Virre Linwendil "Now go look at my photos and thumbs the once you like" Annergård
Sweden
Stockholm
Forza Bajen!
... and still sober
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Yes it is time once again, for reviewing a game after just one play. There is actually a value in such a review, first impressions are important to asses if a game is worthy enough (and etc). Shipyard have an obvious theme, be a shipyard, build ships.
Components:
There is a lot of those, indeed the first thought when looking and setting up the game is that there is so many components. Many tiles of different sizes and types, they can indeed be a bit overwhelming at first. You also have a game board, and personal boards for the players (like in Puerto Rico). The materials is overall of good quality, although some of the tiles of different types can be hard to separate for us that are color-blind. (Well at least it had that problem for me) The details on the tiles can also be hard to separate in bad lightning, actually this seems so common that maybe we should decide that all gaming should be done in good lightning.
Game play:
The game is based on circulation and deciding on an action, but not one that a previous player already decided to use. It uses a lot of elegant mechanisms, but the turn auction loop and the roundels for selling your products and for gaining resources (equipment and crew). And the fact that you can get bonuses makes the game very rich for combinations and also together with the contracts that gives points in the end game makes it a game that seem to have much promise for variation from game to game. There is a slight worry that the contracts cards are heavily unbalanced, that I too some extent felt myself, and others also had noted.
The point of the game is to build boat (using the build boat action) and accumulate crew and equipment (using other actions), and when the boat is finished it sails away on river tiles, with bonuses for different types of crew / equipment and combinations etc. This is a verry nice addition that I think give greatly to the game.
Conclusion:
I like this game, it is a very playable game, that takes about as much time I feel a game should take. This is a game about thinking about actions and combinations, something we know is verry common in generally liked games (Puerto Rico, and two games I personally don't like Agricola and Caylus). I would say this is a good game for those who like finding good combinations, while at the same time having some additional value for those that enjoy Agricola and Caylus.
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To respond to your initial statement: Sorry, but no real new information for me included as someone who hasn't gotten this at the fair but looking at pictures and reading the rules that are already available for some time.
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Randy Shipp
United States
Irving
Texas
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unittype wrote: To respond to your initial statement: Sorry, but no real new information for me included as someone who hasn't gotten this at the fair but looking at pictures and reading the rules that are already available for some time.
As someone who hasn't looked at the pictures or read the rules, I found it to be just fine. There's no denying it contained a lot more useful information than your snarky reply.
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Teik Chooi Oh
United Kingdom
Chorley
Lancashire
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rshipp wrote: unittype wrote: To respond to your initial statement: Sorry, but no real new information for me included as someone who hasn't gotten this at the fair but looking at pictures and reading the rules that are already available for some time. As someone who hasn't looked at the pictures or read the rules, I found it to be just fine. There's no denying it contained a lot more useful information than your snarky reply.
Was it by any chance your family name which makes you more intersted in this game? 
Anyhow, it is a sufficient summary and view of the game and opinion of whom may or may not like it. I have played it couple of times now and will write a review after a few more plays 
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rshipp wrote: unittype wrote: To respond to your initial statement: Sorry, but no real new information for me included as someone who hasn't gotten this at the fair but looking at pictures and reading the rules that are already available for some time. As someone who hasn't looked at the pictures or read the rules, I found it to be just fine. There's no denying it contained a lot more useful information than your snarky reply.
Yeah, snarky. Had to look this word up in Google.
The initial poster has no experience in the game but a vague feeling about what this game is. In the worst case, a review titled posting like this would state wrong rules, early impressions and no long term significance due to the lack of experience with the game.
Why not posting this as a session report or as a general first impression in the corresponding forum? As a review I think these ones do not help anybody but are at the worst misleading.
€dith says that I should not do this much typos and spelling errors.
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Randy Shipp
United States
Irving
Texas
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unittype wrote: Yeah, snarky. Had to look this word up in Google.
Sorry about that. I usually try to avoid idiomatic language with non-native speakers. I wasn't trying to make it more difficult.
unittype wrote: The initial poster has no experience in the game but a vague feeling about what this game is. In the worst case, a review titled posting like this would state wrong rules, early impressions and no long term significance due to the lack of experience with the game.
Why not posting this as a session report or as a general first impression in the corresponding forum? As a review I think these ones do not help anybody but are at the worst misleading.
