The Neverland Rescue
Hi, I’m Bebo, and today I’m going to teach you how to play “The Neverland Rescue” published by Letiman Games!
Hey and welcome back! I just wanted to let you know real quick before we started that these components used in this video are a prototype and are not reflective of the final quality of the game!
“The Neverland Rescue” is a 2-player asymmetrical game by Scott Almes that plays in 30-45 minutes. In this game, players take on the role of Peter Pan or Captain Hook!
Hailey: Peter is attempting to rescue the neverland inhabitants!
Bebo: Captain Hook seek to uncover the 5 hideouts where Peter’s friends are located!
Hailey: At the start of the game, each player is given a reference card.Bebo: They’ll use this to help guide them along the way! Hook takes his character standee and two random pirates who will be joining him! Each pirate has their own special abilities.
Hailey: Peter takes the three location cards and randomly selects one of the three goal cards. The goal card selected tell Peter which Neverland inhabitants they need to rescue from Hook in order to win the game!
Bebo: Hook simply needs to uncover all of the hideouts in order to win the game!
Hailey: Peter Pan then places 5 random Hideout cards in standee bases fanned out in from of them. Then, they put out one companion in front of each location. Each companion is linked to their location!
Bebo: The Neverland board is placed in the middle of the play area. The final version will have a dial to track belief on the top but for this review copy we are using a token to track the amount of belief left in Neverland. Place the marker in the center position of the belief tracker.
Shuffle the Rescue Deck and place it next to the Neverland Board. You are now ready to play!
Bebo: There are multiple phases in each round.
Each round starts with Captain Hook taking the top 6 cards of the Neverland deck, reviewing them and deciding which to place in each of the 3 Neverland locations. 2 must be played in each location.
Hailey: Then the pan player secretly chooses which location to search by placing the location card for their chosen location down. Then they choose one of their 5 companions to search with and move them onto the chosen location card.
Bebo: Captain Hook then chooses one of their 3 pirates to search for Pan with and places them on that specific location of the Neverland board.
Locations resolve differently based on whether the two players chose the same or different locations.
Hailey: If players are not in the same location, they each receive all of the Neverland cards from the specific location that they each chose. Pan resolves their cards before Captain Hook.
Bebo: I will get into detail about what these cards are in a bit, but first let me describe what happens if the two players choose the SAME location. First, Pan chooses one card from their selected location and resolves it first. Hook then receives and resolves the remaining card.
Hailey: Next, Pan’s companion is removed from the game. Pan can no longer search with that companion.
Bebo: Pan must also give Hook a clue as to the hideout associated with that companion. To do so, Pan places one hideout clue token that matches either one of the icons on the hideout card in front of it so Hook now knows one type of icon on that hideout!
Hailey: If Pan ever runs out of companions, they must search a location without one. This is important because once per round, Pan can use the ability of the companion that was chosen to search with.
Bebo: Each companion has their own interesting and unique ability. Getting captured removes that ability from the game.
Lastly, Hook may choose to trigger the ability of the pirate used to search the location. Although Peter can utilize the ability of a companion used to search in any round, the pirate abilities ONLY trigger when Pan and Hook end up at the same location. Each pirate also has a unique ability.
Hailey: So the players are vying for these Rescue Cards, let’s talk about what these are all about…
Bebo: Each Card has two actions to perform, the top half is specific for Pan and only resolves if Pan receives the card and the bottom half is specific for Hook and only resolves if Hook receives the card.
Hailey: There are two types of cards that are in the Neverland deck. Rescue Cards and Action Cards.
Bebo: Any of these cards with an exclamation point must be resolved immediately and any with a hand may be kept in that player’s hand for use at any point in any later round.
Hailey: Action Cards allow players additional actions to perform during their turn such as.
Bebo: Rescue Cards work a little different. The top half, for Pan, will have one of the 3 inhabitants of Neverland depicted on the goal cards like the one Pan received at the beginning of the game. Pan needs to rescue 5 of their specific goal card inhabitants (other types can be swapped at a 2:1 ratio) and doing so ends the game immediately with a win for Pan.
Bebo: The bottom half of the Rescue Cards allow Hook to receive clues of which specific 5 hideouts Pan’s remaining companions are hiding in. There are 3 types of these: 1 icon clues – These cards show 1 specific icon from the hideout cards, like the forest icon. If Hook receives this card, they place it in front of them and Pan places generic search tokens on it, one for each hideout card Pan has with a forest icon on it.
Hailey: So in this example…
Bebo: 2 icon clues show 2 specific icons, for instance water and mountain. If Hook receives this card, they place it in front of them and Pan places generic search tokens on it, one for each hideout card Pan has with water or mountains on it. So in this example…If Pan has the hideout card with both water and mountain, that would be two tokens placed for that one specific card.
The last type of clue card lists 3 different hideouts. If Hook receives this card, Pan places one token on it for each of those listed hideouts that they have in front of them. For example…
After the cards for the round are resolved, Hook may raid one of Peter’s hideouts. Based on the clues received, Hook can try to guess one of the 5 hideouts. If Hook is correct, that hideout is immediately revealed and the companion associated with it, if still in the game, is now removed from the game. If Hook is wrong, Neverland gains 2 belief and the belief tracker is adjusted.
The remaining cards in Neverland are all discarded and a new round begins with Hook drawing 6 cards from the Rescue Deck again.
The game end immediately if Pan rescues the inhabitants listed on his goal card (Pan wins), if Hook uses all 5 of Peter’s hideouts (Hook wins) or if the belief track gets to either end (Pan winning if Neverland is full of belief to the Tink side and Hook winning if Neverland loses belief and it gets to the Hook side).
And that's how you play The Neverland Rescue! Hopefully you liked this video enough to like and subscribe. If you have any questions about the rules, ask them below! Be bold. Play Games. Be You! Happy gaming!
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