The only one who might be able to defeat Fire Lord Ozai is the Avatar … but will Aang be ready when the time comes?
What Is Avatar: Journey of Aang?
Avatar: Journey of Aang is a cooperative game for 1 to 4 players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 30–60 minutes to play. It’s currently seeking funding on Gamefound, with a pledge of $45 for a copy of the game or $79.99 for the deluxe edition. The game roughly follows the story of the animated series, and although you don’t need to know the show to play the game, an emotional connection to the source material will definitely enhance the experience. The game is rated for 8 and up, though younger kids will probably need some help learning the game.
Avatar: Journey of Aang was designed by Bryan Kromrey and published by Bad Crow Games. My draft rulebook did not have illustration credits, but the artwork appears to be taken from the Nickelodeon animated series.
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Avatar: Journey of Aang Components
Note: My review is based on a prototype copy, so it is subject to change and may not reflect final component quality. Some of the components appear to be the “upgraded” versions from the deluxe edition, and others were still in prototype quality.
Here’s what comes in the box:
- Main Adventure board
- Training board
- Elemental Dial board
- Comet Track board
- Comet tracker
- 54 dice (10 per element, 6 starter dice, 8 avatar dice)
- Appa miniature with cloud base
- 4 Player Skill markers
- 4 Challenge markers
- 48 Harmony cards
- 26 Challenge cards
- 4 Player Aid cards
- 16 Trainer cards
- 4 Companion tokens
- 28 Elemental Markers (7 of each element)
- 20 Technique cards
The map board is very large and depicts the world map of Avatar: The Last Airbender, with a dotted line showing Aang’s journey across the world, starting at the South Pole and meandering through the various nations, eventually ending at the Fire Nation. Along the way are many locations marked with numbers, letters, and small spaces for tokens. The path is intended to reproduce Aang’s travels in the television series. In some cases there are location markers close to places where the path doubles back, and it can be easy to misread those locations, thinking they are on one path when they’re on the other.
Despite the size of the board, which makes for an impressive map, there are a lot of things that take up space outside of it—two smaller boards, as well as most of the challenge cards, and the large technique cards. I couldn’t help thinking some of things could have been added to the board itself instead of taking up additional table space, though that would cut into the map illustration—and since this is a licensed property from Nickelodeon, it’s hard to know how much was dictated by the licensee. There are two challenge cards that are always placed in the same places on the board—Guru Pathik and Fire Lord Ozai—and it’s unclear why these need to be actual cards rather than being printed directly on the board in those spaces. The comet track is simply a track with 7 spaces on it, below an illustration of the flaming comet—this, too, feels like something that could have just been incorporated into the main board.
The technique cards have illustrations of various bending techniques that Aang can learn over the course of the game, illustrated to look like scrolls with a figure performing the movements. These are large, tarot-sized cards, and while they’re thematically fun to look at, the part that’s actually important for gameplay is the small column of elemental icons on the left side, and the small dice icons in the bottom right corner, which can both be hard to see from across the table. It would be nice if these had a little more focus on the gameplay elements to make them a bit more functional.
The custom dice are very fancy. (Note: these may be the deluxe dice.) Even though this was a prototype, these look like finished dice: extra large six-sided dice, each face showing a different mix of element icons—each element die has the most of its own element, but can also roll some others as well as a wild symbol. There are dice for each of the four elements, some basic Aang dice, and pink Avatar dice. The dice have a marbled look to them, and a few of them are translucent, which is a nice tie-in to the different elements. The one issue we found was that the air dice, which are clear with some white cloudy inclusions, can be a bit harder to read. You’ll also need to memorize the different elemental icons—they’re the same ones used in the show and books, but at the small size used on the dice they can look pretty similar.
The harmony cards are square cards that depict the four elements. Each one has three numbers in the corners, as well as one elemental symbol—the cards are rotated clockwise as you play, which can increase or decrease Aang’s skill in that element, eventually achieving mastery when the icon is reached. There are two ranks—the silver backed cards are the first rank, and then the gold and red backed cards are the second rank with higher numbers. For the second rank, the fire cards have red backs (and trigger the comet’s approach) and the rest have gold backs; it’s a little strange to me to have the card backs be different because they’re shuffled together but then you can see when a fire card is coming.
Your position on the map is marked with the miniature of Appa, the flying bison. The figurine is attached to a little cloud base, and is removable so that you can move Appa and the cloud independently. It’s a pretty nice model—it’s an extra $8 for the painted version, but it looks great.
The game includes a lot of references to specific people and places from the show, mostly in the form of the challenge cards. The trainer cards also include a variety of characters, those that help Aang learn various types of bending.
