Game: SeaSim

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EndersGame — 2008-10-30T03:59:40+00:00

Swimming against the stream

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EndersGame — 2008-10-25T20:05:42+00:00

Closeup detail of the artwork of the shark's head!

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EndersGame — 2008-10-25T19:54:11+00:00

Reverse side of SeaSim board

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EndersGame — 2008-10-25T19:53:32+00:00

Other half of the board (yellow shark)

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EndersGame — 2008-10-25T19:53:05+00:00

One half of the board (red shark)

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EndersGame — 2008-10-25T19:46:04+00:00

Artwork detail from inside the box

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EndersGame — 2008-10-25T19:44:17+00:00

The three yellow sharks

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EndersGame — 2008-10-25T19:43:48+00:00

The three red sharks

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EndersGame — 2008-10-25T19:42:36+00:00

An ocean full of fish!

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EndersGame — 2008-10-25T19:30:06+00:00

The virus, orca, and current

Thread: Re: Short, shark shock

Maik — 2008-04-18T16:15:19+00:00

skeletodoc wrote:
Do you lose one scoring fish spot even if you don't move a space as when you change fish color on your shark? Or is it that you have to move and eat in order to lose one point for energy spent?

We play that you lose the energy regardless of whether you move or not.

From reading both the english and the german rules, I'm pretty sure that this is how it's intended to work. Probably it would be too easy to wait for fish populations to regrow, otherwise.

Cheerio,
Maik

Thread: Re: Short, shark shock

skeletodoc — 2008-04-18T01:35:49+00:00

Do you lose one scoring fish spot even if you don't move a space as when you change fish color on your shark? Or is it that you have to move and eat in order to lose one point for energy spent?

Thread: Re: Short, shark shock

Natus — 2007-09-28T00:42:57+00:00

Yeah, a thumb from this G&S fanatic as well. Bless you for the pun on top of it all!

Must be my favorite trio in all of opera (I think!)

Thread: Re: Short, shark shock

spartax — 2007-09-27T15:59:27+00:00

I'll give you a thumb just for the G&S reference:

To sit in solemn silence in a dull dark dock
in a pestilential prison with a lifelong lock
awaiting the sensation of a short sharp shock
from a cheap and chippy chopper on a big black block!

Thread: Short, shark shock

Maik — 2007-09-27T15:22:36+00:00

Note: this is a repost of an older review written after Essen 2004 that slumbered over at the game entry for Ocean before SeaSim got its own. I've deleted the review for Ocean, because it never belonged there in the first place

In SeaSim, two groups of sharks (I’m sure there is a collective noun for sharks, but have no idea what it is – murder, which would be a perfect fit, is already reserved for crows) compete for food in an otherwise peaceful lagoon. Each player gets three sharks of one color – yellow for the start player, red for the other one – numbered from one to three. To mark which kind of prey they hunt, the shark counters also have a hole in which you place a fish, which come in three varieties: white, grey and brown. The game board shows the lagoon, divided into 90 hex spaces, and the health tracks with a range of 1 to 22 for both players.

To determine the fish population at the start of the game, you place three fish of each color on nine lagoon spaces. These spaces are determined quasi-randomly with a 9x10 bingo chart, on which you can select any row, column or diagonal to get the starting positions for the fish. Once you have placed all nine of them, you expand them into swarms by placing additional fish in adjacent spaces – first for all three white fish, then for the grey and finally for the brown. This is a nice method for ensuring a different setup each game while still keeping a good distribution over the whole lagoon.

Now that the stage is set, the yellow player places shark number 1 in an empty lagoon space and immediately decides on its type of prey by slotting a fish into the shark counter. The red player places shark-1, then both place shark-2 and then shark-3. At the start of the game, each of your sharks has to hunt a different kind of fish, but this can change later on. Both players mark their starting health of 7 and the hunt is on.

During a game turn, both players move their sharks and eat fish in the same order as during initial placement: the start player (yellow for the first round) moves shark-1, then the other player moves his shark-1, the start player moves shark-2 and so on. During a move, you may rotate your shark by one hex side and then move forward into either an empty space or a space with a fish preyed upon by this shark. In the latter case, you may continue moving forward as long as your gobbling up fishes of the right color. After finishing your move, the health of your sharks changes by the number of fish your shark got minus one. Obviously, the health will have decreased after a turn in which your sharks managed to eat less than three fish together.

After both players have moved all three of their sharks, the fish population is replenished (luckily). White fish swarms grow first, then grey and brown at last. New fish pop up in each space adjacent to two fish of the same kind which also have to be adjacent to each other. The order of growth means that, all other things being equal, there will be more white fish around than grey or brown ones. For the next turn, the player with less healthy sharks becomes the starting player, and that is almost everything you need to know to start playing.

Almost, apart from the winning conditions (either max out with 23+ health or starve your opponent to zero health to win) and the fact that sharks can change their prey. Since shark are pretty dumb, this takes them a while: you have to remove the fish that indicates the current prey in one round and replace it with another type of prey (or, possibly, the same one) in the next round, and in both rounds, the shark may not eat anything at all, although it may turn and move into empty spaces normally.

Although there are no random elements after the inital fish placement, SeaSim is too interactive to be deterministic and can, at times, even feel a bit chaotic with the rise and fall of fish swarms in the lagoon. There is also quite a bit of interesting questions to ponder: herding fishes or going for the biggest kill, hurting your opponent or helping yourself, and when to swap prey types. These decisions add up to a brisk and fun game where the only possible nitpick I can find is that replenishing fish makes me wish for a computer version, sometimes.