He doesn't have "no experience." He has played the game once. That qualifies him to write a review. Sorry you didn't like it.
Randy...
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rshipp wrote: unittype wrote: Yeah, snarky. Had to look this word up in Google. Sorry about that. I usually try to avoid idiomatic language with non-native speakers. I wasn't trying to make it more difficult.
No problem, we are talking in English here, so I have to look things up if I can't understand them. That is a great thing with this site, one improves foreign language skills while talking about boardgames.  My response was intended to be be a little pun as I found that this word seems to be a bit famous: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=snarky
rshipp wrote: unittype wrote: The initial poster has no experience in the game but a vague feeling about what this game is. In the worst case, a review titled posting like this would state wrong rules, early impressions and no long term significance due to the lack of experience with the game.
Why not posting this as a session report or as a general first impression in the corresponding forum? As a review I think these ones do not help anybody but are at the worst misleading. He doesn't have "no experience." He has played the game once. That qualifies him to write a review. Sorry you didn't like it. Randy...
Ok, I can understand your point. But we don't speak of a game like Parchisi, so I think one can hardly understand the nuances of a game by one single play. Shipyard is a fiddly beast with lots of different aspects and mechanics. I played it in Essen and was a bit confused of all these actions and tiles although I read the rules before. So I admit that the phrase "no experience" was a bit exaggerated, but I still can't understand why these first impression posts have to be marked as reviews.
I won't complain any longer, I just want people to think about it a bit to improve the overall quality of reviews here.
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Bruce Murphy
Australia
Pyrmont
NSW
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Well, I'd like to write a review. It goes like this:
I haven't played the game, but I know some people who got a partial rules explanation and then gave up without playing it. From their secondhand accounts of horror it's an unnecessarily overcomplicated game without a great deal of appeal. I also watched many people give up mid rules explanation on other Essen tables while I was playing better games.
tada!
B>
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Randy Shipp
United States
Irving
Texas
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thepackrat wrote: Well, I'd like to write a review. It goes like this:
I haven't played the game, but I know some people who got a partial rules explanation and then gave up without playing it. From their secondhand accounts of horror it's an unnecessarily overcomplicated game without a great deal of appeal. I also watched many people give up mid rules explanation on other Essen tables while I was playing better games.
tada!
B>
Care to tell us what the hell this is supposed to illustrate? Do you really think this is anything like someone playing the game once? Oh, never mind, I'll just stop clicking "Show" next to your posts.
Randy...
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Thomas Naumann
Germany
Unspecified
Unspecified
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I played the game once, too. Together with Randy this raises the experience level by a hefty 100%. In my opinion Randy describes the game pretty fairly. As I am not a reviewer but only a commenter here I safely can leave out all describing parts and go straight to the juicy thing, the opinion. And here it is:
It is a good game. It would be a very good game but for one reason: I think there are a lot of similar "building an economy" games out in the market. It works, the mechanisms fit together very nicely, and in opposite to the packrat I found it quite easy to understand (but challenging to play well). Especially that you have to test your ship design against your rented canal tiles is a great twist.
Why am I not totally excited? Because of the calm and wet nature of the theme. I am not so much in ship yards. I prefer monsters, dragons, wizards, space ships and last but not least trains. That is a totally personal reason, I know, but I can't liberate myself from it (and I do not want it, by the way).
But if you want play a really nice strategized version of Ogallalah, you buy the right game.
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Randy Shipp
United States
Irving
Texas
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khurrad wrote: I played the game once, too. Together with Randy this raises the experience level by a hefty 100%.
I didn't write the review, Virre did. Just giving credit where credit is due. :-)
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Phil Sauer
United States
Willow Street
Pennsylvania
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rshipp wrote:
...Oh, never mind, I'll just stop clicking "Show" next to your posts.
Careful... that is a zero-tolerance offense, as I once found out. Simply do it, don't make a statement about doing it. Just an FYI.
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Randy Shipp
United States
Irving
Texas
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aaxiom wrote: rshipp wrote:
...Oh, never mind, I'll just stop clicking "Show" next to your posts.
Careful... that is a zero-tolerance offense, as I once found out. Simply do it, don't make a statement about doing it. Just an FYI.
LOL...too late! ;-)
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Phil Sauer
United States
Willow Street
Pennsylvania
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As long as a moderator doesn't look at it, you're in the clear... but you can always edit.
