Designed by people who have been to all our National Parks, Trekking The National Parks features a comprehensive map, fun facts and pictures, and plenty of replay value! With many different ways to score points, it’s anyone’s game.
Cards are used both for movement and to claim Parks, depending on whether you’re using the number or the color/symbol; Parks have the matching symbols next to their point value. The more cards they take, the more points you get! To claim a Park, you have to be on that space on the board, and play the right cards – and this is a separate action from movement, which is terribly important! Because you only get two actions per turn, and sometimes your buddies will Sorry-style bump you back to Start. Our own games got progressively more competitive and Munchkin-esque the more that we played.
Beyond claiming Parks (which I’ll admit may have involved some favoritism, especially towards ones that I’ve already been to), you can also score points by camping at Major Parks, picking up stones, and having the most stones of a given color. Stones are laid out randomly at the beginning of the game, and picked up the first time someone visits a Park; Major Parks are selected, three of the six for each game, and have an effect when or after you camp there. Yellowstone, for instance, lets you draw a card off the top of the deck when you claim something. This is especially useful because drawing takes up actions, one per card, and is the main factor slowing down your tourism. Camping is done the same way claiming is, except Major Parks accepts multiple campers!
As a nature and travel nerd, this game is a delight. Most of the National Parks have cards, giving you incidental exposure to Cool Things The World Has To Offer, and the parks that aren’t on the cards are in a little booklet to the side. You can tell that the creators truly love the subject material, and that they were careful to weight the mechanics so you can revisit it again and again.
(Note: my understanding is that the “claim” mechanic is called “explore” in the third edition, and that it adds rules for solo play. What I played was the second edition, so that’s what the post’s about! Very excited by the possibility of playing as the bear, though, which is usually the First Player token.)
