it during setup.  If you land on a fort, you get the weapon stored there – place it on your player board. You will get a gold bonus for this as well as a unique reward (different for each player).

5] Sundown – the four cards at the bottom of the player board are discarded. Remove the event card.

The game ends immediately when someone gets 20 Gold.

My thoughts on the game

Treos is a 2024 game that feels very old-school.  At its heart, it’s a programmed race game.  You start the game with a single quest, but can add more to your list.  You’ll earn gold each time you hit a destination on one of your quests.  There is a bit of efficiency/optimization in planning your route to ensure that you hit the desired locations in prompt order – though there is also a bit of luck at play as you are sometimes at the mercy of what card is on top of a stack when you are there…  You’re never obligated to pick up a quest from a stack, but you also will have fewer goals at the moment if you don’t pick up that card.

The first part of each round gives you some interesting decisions as you have to both program your route for the next three moves as well as vie for turn order.  As you would expect, the cards that give you the most options generally also give you the best priority number.  This is the one huge benefit (in my mind) of finishing the side quests and collecting weapons; you’ll get better movement cards to add to your deck.  

The event cards drawn at the beginning of each round will also change your planning. Sometimes they might give a free movement or enhanced movement along a particular type of track.  Sometimes they might invert the priority order (going from low to high).   Players may also find themselves pulled in different directions due to their unique ability on their player board.

Turn order can be important if you’re racing against someone else for a particular destination (especially if you want the coin from an inn or a particular card from the top of a stack).  The other advantage of going earlier in turn order is that it is less likely that a highwayman can be moved to block your progress.  Depending on the cards you play, you might not have the flexibility to move where you want if the highwayman unexpectedly blocks a vital pathway in your plan.  That being said, I’ve found that the highwaymen are really at most only a mild nuisance.  Rarely do they completely block someone from where they want to go, and plenty of times it feels like the whole mechanism behind them isn’t worth the effort for the small effect on the game.  (Maybe my friends and I aren’t mean enough; or we’re really bad at predicting where people want to go…)

Near the end of the game, turn order is vitally important as the game ends immediately when someone gets 20 gold, so being one place ahead in turn order can literally win you the game.

As I mentioned earlier, each turn is different due to the event card, and the map should also be different each game as you have to construct the map from the four different board pieces.  Not that I think that Treos is a game that would be solvable even with a fixed map… In the end, your destinations still just come down to card drawing luck.

Treos is an easy going game, suitable for families as well as most children.  The concepts of initiative bidding and movement are easy to grok, and the game is otherwise simple.  Pick up a destination card and then get yourself to that destination as quickly as you can.  

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Alison Brennan: Your aim is to race around a map collecting gold, and collect destination cards and score them when your meeple gets there. Each round you’ll program 3 moves from your hand of 5 movement cards. These provide allowable compass directions, road types, and number of moves. Each round you can also move a blocking highwayman either out of your way or to block someone else. It’s an hour of grinding away, moving from one side of the map to the other and back again to eke out your points. Despite the lack of story arc, it was ok as a 2p – I always liked Roborally, and fulfilling quests hits my buttons – but the next play will be the same as this one and I can picture it being aggravating with more players and more blocks.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale
• Neutral. Mark Jackson, Alison
• Not for me…