The game also looks good – from the waters of the lagoon to the sharks that depict the health tracks (ugly brutes, and not in the least cartoony). The wooden fish meeples may be a bit drab (white, grey and brown are not exactly festive colors), but I would guess that more colorful prey would have made it difficult to readily find your sharks among them.

Expanded rules introduce an orca, a deadly virus and/or a current to the game, but so far we have been satisfied enough with the basic game to not try them yet. I do look forward to all of them, but even with just the basics SeaSim will hold a favorite place at our gaming table for some time to come.

Thread: Re: Need clarification on current movement

BilboAtBagEnd — 2007-03-17T22:07:55+00:00

Ahh, the current. It is neat but it is a little more involved than the other extra goodies.

EvilTimmy wrote:
Well that means that it is a contradiction in the rules when it states that when it moves into a space with a fish that it moves further without changing direction. The common rules say to turn when it hits (is)land.

I believe that means "changing direction in the normal course of things". Because it is one of the movers, I just have it move as normal for the killer whale and the virus. If you think of direction as not being merely linear in this game but also takes into account those occaisonal land-hit turns, then the rule is more clear. Although perhaps path would be a better term, but even that is a bit fuzzy.

When carrying fish:
--Move (turning if necessary) until it passes through 2 adjacent empty spaces and drop the 2 fish in those spaces. Then continue on to end movement in a 3rd empty space.

Right, even if that empty space involves moving beyond fish that are already there, and even curving around.

I have no idea how it would ever occur that the Current would not be able to drop fish and end on an empty space as stated in the 'exceptional situation' unless the intention is that you move until you pass 2 adjacent empty spaces and can only drop fish if the 3rd empty space is also immediately adjacent to the first 2. Or maybe if the entire board was full except for 2 adjacent spaces. Otherwise, you can always skip over fish and turn to reach that 3rd empty space to stop in.

I can think of the board full of fish, but I can also think of a situation where the current is not able to turn because there are fish preventing it from turning around and finding a way out, and enough fish in such a position to block any passage all the way out to the board.

[c]------------ <-- top of board
| O _ X X L O |
| _ _ _ _ O O _ |
| _ _ _ O _ O |
------------- <-- bottom of board[/c]

Note that even though there there is an empty space after the current has left it, the current can't just turn around back to where it came without the fish---it has to act like the virus, which is to act as though it hasn't really had it's move turn, except to turn around to face in the opposite orientation.

A very rare case indeed, but a greater possibility than a board almost full of fish.

Hope this helps.

Thread: Re: Need clarification on current movement

EvilTimmy — 2007-02-16T16:49:06+00:00

Well that means that it is a contradiction in the rules when it states that when it moves into a space with a fish that it moves further without changing direction. The common rules say to turn when it hits (is)land.

I will take this to mean that the Current moves as such:

When not carrying fish:
--Move until it has passed 3 empty spaces, turning if necessary along the way
--If it passes over two fish of the same color in the course of its movement it picks up the first two fish of matching color

When carrying fish:
--Move (turning if necessary) until it passes through 2 adjacent empty spaces and drop the 2 fish in those spaces. Then continue on to end movement in a 3rd empty space.

I have no idea how it would ever occur that the Current would not be able to drop fish and end on an empty space as stated in the 'exceptional situation' unless the intention is that you move until you pass 2 adjacent empty spaces and can only drop fish if the 3rd empty space is also immediately adjacent to the first 2. Or maybe if the entire board was full except for 2 adjacent spaces. Otherwise, you can always skip over fish and turn to reach that 3rd empty space to stop in.

Thread: Re: Need clarification on current movement

cwali — 2007-02-16T12:55:02+00:00

EvilTimmy wrote:
Anyone care to clarify how the current is supposed to work?
The written English rules [for the current] are about as clear as mud and contain what seem to be contradictions

If the Current moves into a space with a fish, then it moves further without changing direction
What if the very next space is land? How can it keep moving in the same direction? This is my biggest question.

First the common rules for the virus, orca and current are explained. There you see what happens if they hit (is)land.

Thread: Need clarification on current movement

EvilTimmy — 2007-02-15T06:26:43+00:00

Anyone care to clarify how the current is supposed to work?
The written English rules [for the current] are about as clear as mud and contain what seem to be contradictions

If the Current moves into a space with a fish, then it moves further without changing direction
What if the very next space is land? How can it keep moving in the same direction? This is my biggest question.

If the Current moves through several spaces containing the same type of fish, then it picks up the first 2 of these fish. If this counts for 2 or all 3 types of fish, then the Current only picks up the first type it can pick 2 fish from.
I think this is a rather roundabout way of saying that you pick up the first two matching fish colors that it encounters(?).

Next round the Current moves until it has passed through 2 adjacent empty spaces. (It may move through more than 3 empty spaces now in order to accomplish this.)
I understand this to mean that the Current just moves as many spaces as necessary (including making turns when it hits land) until it passes two empty spaces. Agree?

Exceptional situation: If the Current can't drop the 2 fish and end on an empty space, then the Current holds the 2 fish and places them next round.
I think I finally understand that even though the Current can move in an unlimited fashion when it is carrying fish it can still end up in a situation where it passes two empty spaces but then there might not be a 3rd empty space beyond that for it to move into.

Lastly, how is Current movement decided when it is already carrying fish? Does it simply ignore and skip over spaces containing fish? (i.e. 'normally' it must not change direction when this happens)