Curt Hnatiuk
United States
St. Louis
Missouri
-
Designer: Ronald Wettering
Publisher of version reviewed: Z-MAN games
Like any other game review I do, I am going to do my work from the outside to the inside, and then include how the game plays with my different playgroups if applicable. (My 3 main groups are 1: My girlfriend and I, 2: a collection of 4 lighter gamers and me and, 3: Mom, Grandma, Girlfriend and I.)
The Box (Let’s take a look at the outside)
“Negotiation skills are necessary and backstabbing will not be uncommon. You will do whatever is necessary to get your sailors to shore. So will everyone else!”
Recommends: 3-6 people, ages 12+, 90 minutes
My opinion*: 5-6 people, ages 12+, 60 – 90 minutes
*This game thrives with more people. It gives a better chance to make and break deals. I have played with 4-6 people, and have found the game very enjoyable with 5-6 people. The age limit is there most likely to help with understanding that it is a game, and it is all in fun. There is a certain maturity limit needed or tempers could run high. The 90 minute play time seems about right. There is a point when it will actually start coming down through repeated plays, but then there is an interesting limit reached where negotiations are going to start taking a lot longer, and the play time goes up again.
The Components (I always dive past the ever important rules to see the medley of bits and pieces)
The board is simplistic and artistic, with very intense colors.
Each of the colors has its own wooden boat and pawns, with an assortment of regular sized pawns and larger ones. As well, each player will received a set of cards, with each other player’s color represented, 3 cards with a representation of a crusty old captain, and a card representing a non-player color, black. (Right off the bat, I used card protectors on them, as I knew the game would be played with beer, and snacks in close proximity, and I want it to last a while.) Finally, there is a black boat, a black disk used to represent the start player for the round, and a series of little blue cylinders used to represent leaks in the boats.
The insert for the game is folded cardboard. It is not good for storing the game to keep it safe, so this game got the sandwich baggie treatment.
The Rulebook (Does it enhance learning, or make you want to turn and run?!)
The rulebook contains 8 English pages. It is full color, and is full of examples. Any issues I had originally were answered by carefully reading the included examples (as carefully as you can while sipping your beer). In addition, the margin is actually a quick reference of sorts, so if it has been a while since you played, you can get right back into the action.
I have found the rules to be very well laid out, making it easy to learn on your own, and they follow a good format, so I generally use it when teaching the game to others. I find that the rules explanation is completed before anyone gets to that ‘eyes glazing over’ part when their brain is on overload.
The Rules (How do you play this sucker?!)
The object of the game is this: Get your sailors from the ship wreckage to the islands in the distance. Some of the lifeboats will spring leaks and not reach the islands, so choose your boats carefully. The catch is, other than deciding the start player; there is no random element to the game. All the decisions are going to be made by voting, and majority rules!
At the start of the game, each player follows the set up to get their boat and sailors onto the board. Then the game is played over a series of turns, with each turn consisting of 3 phases. The game ends when there are no boats left, because they either made it to the island, or they were lost at sea.
The Vote - Everything that happens in this game is a vote by the players, so I am going to take the time to describe the voting process. Each time a decision is made, each player selects one of their cards from their hand, and places it face down in front of them. All cards are revealed at the same time, and the ‘winner’ is the color with the most votes. If there is ever a tie, then the player with the start disk determines the winner out of those colors that are tied. Once catch is that each player has 3 captain cards that they can select instead of a color card. Once played, captain cards are removed from the game and only the colored cards are returned to a player’s hand. The benefit of playing a captain card is that *IF* you are the only player to play a captain card, then *YOU* decide the entire vote by selecting any color you want. The drawback comes when more than one captain card is played. If ever more than one is played, then *ALL* captain cards for that vote are discarded with no effect, and the vote is decided by those that played colored cards. (To sum up, in a vote, everyone selects a card, if one player played a captain card, they decided the vote, if there is more than 1 or no captain cards played, which ever color is represented the most ‘wins’ with all ties decided by the player with the start disk.)
The 3 phases are: Phase 1 – a lifeboat gets a leak, Phase 2 – a boat moves forward and Phase 3 – Sailors change boats.
