MIA #5: Treasure, Ready, Go! (Auf die Schätze, fertig, los!)

Treasure, Ready, Go! (Auf die Schätze, fertig, los!)

• designer: Roberto Fraga
• publisher: Haba
• date: 2008
• BoardGameGeek rank/rating: not ranked/7.17
• age: 5+
• # of players: 2-4
• print status: in print
• cost: $31.49 (maukilo.com)

I'm already on record as a huge fan of Jungle Treasure, Roberto Fraga's frenetic mash-up of Time is Money (his own design) & Make'n'Break. (BTW, Jungle Treasure is published by Haba!)

So it comes as no surprise to my faithful readers (and even to my unfaithful ones) that I thoroughly enjoy Treasure, Ready, Go! This is a big box version of the aforementioned Jungle Treasure with some great adaptions to the game to make it more accessible to younger children.

Once again, we are seeking treasure - but this time we're on the island of Mad Roger Sword... and in order to successfully collect his gold coins we must complete a variety of tasks:

• rebuild the ancient ruins (using six 1-inch square colored blocks)
• locate important supplies (by rolling a custom die)
• reorganize the animals (there are four chunky wooden animals included)
• find matching treasures (8 treasure tokens lay in the middle of the board)
• recognize animals in disguise (the first player to do so, even if they aren't the active player, receive the card)
• imitate local wildlife (three different cards have players posing & making animal noises)
• take a penny/pick it up/then all day/you'll have good luck (there are some cards that are give free gold)

On your turn, another player flips the (roughly) 1 minute timer over and you begin flipping the over-sized cards & completing as many tasks as you can before time runs out. Once you finish a task, you can flip another card or call "Stop!" - of course, if you don't call "Stop!" before the time runs out, you get no treasure (points) for this turn. (Ouch.) Each player gets three turns... and the person with the most treasure at the end of the game wins.

It's amazingly simple to teach - once you explain the timer, you take the first turn & they'll figure most of the game out. Kids love the frenetic activity... but don't count adults out. I've tried this with numerous groups of adults only, always with success.

The rules contain a couple of great variants to tune the game to your taste:

• In Jungle Treasure, the timer is hidden behind a player's hand. You can do that here - in fact, it's a good balancing mechanic when playing with kids for the adults to use the hidden timer rule.
• You can also count cards instead of coins (marked on the cards), making it easier to little ones to count their points.

I've also used this with my 4 year old as an experience/imagination game - we each took turns doing 10 cards and just had fun.