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Image courtesy of the good ZMan
Played with advanced rules (lose 5 tiles, not 4, and 6 when the game is over, each time you feed the parrotfish). The beginning game is too open to a quick lucky blitz without that change, we think.
Major Events Under the Sea:
1. We both make and score yellow corals quickly. My wife's has 3 tiles left, I have 2. Hrm.
2. My wife manages to score a large pink tile (4 tiles, I think), by observing that she doesn't think I have gray cubes, or any way to get any, so she can leave herself vulnerable to gray attack. She starts locking down pink as a strong color, for the end-game. I know I put a pink in at the beginning, but this is not looking good for me.
3. I try for an aggressive run at a gray coral (size 10!) but it's not well protected, and by changing dominance a couple of times, using up most of her front stuff, she splits it up to be worth nothing.
4. I go for a large white group, but it also gets attacked. There is a long standoff: we both hold gray areas, if either of us leaves, they can be joined for a very large coral. But what we each hold is not worth eating (in fact, it will score no tiles). This goes on for some time, as we take some tile groups (none terribly desirable for either of us), ponder which cubes are most important to have if things change, and wonder if the stalemate will ever end.
5. There is a TENSE turn -- I pull finally my shrimp off of half of "my" gray coral (the one that was split) to protect a newly regrown giant white. There is white near the gray, and I've locked down so that white cannot attack gray. A bit of pink also protects. I think my wife doesn't have any gray cubes, so maybe I can make it! My wife ponders, and ponders, frowning, looking at her tiles -- she may be able to attack me, but she can't take advantage of my briefly vulnerable gray (to rejoin it to her own gray) if she does. Right? She ponders, frowns. AHA. A smile. A terrible smile!
This is what makes Reef Encounter, brain-burning and puzzle-like, a sometimes fantastic game. She eats just the right tiles on the second board (the one "nothing much is going on" with), attacks white, uses a gray tile eaten on the other board to grab a gray cube, and has just enough gray tiles in front of her screen to JOIN WITH MY GRAY (the gray I'd started, then left briefly unshrimped). Sometimes a beautiful precision plan just comes together, and it's fun to watch even if it's crushing your hopes and dreams.
There's little I can do -- in protecting my briefly abandoned gray, I have made gray pretty much invulnerable. Sigh.
6. Her next turn, she eats the giant gray and it's all over but the fish emptying, pretty much.
7. My wife attacks a moderately good pink coral I have (I'm playing in desperation mode now, taking big risks), then changes the dominance (which makes her first attack impossible now), attacks a larger white I've gotten going -- she has to use all her pink tiles in front of the screen and make pink worth a bit less to do this.
8. I do manage to drop a massive amount of orange tiles at once, and if she wants to use her last shrimp and finish the game she'll have to let me get a 6-tiles-left orange feeding. Orange is at 3 points a tile, not bad. Not pink, but not bad.
9. She finishes the game by eating a small pink coral. Her pink is worth 24 (6 x 4), my orange is worth 18 (6 x 3). As noted before, we both had some yellow, mine worth 8 points, hers worth 12. Finally, I have a lone pink tile (4 points) she has a nice gray set for 15 points.
This game is one I don't play too often, just a few times a year, since it's very tense -- back and forth, attack and defense, can you find my weakness -- you only have this turn before I eat! You leave one opening, you hope it doesn't fall... Brain burning, indeed, but a very solid game. I don't have the grasp of subtle play (and some good attacks I didn't even note above were cleverly done) my wife does, but I can appreciate the game's depth and... fascination. I think a lot of the appeal comes from the "take as many actions in any order" turns -- there's room to come up with a complex and very clever (and unexpected) plan, unlike games with smaller turns. But turns are constrained enough that they usually aren't "go get a sandwich" as in, say, Loyang. The downside? As we get better, it may become even more intense, and longer (as we cut any good corals down to size even more effectively)!
Final score:
alexd 30
Mrs. alexd 51
Image courtesy of turtleback
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Posted Fri Jul 9, 2010 5:38 am