How to Play Avatar: Journey of Aang
The Goal
The goal of the game is to defeat Fire Lord Ozai.
Setup
Set up the main map board: shuffle the element tokens and place one at random at each location. Separate the challenge cards into their different levels and shuffle each level separately, and then place three challenge cards in the indicated spaces next to the board. Place the Guru Pathik card at the temple, and Fire Lord Ozai at the Fire Nation. Place Appa on his cloud at the start of the path at the bottom of the board.
Place the comet board nearby with the counter on “0” and place the Phoenix King Ozai challenge card on the board.
Set all of your element mastery dials to 0.
Shuffle the harmony cards—the silver backed cards are the top half of the deck, and the red and gold backed cards are shuffled together and form the bottom half of the deck.
Place the training board nearby and put two harmony cards into the training area at the bottom, turning the first card to level 1 and the second card to level 2. Adjust the current element levels according to the cards in the training area: each element’s level is equal to the sum of the cards in the training area, plus the mastery (which starts at zero). Put two more harmony cards nearby in an area designated as “the environment.”
Give each player a trainer card, two dice of their indicated element, and two harmony cards.
Gameplay
On your turn, you begin with the Action Phase, choosing one of the following actions: Meditate, Practice, or Adventure.
Meditate: Take 3 harmony cards from the environment or the top of the deck.
Practice: Play 2 harmony cards from your hand into the training area. When you play a harmony card, first rotate all cards of that element one level, and then add your card at level 1. When a card reaches level 4 (showing the element icon instead of a number), you remove it from the training board, add 1 to your mastery of that element, and then put the card in your Completed Practice pile. (You may play 3 harmony cards in one turn if they match the element token of your current location.)
Adventure: You move along the path and attempt a challenge. You may either attempt an elemental challenge (most of the spaces on the board), or you may attempt one of the challenge cards if you reach the location with the matching letter.
First, move Appa (without the cloud base) as many spaces as you wish. For each location you move, increase the challenge levels of the elements based on the tokens you pass and the number printed on the board. (In the photo above, the movement has added 1 water, 2 earth, 2 fire, and 1 air for the challenge levels.) When you’ve decided to stop moving and attempt a challenge, compare the current skill levels of the four elements with the challenge levels of the elements.
If the challenge levels are higher, then you’ll need to roll dice, hoping to get enough elements to make up the difference. (In the photo above, the skill levels are all high enough except fire: the player will need to roll at least 2 fire symbols to succeed.) You roll Aang’s six dice, as well as your own dice. Prior to rolling, you may discard 4 harmony cards to temporarily grant Aang an additional avatar die. If you roll and don’t succeed, you may spend harmony cards for re-rolls, one card per die you want to re-roll. (You must decide how many cards to spend before you re-roll any dice.)
If you roll enough elements to meet the challenge levels, you succeed! Move the cloud to Appa’s location, and rotate every harmony card on the training board one level. (Challenge cards may award you benefits in addition to rotating all of the harmony cards.)
If you fail the challenge, move Appa back to the cloud location.
After the Action Phase, you move to the Training Phase. You may spend cards from your Completed Practice pile to learn a technique—discard cards as shown on the card, and then Aang gains the indicated element dice. Note that Aang always has only six dice, so you replace dice from his pool with the newly gained dice.
You may also level up your trainer card, as long as you have reached the required chapter shown on the card. (Aang’s journey will pass several chapter markers along the path.) Note that only two trainers may be leveled up over the course of the game, so players should discuss which ones will be most useful. When you upgrade your trainer card, flip it to the side with the color illustration, giving you access to a stronger ability. It may also provide new dice to swap into Aang’s pool.
Aang can also gain avatar dice, the most powerful and flexible, by reaching mastery goals. Each time an elemental mastery reaches level 8, Aang gains an avatar die. He also earns avatar dice when all four elements have reached at least level 4, and then again when all four have reached level 8. (Remember, new dice are swapped for existing dice in Aang’s pool, not added.)
Finally, there’s the Comet Phase. Add the top two harmony cards from the deck into the environment. If there are ever three of the same element, they cascade and are discarded. If any of the cards added to the environment are red backed cards, advance the comet tracker by one space.
Game End
The game concludes with a battle against Ozai, and there are two possibilities. If Aang reaches Fire Lord Ozai before the fire comet arrives, then he will face off against this easier version of Ozai, and can make multiple attempts to defeat him.
If the fire comet arrives—the tracker reaches the Phoenix King Ozai card—then Aang must face this harder version of Ozai immediately, and only has one chance to defeat him.
