Outdoor Survival (1972) - Avalon Hill classic

I had Outdoor Survival on my game shelf since the 80's at least.  A few years ago, I gave my board game collection to a family who was having actual board game nights.  At the time I had no players at all willing to come over and game, so it felt like a good move.  Now I wish I had half of those games back.  Not all of them, because THAT would be mental.  But some of them were classics, like Outdoor Survival.

It's a famous game board, which is described as "13,200 acres of the great outdoors".  A three-part heavy folding board, and yes, the little plastic clips that are loose in the box are meant to hold the parts of the board together.

The rules start you with a basic game, where you start at the base (number 5) in the middle of the board, and the first player to make it off the East or West edge of the board wins.  Here I am a few moves into a solitaire game.

The basic rules are simple: roll a die to see your movement options.  Move.  Repeat.

Once you have tried the basic game, there are 5 scenario cards for the full experience.  Now you have to check if you got food or water resources each turn.  Slowly die and watch your movement rate go down. 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, doomed.

Yes, you can survive and win.  My yellow/green guy made it to safety, maybe you can survive, too.

Or not.  Depending on the scenario, you may need to land on a food or water space to count it, or just pass over it, or stay on a resource space for two or three turns to gain one, two or three levels back.  And when your food or water hit certain points on their tracks, your life level goes down, and as your life level goes down, your available movement rate goes down.  To make it slightly easier, use the variant where all of the cabins count for both food and water.  You will thank me later.  To make it worse, use the Wilderness Encounter table on the back of the scenario cards: you can get a variety of ups and downs.  Break a leg.

Here, my two guys set on out the Survival scenario a few turns ago ...

So far, so good.  And here we are near the end ...

Yellow/green is a move or two from the West end, but blue had to double back past the deer (move three but no water dropped his life level by 4, so he could now only move one) to the pool of water where he dropped to life level L-0 (zero movement left) and starved.

Probably my favorite scenario is the Rescue one, where you take a missing person chip and three blank chips, flip them face down, mix them up and put them at random spots on the map.  Then you have to make it to each chip, flip it over, and when you find the missing person, escort them back to safety.  In this scenario, food and water are easier to maintain, but a lot more movement is needed.

The scenarios are well balanced, and you can always make up your own.  It plays just fine as a solitaire challenge, or maybe someone else wants to come starve with you ... either way.

Avalon Hill was the master of tactical games with hundreds or little chips; all kinds of battles, historical scenarios, and usually with long rulebooks with every rule perfectly numbered and sub-numbered for reference.  But this was just a person trying to move across terrain before being slowed to extinction.  I am so glad I found a fresh copy for my collection.