First, all of the bears on that track are returned to the bag. If you wind up placing a bear on the last space of a temple track, a ritual occurs. If you place an orange bear adjacent to a blue bear and a white, you would have to pay one blue and one white bear to the temples in order to take the token on that space. You must pay the same number and color of bears from your supply to the respective temples. The price of placement is determined by the adjacent bears. So you canвЂ™t just go off into the wilderness and place a bear on any empty spot. Rule number two is that the bear you place must be adjacent to another bear (just not one of the same color). The board spaces are connected by paths and if you want to place an orange bear, for example, you canвЂ™t place it where another orange bear connects to that space. Rule number one is that you may not place your bear adjacent to another one of the same color. When you complete a column on your board, you will take a seal card, which IвЂ™ll explain in a minute.ДЄh, but itвЂ™s not so simple as just plonking a bear anywhere you want. Some tokens have seals on them and these can be extra-valuable at the end of the game. Note that you can never take a token of a type for which you do not have an empty slot. The token is then yours to be placed in an empty spot on your player board. To gain a knowledge token, you must place a bear on a space with a token.

Four random bears are also placed on the board and these mark where the quest for tokens begins. The board is randomly seeded with tokens at the beginning of the game. Getting a new knowledge token is trickier. If you have more than ten bears in your reserve at the end of your turn, you must discard down to ten and return the excess to the bag. If you choose to get new bears, you can take two from the temple tracks on the board, or draw three randomly from the bag. You can choose to either get new bears (theyвЂ™re called steles in the game, but IвЂ™m just going to call them bears for simplicityвЂ™s sake), or acquire a knowledge token. Turns are simple in The Way of the Bear (hereafter TWOB). Do this and youвЂ™ll be the new king of the bears.

This means gathering two tokens of each knowledge type (or three, in a two-player game). The goal is to be the first player to complete your personal player board. The Way of the Bear is a set collection and path-building game with a racing element built in. Will you succeed, or are you destined to be the court jester? How It Plays The Way of the Bear casts you as a prince of the land embarking on a quest to become the next king. If you want the throne, you have to do all of this faster than the other hopefuls. And youвЂ™d better erect some sacred bear statues so that everyone in the land knows how important you are. You must travel the land and gatherВ the most knowledge of religion, military, education and commerce. If you want to be King of the Bears, there are tests to pass.

The bear and the dragon