They fume at my nagging while they’re trying to optimize their next turn. A shaky board game with its flaws patched up by legacy mechanics, Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2019. Press J to jump to the feed. ( Log Out /  If you prefer to read/comment via the BoardGameGeek forums, be sure to subscribe to the Top of the Table Geeklist. After viewing product detail pages, look here to find an easy way to navigate back to pages you are interested in. There just aren't a lot of intriguing/satisfying board games that you can play 15-20 games and be excited to see what comes next. The first game proper. There's a problem loading this menu right now. I talked about it for weeks, just waiting for my friends to be available to play. However, when such an issue inevitably came up, I don’t believe the right decision was to make such a drastic change. This book contains 400 or so story entries, a map, and a section at the back sealed by perforated card and more dire "no-looking" warnings. There are hundreds of stickers, by the way: whirlpools, new islands, weird statues, and plenty of symbols with no current meaning but plenty of portent. Thanks for reading this post! Like the leaders of the provinces, they became blinded by the pursuit of glory, and their ambition became their downfall. Prior to this purchase, my board game experience was very low, consisting of the likes of Monopoly, Risk, Sorry etc. 2017: Year in Review – The Top of the Table, Follow The Top of the Table on WordPress.com. Recently, my husband and I discovered legacy games through Pandemic Legacy. At the start of things, the players, as mainland noble families beginning to explore the western sea, start with two plastic ships at one edge of a large, mostly empty board. We have all been so engaged in this game we are meeting to play every week, when we previously only did once a month. There is so much to do now that we had no inkling would come at the start. But unlike Pandemic: Legacy, its direct forebear, which rightly bathes in near-universal acclaim and therefore set the hype-train in motion, SeaFall is an incredibly divisive game. A couple of weeks ago, I finished my campaign of Seafall, an epic game of exploration on the high seas for 3-5 players. There's a reason it's 75% off. The book then tells you how to change the board, in this instance by taking a sticker from one of three big old sheets that come in the box and placing it on the island site to label it as a site that produces a type of good or hosts a mine or a market. I think that the biggest mistake of all was to make players discard all buildings, ship upgrades, money, and treasure at the end of each game. Though it may seem daunting at first, the game eases you in with a few rules and then expands the rule book as you get more experience. It also analyzes reviews to verify trustworthiness. […]. In the meantime, we debated whether or not SeaFall would be worth it. In the first game, the first player to land on an island names it, writing whatever they like in the white space provided on the board. With just a one hour play time, it’s easy to get a quick game in on a weeknight. As someone who had pre-ordered a copy of Seafall and talked a group of four friends into playing it, I was torn over whether to just eat the $80 and play something else. Seafall gets increasingly complex as you progress through the game, unlocking new rules and mechanics by achieving milestones and opening sealed boxes. We've been playing Seafall for the past couple of months, and today thought it was time to review the game. Since its release in October, the controversy has kept up, and there has been precious little critical consensus. This has been the best gaming experience I have ever had. This would allow for the removal of the rubber-banding mechanisms that ultimately don’t work anyway (game-end discarding and starting bonuses), letting players wage war if they care about competitive scores, or just play peacefully and be happy with their own successes. By the eighth game, momentum was fading and one member of our group was preparing to move to Nashville. There are masses of secondary characters, a whole system of building a town and upgrading ships, and a rich, developing story that my group, just seven games in, is coming to love. I ended up canceling my pre-order (getting Cry Havoc instead), because I realized how hard it would be to get a group to sit down through so many long sessions. These mechanics add new ways of playing the game, but they never come together and feel cohesive. The explorer's map, showing the symbols of all the places to explore. You can name them all. Also, younger players may hate it because it isn't the most rewarding game playing process. After much deliberation, I talked myself into going forward with the campaign, wondering if the early reviewers’ opinions were affected by the breakneck pace at which they rushed through a game that was meant to be savored. It finishes more or less at the same time as each of the four islands are named, and the four corresponding entries written on quest cards are read out. You might have heard about SeaFall. Sure, there were some very exciting moments scattered in, especially in our first 3-4 games. Thanks for reading this post! It will cost you in terms of playing time. Not simply a function of the "legacy" mechanics, there are many places where the rules are poorly written or frustratingly omissive for no plot-related reason. SeaFall