The game ends when Aang defeats Fire Lord Ozai, or after the battle with Fire King Ozai, win or lose—if you defeat Ozai, you win, and if Ozai wins, you lose.
Why You Should Play Avatar: Journey of Aang
One of the things that stands out to me in Avatar: Journey of Aang is that no single player gets to be Aang, unlike most of the other Avatar-based games I’ve played in the past. Most of the time you’ll get to play as one of the main characters in the show, and since 4 players is a pretty common player count, you usually end up with Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Toph. And while those four make sense for the story, those four characters have very different personal journeys over the course of the show, and ultimately it’s a showdown between Aang and Ozai. Journey of Aang‘s approach makes all of the players the supporting cast for Aang, so you’re all working together to prepare him for that final fight. Sadly, though, that means Sokka doesn’t get a role in this game: he’s not a bender, so although he’s presumably along for this journey, he’s not helping Aang develop his mastery of the different elements. (I did notice there is a “Non-Bender Expansion” that includes Sokka and a few other non-bender trainers, but he’s not in the base game.)
The game allows a bit of pressing your luck to advance: every round, you’re rolling Aang’s six dice, as well as any that you have yourself (you typically start with one elemental die, and can gain more if you upgrade your trainer). Since many of the dice have multiple symbols on a single face, you can roll a lot of different symbols, particularly if Aang’s dice have also been upgraded. You can play it safe by adding cards to the training area, and only traveling up to a point where you can guarantee success. But there are two problems with that: first, it takes enough turns that Sozin’s Comet is likely to show up, forcing a confrontation at a more difficult level. The second is simply that if you never take a risk, you don’t roll any of those gorgeous dice.
There is an option to just adventure over and over again, trying to hit the elemental challenges with dice rolls rather than by adding cards to the practice area. The drawback is that you’re not building up mastery, which means that you may eventually reach a challenge where you simply can’t roll enough dice to make up all the symbols needed—particularly when you reach Ozai himself. So a lot of turns are spent playing cards to the training board, and figuring out which cards each player should add to maximize Aang’s chances for the next challenge.
And that’s one downside to this game: it’s filled with beautiful dice but you it can feel like you don’t get to roll them nearly enough. If your turn is spent meditating or practicing, all you do is draw cards or add some cards—and then your turn is over. Adventuring is the action that feels like a “real” turn where something significant is happening. I suppose that’s thematically appropriate, that meditating and practicing feel boring but are necessary for success, but “thematically appropriate” and “fun to play” don’t always coincide.
The ebb and flow of Aang’s skill levels take some attention to build up. Each element has a different order of values on its harmony card, so the skill can go down even when a card ranks up. And when Aang gains mastery, a card is removed, which gives you a permanent bonus but can still lead to a temporary drop. This is particularly true when cards are rotated due to completing a challenge, because you haven’t added new cards to the board. Gaining mastery is also important because if you get enough, Aang gets the sparkly pink Avatar dice, which have a whole lot of icons: there’s a face with one of each element, and faces that offer a choice between 3 of an element or a wild. If you can max out the avatar dice before the final showdown, you’ll have a significant advantage.
The techniques let you swap out the weak starting dice with elemental dice, and it’s important to look ahead at the (randomly assigned) elements later in the journey. Knowing what elements you’ll need to be particularly strong helps you prepare, and if you have low mastery for a particular element then it can help to have some extra dice that are more likely to roll that icon. Ultimately, when you face Ozai, you’ll need 10 of each element (or 13 if Ozai has ascended to the Phoenix King form). Better get training!
Avatar: Journey of Aang takes you along Aang’s path, but it relies a lot on your own knowledge of the series to add the flavor. Although there are plenty of challenge cards that reference the characters and places, there isn’t any flavor text that explains why Wan Shi Tong requires 9 air to pass (or, indeed, who Wan Shi Tong is at all). If you aren’t already familiar with the show, this isn’t a game that will draw you into that story. It’s also possible to take the journey without taking on any of the challenge cards specifically—you could just do the generic elemental challenges every time, which means it’s possible to play the game entirely as an abstract numbers game until you reach Ozai. For that reason, I think this is definitely a game designed specifically for existing fans of Avatar and isn’t one that I would generally play with people who don’t already know the story. However, if you are a fan, this has an interesting progression that feels a bit different from the other Avatar-based games I’ve played.
For more information or to make a pledge, visit the Avatar: Journey of Aang Gamefound page!
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Disclosure: GeekDad received a prototype of this game for review purposes.
