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The Dave
United States
Brooklyn
United States
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I convinced The Wife to try the advanced tactical set up along with the Governors variant of Seeland. She LOVES Vikings, so when I first mentioned that Seeland shared some similarities with one of her favorite games she was very excited to try it. Unfortunately I picked the wrong night to try it with her. You see, she's half way along with our second child, and last Friday she was not feeling the best. But she is a great Wife and wanted me to get in a first play Friday, especially since my other gaming buddies
flaked out on me couldn't make it.
I say all this to note two things:
1) This isn't technically a first play review, since I've already done that.
2) I will try to give an honest opinion of the game, but I am admitting that may be hard because The Wife really wasn't into the game at all.
You see, The Wife is a good gamer. She usually does really well in games (all the while complaining she has "no clue" what is going on, but whatever The Wife, I'm on to you now). On this night, because she wasn't feeling well, she was really off. She didn't fully explore the decisions available in the game and made poor tactical choices. She kept complaining that she didn't understand why you would take any tile other than the one in front, she wasn't racing for the revealed farms to keep stuivers from me (which resulted in me getting 6 or 7 extra turns), and in general she played sub-optimally. I tried to help her, even pointing some pretty killer combos (which she took, but only because I had pointed them out), but overall she just really didn't care.
I can't help it, but this definitely clouds my judgment since I found this particular game to be almost as bad as my first game was, but in this case it was my lack of competition, and not the game, that made the experience not so great. I think.
(And if you happened to muddle through that last paragraph, God bless you! Ms. Brigoti would not be happy with that grammar or syntax!)
I won by over 50 points. I did almost anything I wanted in the game. It was boring.
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I will now review Seeland (with the advanced random tactical setup and the Governors variant) according to the following criteria. Keep in mind this is a review of the game after only one-ish play.
Accessibility (1): How easy was the game to teach and learn? Is it complex and/or fiddly? Are the rules easy to understand and follow? How long did it take to go over the rules?
Fun (1): Is it fun? Included in this might be a theme-to-mechanics metric, or a player interaction metric.
Length of first play (1): Some games say 60-90 minutes, but the first play might take you 3 hours. Not included is length of rules explanation.
Desire to play again (1): Typically I would rather play a new game than play a game I’ve already played (with some exceptions). I know – I am crazy. This will be a good measure of how much I like the game.
Review:
Accessibility:
Again, this is a high point for the game. I was able to teach The Wife the basics in less than 15 minutes. There was some initial confusion regarding the Governors, and also some confusion when the possibility of a mill not meeting a governor's expectation came up, and the next closest mill already had a governor on it. But all things considered Seeland is an easy game to teach and learn.
Score: .7
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Fun:
Well, at least I can say I tried. I will be honest and say that the tension that basic Seeland is lacking, is probably abundant in this variant. Unfortunately The Wife didn't get Seeland at all, so I had the run of the game. If I was rating on this play it would be a 0. As it is, I can see a much more fun game here, so it gets a .4
Score: .4
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Length of first play:
Not much different here, except that there was a bit more thinking about what to do during my turns. It dragged a bit longer than my first play, and that's taking The Wife's suboptimal play into account (which was taking the first tile and immediately placing it).
Score: .6
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Desire to play again:
My desire to play again isn't very high. I certainly wouldn't suggest this over a new game, and I think the only way I try it again would be if The Wife requested it. At this point I see Seeland going in the for sale/trade pile.
Score: .1
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OVERALL: 1.8/4
So even though the score fell, I think I enjoyed the game a tiny bit better. Unfortunately that isn't saying much, as I really didn't like my first play. I had such high hopes for Seeland considering my love for Vikings, and perhaps that's the problem. I guess that kind of hope is like loving the Beatles and then expecting to love Oasis just because they too are from England...
For me, I'll take Vikings.
Up Next: LUNA, aka one of the coolest games I've ever played.
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