First I’ll say Portals and Prophets is a staple in our rotation of games for Bible Board Game Night. It has a great balance between fun, theme, strategy, and replayability. I highly recommend it!
If you would like to buy a copy of Portals and Prophets, we currently suggest going to their web site to submit an order request.
It’s Fun
It is just fun to play. Whenever I introduce a game to our Bible board game group, when we are done, I ask if people would play the game again and Portals and Prophets always gets a yes. It has that intangible combination of fun that people want to come back to. Here is a 2 min intro…
Theme
With so many books, movies, and TV exploring time travel (The Time Machine, Star Trek, Doctor Who, etc.) having a board game where you are the time traveler is a pretty cool idea! As a time traveler, you can go back to Biblical events. Additional elements such as teleportation portals and fuel boosts tie into the theme, which is what we like.
It is Not another Q&A Game
While there are times and places for Question and Answer games, we also like to see more games that are original theme-based games. This has it! It is enjoyable for families and friends without it being a test of who knows the most.
Game Setup & How to Play
The Game Designer, Andrew Harmon did a great job creating a video for Game Setup and How to Play to help you get started faster. I would skip the manual and show all players this on a laptop, tablet, or phone pausing as needed while you do each step.
Note : It took us 60-120 minutes for 4 people (playing the first or 2nd time).
Strategy and Replayability
Be in the Right Place
At the Right Time
The Strategy of trying to be in the right place at the right time adds to making this game unique and replayable. For new gamers, it takes a little while to learn how to plan ahead for the next location you need to reach, but even for the experienced gamer, there is enough variety that you don’t feel like you mastered it. You want to play again to see if next time you can improve.
End of Game Unique Bonuses
I have to mention the end of game bonus points. They can be significant. On several occasions, the players near the back end of the scoring won after all the bonuses were added up. This should keep all players interested to the very end.
Artwork
Pretty good. While the game is not set up as a Q&A learning game, you do get to learn some geography and locations of real Biblical places.
Home Rules
While I think the main game-play itself is solid, there are a couple of small variations I do which you can try or ignore.
- No fuel boost restriction
With new players, we are usually struggling to have enough fuel boost cards in our hands and they have other rules to worry about, so I often skip the fuel limit rule. - The reason why you are going back in time.
Depending on who is playing with you, the included background story as a ‘ Tour Guide Test’ may be sufficient or you may want to give some other reason.
“You live at a time when Time travel exists. You are going back in time to visit real Biblical events”
Sometimes I will leave it as simple as that and leave the reason to their imaginations. If I have more of a techie gamer crowd I may add some suspense and danger…
‘You live at a time when Time travel exists. Some people want to change history. You have to go back to visit Biblical places to stabilize the timeline!”
This doesn’t change the game-play itself. I am just looking to help my players get more into the theme. - Reading the card descriptions
When a card is played for a score, we found that it was a good time to read the entire card description and bible verse. This didn’t feel like a contrived game element to force Bible learning but actually explaining each place while you were there.
Overall
Portals and Prophets is currently in our top 5 bible board games and in our Bible board game night rotation. There is something about it that we want to keep going back again!
If you would like to buy a copy of Portals and Prophets, we currently suggest going to their web site to submit an order request.
If you are the gamemaster or like to binge-watch other videos to get a better feel for the game, here are some extra videos…
A full game-play demo
another review
Cooperative Variant
If you are looking for a variant where you can play together as a team.
Cooperative Rulebook
