The Ultimate Guide to The Adventures of Robin Hood: Is It A Family Game?

The Adventures of Robin Hood promises to be something a bit different. It’s from designer Michael Menzel, the mind behind the cooperative family-friendly fantasy adventure Legends of Andor.

What is the Story of The Adventures of Robin Hood?

Right from opening the box, it’s clear that The Adventures of Robin Hood is doing something a bit different from the average board game. The “accompanying booklet” that outlines the rules actively exhorts you not to read it, but to refer to a single introductory sheet instead. This goes over the movement rules for the game which are quite novel.

Each character – there are four from the Robin Hood legends – comes with five wooden pieces. Two are standing, while the other three have long straight tails of various lengths. A standing piece marks the current position of the character, and to move, you lay as many of the others as you want end to end.

Gameplay of The Adventures of Robin Hood – is it any good?

One of the great delights of The Adventures of Robin Hood is how neatly, simply, and intuitively everything fits together. You move via physical paths on the board, avoiding obstacles. You escape detection by keeping to the clearly marked shaded areas. The less you move, the more energy you have for taking out the enemy. Learning it all as you play makes it easier to take in, although it’s a good idea to ignore the stricture on the rulebook and give it a flick through after your first game or two.

At the same time, these accessible systems give the players plenty of decisions to make and excitement to enjoy. Time pressure is constant and the gaps between the shadows are large.

How to overcome the guards in The Adventures of Robin Hood?

Overcoming guards in The Adventures of Robin Hood using the defeat action means drawing a white cube from the bag, rather than just violet ones. Tiles with question marks can be interacted with, leading to another player reading to you from the book from the right page and giving you your options – do you want to ask for aid, or something to further your quest? You’re probably flipping the tile afterwards, so you’ll want to choose carefully.

In describing the mechanics of it all however, we’re doing the game a disservice. In reality, the Adventures of Robin Hood feels vaguely like a roleplaying game in the way the light mechanical elements spin out to create bigger stories and moments.

Each chapter of the game reaches out to you with a simple and open question, something like “study the board, who (or what) do you think could help you?”. And then off you go. Where would you likely find a rope? Who is likely to be in danger after your previous escapades? Who knows a good place to hide? You scan the board and discuss what the plan is – you know you’ve only got so many turns to complete your goal, once you decide what that really should be. The openness of that initial question is refreshing and whether you find out your initial idea was a waste of time, or worse, completely wrong, doesn’t matter – as you’ll only be adding to the drama. One quest in the game asked us to find certain items, which could be collected from disparate areas of the board, or in one scenario-specific place – the latter only becoming clear after the fact.

Move
Movement in The Adventures of Robin Hood hearkens back to classic tabletop war games. Starting with where your character is standing, place the walking/running figures touching each other. This creates a path your character will travel, ending with your second standing figure.

Your path can’t overlap obstacles; Robin must travel around the waterfall.
Move without using your long “running” figure and you “save some energy”. Put a white cube in the cloth bag. We’ll explain these in a minute.

Examine/Interact
Throughout the game, your party’s characters traverse the board to talk to different people or interact with different objects. Each of these is indexed with a number, which correlates to an anchor page in the book.

Robin moves to talk to the Guardian of the Forest (index 90 in the book).
Usually, this anchor page will direct you to a different page depending on the adventure you’re in. Don’t read any extra pages – you don’t want to spoil the story!

Defeat
It wouldn’t be a Robin Hood game without some fighting, right? During the course of the game, you and your fellow adventurers will need to fight guards and rob nobles.

To defeat an opponent, move your character within range with the Move action (as defined above). Then, pull three cubes out of the bag, one at a time. If a cube is white, stop, you’ve won! Flip the guard insert over and take the reward hidden beneath it (usually raising hope for the land).

If you pull three purple cubes, you’ve lost. There’s no ill effect to this (yet), and you’ve increased the chance to get a white cube later on. Don’t fret!

The Adventures of Robin Hood A Family Game

The Adventures of Robin Hood sits as the best kind of family game. Cooperative and expansive, intriguing and surprising, and a game that relies on you all working together. It’s all about how the players want to approach each situation – giving you the buzz of adventure, even if you mess it up a couple of times. Missing out on this game will be robbing yourself of riches.

WEAPONARY in The Adventures of Robin Hood

Occasionally, you’ll see a small ring of dots on the grass. These are
magic mushrooms! Use the Take button to pick them. The mushrooms can bring an ally back to life but you must use it before they’re buried. Mushrooms may only be used once, but some will grow elsewhere.

The Sword, Give and Take icons can also be used on the Merry Men, but they then have the effect of issuing orders to the men to either give money
away, rob someone on your behalf or go and find a Norman to kill. Archery practice will speed up Robin’s reload time when he’s shot an arrow. Practice literally does make perfect, well, faster at the very least.

When you’re robbing the merchant in The Adventures of Robin Hood, he’ll usually succumb after one attempt, but if you’re accompanied by a Merry Man or two he’ll probably give up the dosh straight away. Don’t rob people if they’re close to any guards. To escape from any guards, you might try struggling with the Sword icon or using your gift from the dragon. Alternatively, blow your horn and summon the Merry Men to rescue you. Either way, try and avoid being released inside the castle and run like mad as soon as you get free. If all else fails, have a go at bribery.

Can you play Adventures of Robin Hood solo?

Robin Hood himself. Little John, Maid Marian or Will Scarlet. In a two player game you can easily play as two characters each, and it’s also possible to play all four yourself in a solo. I played most of this in a three, using all four characters..

What is Robin Hood adventure?

Immerse yourself in medieval Nottingham. Travel through the Castle tunnel into Robin Hood Adventures where you’ll sit back in a forest clearing to experience the ballads of Robin Hood on in the round storytelling screens. Train with Robin’s Merrie Band.

Is there a Robin Hood game?

Robin Hood – Sherwood Builders is an action adventure RPG with city-building elements, where we will take the role of a classic hero, who fights against the tyranny and injustice that haunts Sherwood.

Is Robin Hood a true story?

Because Hunter and other 19th-century historians discovered many different records attached to the name Robin Hood, most scholars came to agree that there was probably no single person in the historical record who inspired the popular stories.