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Randy Shipp
United States
Irving
Texas
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Um, someone helped the moderator find it. ;-) It's OK, I learned my lesson.
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Phil Sauer
United States
Willow Street
Pennsylvania
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Nah. Getting banned for a spell is learning a lesson. I call this being fortunate.
Incidentally, I agree with your posts above... for the record.
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We played a turn and my feeling is that there is no pressure in this game.
There are so many alternatives that even if a player grabs the action you need, you will still be able to get something equally valuable this turn.
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Randy Shipp
United States
Irving
Texas
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GeoMan wrote: We played a turn and my feeling is that there is no pressure in this game.
There are so many alternatives that even if a player grabs the action you need, you will still be able to get something equally valuable this turn.
In some games, sometimes, that is the pressure, that there are many choices and all of them seem good! It's one of the things I like a lot about games like Stone Age. It's more fun than having nothing good to do on your turn.
Interested to try this game, but I certainly can imagine that your comment could be right on and that there's no tension.
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Paulo Soledade
Portugal
Caranguejeira
Leiria
Madeira - Pearl of the Atlantic - The Boardgame
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aaxiom wrote: rshipp wrote:
...Oh, never mind, I'll just stop clicking "Show" next to your posts.
Careful... that is a zero-tolerance offense, as I once found out. Simply do it, don't make a statement about doing it. Just an FYI.
"Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club!" 
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Phil Sauer
United States
Willow Street
Pennsylvania
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Soledade wrote: aaxiom wrote: rshipp wrote:
...Oh, never mind, I'll just stop clicking "Show" next to your posts.
Careful... that is a zero-tolerance offense, as I once found out. Simply do it, don't make a statement about doing it. Just an FYI. "Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club!"
It's too late... we talked about Fight Club. A day in the penalty box has already been meted out.
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Randy Shipp
United States
Irving
Texas
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"You do that, you go to the box, you know. Two minutes, by yourself, you know and you feel shame, you know. And then you get free!" -- Denis Lemieux, Slap Shot
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Phil Sauer
United States
Willow Street
Pennsylvania
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Welcome back, Randy.
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Rommer Tuesta-Vilca
Canada
Montreal
Quebec
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thepackrat wrote: Well, I'd like to write a review. It goes like this:
I haven't played the game, but I know some people who got a partial rules explanation and then gave up without playing it. From their secondhand accounts of horror it's an unnecessarily overcomplicated game without a great deal of appeal. I also watched many people give up mid rules explanation on other Essen tables while I was playing better games.
tada!
B>
Mmmmmmmmm....still waiting for the review.......
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It was fun browsing through your little fight above! but I think it's a waste of space. Let's get back to the game!!
We played it for the first time last night and..... it took us almost 4 hours in a 3 person game!! Yes, we did take a couple of breaks to let our heads cool down. No, we never thought of giving up!! Do you remember your first game of Agricola? I bet it took some hours too. My friends gave up on it and it spent half a hear on my shelf. When I finaly forced them to play again.... it only took about 3-4 games and it's their favorite right now.
Let's not give up on this game!! The rules are not complex at all. There is a lot of them, there is a huge number of combinations but as soon as we become better acquainted with them I belive the game should go smoothly.
We loved the theme of ship building. I wish they were more sailing ships them steam engine ones. There is a lot of elements but it seems there must be in a good game (excuse the repeating comparison) e.g. Agricola
The final score was very spread out with the lowest at around 50 and highest at almost 100. I think there might be an imbalance in the government cards.
We will definitely try again soon and I'm sure it will be much easier this time.
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Ben Gander
United Kingdom
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GeoMan wrote: We played a turn and my feeling is that there is no pressure in this game.
There are so many alternatives that even if a player grabs the action you need, you will still be able to get something equally valuable this turn.
This would be my main criticism, having played one three player game. There's not many ways to interact - you can stop someone taking an action for a turn (though they'll usually not be held up by it - major exceptions are the employee track and the "Commodities Exchange Hexamgon") but there's enough ways to get most resources and little time pressure so they'll not care except at the end of the game.
I'm also not convinced the Government Contracts are well balanced as I romped to victory with a seemingly simple yet high scoring combo.
Still, the game is relatively fun for a heavy resource management game and I'd certainly play it again.
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