review: Hotly anticipated board game is a work of flawed genius Massive hype, strong backlash—this Pandemic Legacy follow-up has made big waves. I’ve got to believe that this was a decision made midstream, because some buildings and structures don’t even make sense when you can’t carry them over from one game to the next (case in point: the Bank). This is the dichotomy that fuels so much of the division surrounding SeaFall: there’s a lot of chafing between the experience versus the mechanics. Interesting legacy mechanics, low price, but deeply flawed game, Reviewed in the United States on July 6, 2019. The legacy aspect shines through wonderfully. Let me start off by saying I was extremely excited to begin this game. This genre is relatively new in the sector of mass produced board games (though RPGs have been using many of these concepts for decades), and Seafall was met with great anticipation leading up to its 2016 release. Secondarily, I think the length of the campaign should have been reduced. Every game session was accompanied by pauses for searches of the BoardGameGeek forums in an effort to find clarification of the numerous mechanics and how they're intended to work together. The Captain's Log (Unofficial SeaFall FAQ and compilation of rules clarifications and game play information from SeaFall's developers) Components. Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2019. Use of and/or registration on any portion of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement (updated 1/1/20) and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement (updated 1/1/20) and Ars Technica Addendum (effective 8/21/2018). ( Log Out /  But in trying to provide catch-up mechanisms, Seafall ended up actually making the game imbalanced and full of frustrating experiences. But I would have much rather spent that time playing a better campaign game like Gloomhaven or Mechs vs Minions, or just trying a different new game each month. Leaving the rest of this stuff here, but I am changing my rating to 5 stars (considering a $20-25 purchase). Since October 2016, four friends and I have gotten together about once a month to play Seafall. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts I understand that there may have been unforeseen problems found in playtesting that led Rob Daviau and his team to make buildings and structures temporary. To the left are the ship and town upgrades, which get added to as you open new chests. Also, be sure to check out the links below to follow this blog on Twitter and/or Facebook. Upon opening that final box, the unanimous feeling was one of being underwhelmed, and relieved to be done. Plus, I’m always looking for games that my wife and I can enjoy together, and this is the first legacy game I’ve gotten her to play with me. Your recently viewed items and featured recommendations, Select the department you want to search in, Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2019. As a huge fan of Pandemic Legacy and Risk Legacy, the expectations for SeaFall were high. This is a great game ... for some. Advisors will help you in your adventures. Rather than play on without him, we decided to stage an epic finale, ignoring the score and just playing until the sixth and final box could be opened. If you have unlimited free time, or you want to open all the boxes and study some inventive game design elements that may serve as building blocks for a fantastic game in the future – then by all means, go for it. CNMN Collection © 2020 Condé Nast. The question though - does it sink or swim? Check out our complete board gaming coverage at. But as the initial reviews came trickling in, excitement was replaced with worry and disappointment. So now that I’ve given a spoiler free overview and summary of my thoughts, I’d like to discuss the specific ways I think Seafall could be improved. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. […] run, another is of a game that has not yet made it but should do so in 2018, and the other is of a game that will surely never appear on the list — but I felt compelled to write about it […], […] I’m only two games into Charterstone, in which I’m playing a two player campaign with my wife. It had been 3+ years in the making for Rob Daviau, the creator of the Legacy board game concept and co-designer of BGG #1 mega-hit Pandemic Legacy. If you’re not familiar with Seafall or the concept of campaign (or ‘Legacy’) games, it is played over a number of sessions, as players make permanent changes to the game and the story hurtles towards a permanent and unique ending. After reading mixed reviews, we were unsure if it would be great or be a total bust, but the price dropped to a little over $30 and we decided to give it a shot and if we ended up hating it, oh well. That latter point is obviously exacerbated with more players. ( Log Out /  The first few commercial copies were snatched up so quickly at GenCon 2016 that anyone without a press pass had little hope of acquiring one. The Builder's Guild actions are SeaFall's representation of the second X: expand. So is it any good? The chests are lined neatly to one side of the game box, and players are strictly banned from peeking at their contents until the appointed time. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. One-line review: Seafall is a game with great components and the stirrings of a good game, but a vague/contradictory rulebook makes it such that players are often in charge of deciding how the game works.