JAQ review — Ready your sword and earn your coin

Journey.Adventure.Quest or JAQ is one of my favorite board games that I have gotten to try in October. This game has changed my perspective on board games as a whole and added a whole new layer to this hobby for me. So kick your boots back, take off your helmet, and let’s go on an adventure.

JAQ is a game for 1-6 players that is both cooperative and competitive; you can choose what game mode you want to play. This game will take you about an hour to complete regardless of the amount of players you have. You can, of course, continue adventuring to your heart’s content and go beyond the hour mark.

Cracking open the box

Okay, so what you’re seeing here is my organization of the box after I put everything together. At the top, you can see all the tokens. That top tray is included in the box and is perfect for organization. The bottom tray consists of a few decks of cards, the monster cards, the blood tokens, and a few more tokens under the blood tokens.

Everything in the box has an extremely good build except for the rulebook. The cards are strong and will not rip and tear as you play with them. The coins are sturdy and can be tossed around without peeling. My favorite part of this box is the extra space to organize. What I haven’t shown yet is that there are also deck separators included in the box: I use these to keep the cards organized for solo play. Honestly? This box comes with everything you need to stay organized and keep set up for quick games, and I really appreciate that.

However, there is a downside, and that’s the rulebook. When I go through and play for the first time I tend to bend the book back when both pages are open because it makes it easier for the larger rulebooks to be read. The JAQ rulebook can’t handle this or well, at least mine couldn’t. The staples for my rulebook fell right out and I had to put the book back together.

Rules

JAQ is a 19-page rulebook that is pretty wide. The box is thin and slightly heavy but can be easy enough to transport. I have multiple issues with the rulebook and none of my issues have to do with the rules. I have had to re-staple this rulebook at least four times, including during my first playthrough. It does not hold together well and even as I type this I have to staple the booklet again.

The first thing you have to do is figure out how many players you’re going to have. I tested this game solo with 6 players, and our sweet spot was 4 players. On the bottom right of the cards, there are dots. When you have 4 players, you have to use the cards with four dots on the bottom.

After that, you have to choose the competition mode. You can play competitively or non-competitive. We only tried the non-competitive game mode. Now shuffle the Journey, Adventure, and Quest decks. When that’s done, shuffle the 3 decks of monsters and draw a level 1, 2, and 3 card. At this point, you can get the tokens set up and draw the top 3 Quest Cards.

JAQ requires a big play area. By step 7, the step where you have to start handing you the hero equipment, we had to pull out another table. This is one of my biggest complaints about the game. There is a lot of card stacking and setup that has to be done. Setting this game up is such a headache when you’re playing with multiple people and the payoff isn’t there for me to warrant the amount of time it takes.

The rules are not hard to understand or follow, but I found myself not wanting to spend the time to remember them. Everything felt like a slog with JAQ but I noticed that my group was having a fantastic time with the game. It could be that I would’ve liked the competitive game mode more, bluntly, to put it bluntly, JAQ became so boring I was forgetting how to play mid-game. This is not the fault of the game really, it comes down to the type of board games that I enjoy.

Going on a Solo Adventure

What you see in this image is a solo game in progress. Now, there are two ways to play solo. You can play the game as normal and continue slaying monsters until you want to stop. To test this I played for about two hours without stopping. Eventually, the game gets stale, and it’s best to rest your game.

The second way to play solo is for you to face off against the red knight, and let me just tell you I can’t say much about this because I have yet to beat him. He’s a real challenge that I just love. But be warned, he might be a touch difficult when you first start playing. I do recommend getting a few normal matches under your belt before taking him on.

I love the solo mode because you can play it quickly and the rules flow a lot better for me: I got around 9 solo matches in before realizing that JAQ really isn’t the game for me. With that being said the solo mode is fun.

Final Thoughts

JAQ is a good monster battling game with strong components and a unique art design that I grew to adore. The rules hold up the best when you have 4 players, but you have to be careful when you pass around the rulebook because it doesn’t hold together well.

The unique mechanics were lost on me because the more I played the more issues I had paying attention to the game. With more players, the game became far too slow for me to enjoy. With that being said, the team I tested the game with loved it and used it as part of their weekly game rotation.

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