Phase 1 – a lifeboat gets a leak: In this phase, one of the boats develops a leak. Which boat you ask? Well read the above comment on the vote. That’s right, the players vote on which boat gets a leak, with the ‘winning’ color getting one of the blue cylinder tokens. A special note, if a boat ever has more leaks than sailors, then the entire boat sinks, and everyone on board learns to breathe seawater. Now each boat has limited space, so there can be 2 outcomes to this vote.
1)If the boat has room for the leak, then put the leak marker in any empty seat (remember to check if the boat sinks)
2)If there is no room for it, then you have to make room. This is done with, yup you guessed it, a vote! Now this vote is a little different than the other votes. Only the colors in the boat may vote on who gets thrown overboard. In this vote, each player has his vote scaled by the number of people in the boat. Small sailors are worth 1 point, and the large sailors are worth 2. So, if yellow has 2 small sailors, red has 1 small and 1 large, and white has 2 large sailors, then their number of votes respectively are : 2, 3, 4. So as you can see, any 2 of the colors can still side together to vote out the 3rd. (And remember any captain card that is the only one played will still decide the vote)
Phase 2 – a boat moves forward: This is the most straight forward phase. There is a vote, and the winning color boat is moved 1 space forward. Boats only ever move straight forward, and on its 3rd moved forward, it has reached the island, and is unloaded.
Phase 3 – Sailors change boats: In this phase, everyone panics, screams can be heard by everyone in the boats, and the paranoia of what is going to happen fully sinks in. In this phase, each player, starting with the start player, selects one of their sailors, and jumps him out of a boat, and then once everyone has had a sailor jump out, in reverse order, everyone jumps back into a different boat. The following rules must be followed. Only 1 sailor can jump out of each boat. If it gets to your turn, and none of your sailors can jump out, because different colored sailors already have, then you get skipped. Next, when jumping into a boat (remember, this is done in reverse order), you MUST jump into a different boat than the one you jumped out of, and you can only jump into a boat with room. If your only choices are full boats, and the boat that you jumped out of, then, blub… blub…. blub, that sailor is fish food.
And that is game play. Repeat as often as necessary until everyone is safely on an island, or safely on the bottom of the sea.
Game Groups (so how does each group like this game?)
Group 1 (My girlfriend and I): Well, unfortunately (or fortunately =) this game is not 2 players.
Group 2 (4 lighter gamers and me): First, I have to say that one of the lighter gamers is almost always my girlfriend. This game does have a lot of negotiation and ability to create bad feelings; however, these bad feelings have never been a problem for this group. We all understand that it is a game, and whatever happens in Lifeboats, stays in Lifeboats. We have an uncanny ability to put the feelings of the game into the game box with all of the bits, so it won’t affect our other games. When we do pull out Lifeboats again though, we seem to have perfect recall…. ‘Hey, didn’t you vote me out in the last game…’ but it’s all taken in fun. This game always goes over well with this group, even when we have new members.
Group 3 (Mom, Grandma, Girlfriend and I): I have never played it with this group. I just keeping hitting the mental road block of, I have to vote my grandmother to her doom… I don’t know how she would take it. Having said that, I think the complexity in the game, or lack of it, is very grandma friendly, and that she would be able to understand it fairly well. She has a tendency to pick on my mother though, and I could see that going badly.
The Rating (I am going to assign a number to the game to represent its ‘fun’)
I will never turn down a game of Lifeboats, and will suggest it. It is easy to learn, and is a great game to get the new person talking, so they are not so shy. In the 20+ people I have introduced this game to, I have only ever had 1 person who didn’t like it, as they never got into the spirit of the negotiation, which is what this game is.
I usually get requests for this one, which I am more than happy to fulfill.
This game is an 8.
-
Self Appointed Senator of Good Ideas
Other-South Pacific
Coming Soon
Castle GreySkull
-
Good review. We picked this up a few months ago. Played it a few times and it kind of fizzled out. You are right that it is better with more players.
I have been thinking about trading this but maybe we will give it some play during the holidays before I decide.
-
|
|
