Indiana Jones: Sands of Adventure Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Indiana Jones Sands of Adventure, a cooperative board game published by Funko Games. In Indiana Jones Sands of Adventure, players are working together to stop the bad guys from getting the Ark of the Covenant.

One of my favorite movie trilogies of all time has to be Indiana Jones. What? There was a fourth movie you say? No, that’s just a rumor. Kind of like Highlander 2 or a second season of Heroes.

Regardless, this globetrotting movie about finding lost treasure, punching bad guys, and ophidiophobia has been capturing our imagination since the early 80s. Today, we are going to take a look at Indiana Jones: Sands of Adventure. It’s a new cooperative board game designed by the team at Prospero Hall and published by Funko Games.

The theme of Sands of Adventure, however pasted on it is, has you and your fellow players trying to defeat the Third Reich before they can find the lost Ark of the Covenant. Each player gets to control a character from the movie, each with their own special power: Dr. Jones, Marion, Sallah, and Marcus Brody all make an appearance.

The game is played out in two phases. First is the Exploration Phase. On a player’s turn, they must first will move their miniature to a different tile. Once there, they can take the action list. This usually involves drawing cards, playing cards, or gaining special power tiles. Afterward, the player has to roll the threat dice. These will tell them how many gems they have to drop into the basket of the sand timer. The timer is on a swivel, so after enough gems have been dropped in the basket, it will flip around, starting the Timed Phase.

During the Timed Phase, the sand timer is running in real-time, so players must act quickly. On their turn, a player can