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viktor_haagWe played Richard Breese's latest, Reef Encounter, at our latest Spiel Nacht (biweekly boardgame night hosted by a local german-style boardgame vendor). The rules read-through was a bit difficult and took about 20 minutes, but once we got playing it became evident very quickly what the game was all about. The game was quite enjoyable (everyone chipped in some post-game analysis afterwards, which was a good sign).
Personally, I quite liked the game. it seems about the same level of complexity as other Breese offerings (Keythedral, Alladin's Dragons) which is to say more in the ballpark of Puerto Rico or El Grande than it is of Settlers of Catan or Ticket To Ride. One thing I like about this game is the sort of free-wheeling encouragement to string your turn together into a powerful set of move combinations.
On the surface, the game seems to use an action point system (like in Tikal, or Torres) to limit the number of things that players can do every turn. But it's more flexible than this -- actions in Tikal are constrained by an artificial limit that never varies throughout the game. In reality, Reef Encounter's action limits are only partially imposed from "outside" the game (some of the possible actions can only be done once a turn); many of the games action choices you can choose as many times as you want during your turn -- what limits you then is the resources you've accumulated on the board and "in hand" throughout the game, as the unlimited actions consist mostly of transmuting certain kinds of resources into other kinds of resources.
This mixture of limited and unlimited actions is quite clever, because then the fun part becomes learning how to do all the transmutations you need in and around your limited actions to string them together in the most powerful way.
My description is quite abstract, I know, but I really don't think it would help to know that the theme behind the game is all about the development of various coral reefs on a small area of sea bed (sic). Apparently, Breese was inspired to design the game after watching a nature documentary on television!
There's something about the joy of learning how to string together limited and unlimited actions in a game to make longer and longer action combinations that's really compelling; I think it's the same joy that people feel when they build something ("see, I started with a bunch of mundane raw materials, and I built that!"). I haven't really felt that feeling in other german games as strongly as Reef Encounter, and the game it reminds me most of, actually, is Magic The Gathering! You get the same kind of struggle to line up your resources for devastating combination moves, and the same kind of gut wrenching suspense while you're waiting for resources (all I need is just one more damned pink cube! how do I get that cube? how do I get it?).
My first play of Reef Encounter earned it a 7.5 rating, but I suspect that subsequent plays might well boost that value. How much richness is actually there in the game? Certainly not even remotely approaching Magic, but the game has lots of good qualities just the same: nice bits, a reasonable price (now that it's been reprinted in North America by Z-Man games), a theme that's pretty well attached to the mechanics, and the sense that the game provides you with solid tactical choice and a decent measure of strategic choice.
I don't think it's the next "great game", but it certainly seems to me that it could be a very good one.
Personally, I quite liked the game. it seems about the same level of complexity as other Breese offerings (Keythedral, Alladin's Dragons) which is to say more in the ballpark of Puerto Rico or El Grande than it is of Settlers of Catan or Ticket To Ride. One thing I like about this game is the sort of free-wheeling encouragement to string your turn together into a powerful set of move combinations.
On the surface, the game seems to use an action point system (like in Tikal, or Torres) to limit the number of things that players can do every turn. But it's more flexible than this -- actions in Tikal are constrained by an artificial limit that never varies throughout the game. In reality, Reef Encounter's action limits are only partially imposed from "outside" the game (some of the possible actions can only be done once a turn); many of the games action choices you can choose as many times as you want during your turn -- what limits you then is the resources you've accumulated on the board and "in hand" throughout the game, as the unlimited actions consist mostly of transmuting certain kinds of resources into other kinds of resources.
This mixture of limited and unlimited actions is quite clever, because then the fun part becomes learning how to do all the transmutations you need in and around your limited actions to string them together in the most powerful way.
My description is quite abstract, I know, but I really don't think it would help to know that the theme behind the game is all about the development of various coral reefs on a small area of sea bed (sic). Apparently, Breese was inspired to design the game after watching a nature documentary on television!
There's something about the joy of learning how to string together limited and unlimited actions in a game to make longer and longer action combinations that's really compelling; I think it's the same joy that people feel when they build something ("see, I started with a bunch of mundane raw materials, and I built that!"). I haven't really felt that feeling in other german games as strongly as Reef Encounter, and the game it reminds me most of, actually, is Magic The Gathering! You get the same kind of struggle to line up your resources for devastating combination moves, and the same kind of gut wrenching suspense while you're waiting for resources (all I need is just one more damned pink cube! how do I get that cube? how do I get it?).
My first play of Reef Encounter earned it a 7.5 rating, but I suspect that subsequent plays might well boost that value. How much richness is actually there in the game? Certainly not even remotely approaching Magic, but the game has lots of good qualities just the same: nice bits, a reasonable price (now that it's been reprinted in North America by Z-Man games), a theme that's pretty well attached to the mechanics, and the sense that the game provides you with solid tactical choice and a decent measure of strategic choice.
I don't think it's the next "great game", but it certainly seems to me that it could be a very good one.
