Tales of the Arabian Nights (Board Game)

Each year whooshes by faster and faster. The last few months have been a whirlwind and the next couple don't look much better, but I did take some time off to hang out with my family.

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and got to spend time with those you care about. 

One of my Christmas gifts this year was a cool board game called Tales of the Arabian Nights. When I first hefted the gift, I thought it was filled with bricks, but it wasn't. It was full of pages and pages of game material. It's like a choose-your-own-adventure on steroids.

Unlike most board games, this one is about the story and less about the winning. If you're the kind of person who MUST.WIN.GAME. then you might not enjoy this. To be honest, I'm fairly competitive but I'm able to turn that off for this game. It's really fun to see all the crazy things that happen. Sometimes the fates are on your side, sometimes they're not. 

I enjoy creating a story as I go along. Here's how it works. Everyone starts the game with a random quest. You can ignore this quest if you want, but I like to build my whole character around it. Last night I discovered my father was the King of Thieves and I had to steal some awesome loot in order to take over as his heir.

I traveled through the desert and mountains to Constantinople. The first person I tried to rob enslaved me, then I had to go searching for money to buy my freedom. After many turns, I escaped slavery and obtained one of the quest relics. Huzzah! On my way across the sea to India I aided a prince and successfully escaped a merman attack. The next person I robbed threw me in jail where I rotted for many turns. But it turned out to be a good thing because I met a jailer who taught me some skills that I used to get the last relic and claimed my title.

I didn't win the game, but I had a blast trying to fit the crazy encounters into a cohesive story.

If you like stories and board games, and have a couple hours to play. You might enjoy this game. I know I do. And my older kids do too.

* The image of the cover of the game belongs to Z-Man games.