Lords of Deepwater

At the optimistic time of 8.45pm Andrew, Ian and I sat down to play Underwater Cities, undertaking the (futuristic) building of said cities, under the water. Not literally under the water, although it did feel a bit like that at times. Ian, last to arrive, surveyed the board and said it looked a bit mad. Then I explained the rules and he said it sounded pretty straightforward. Smell wasn't mentioned, but I'd guess it was salt, with a whiff of solder.

ready to dive

It is pretty straightforward too: long-time players won't be surprised to hear that before building anything, you need to harvest the appropriate resources. In Underwater Cities that's credits, science, steelplast, biomatter, and kelp. There's never enough kelp. The harvesting is where Underwater Cities gets more interesting; aligning the standard worker-placement fare with card 'payment' for the action. Each action on the board has a colour (green/red/orange) and if you pay with a card of the matching colour, you get to activate the action on the card as well.

Turn order is important. Although there's a way to take an occupied action space, it costs credits, and credits are needed for construction of cities and the perennial board game favourite: desalination plants. Other buildings are farms and labs. Tunnels also need to be built to connect your cities together - if you don't link back to your starting city, your cities and buildings are devoid of population and production, like a watery Barrett estate waiting for young families to arrive. After rounds 4, 7 and 10 (the last round) your network runs production: Farms produce food, Labs science, Desalination and Tunnels give you credit income. Upgraded buildings and tunnels produce more, including victory points as society recognises your growing success. Symbiotic cities, if you manage to build them (Andrew and I didn't) also provide points, as they represent a more harmonic existence within the environs of the ocean.

Ian's cities (white/red) farms (green) and desalination plants (yellow)

Ian began tentatively by playing lots of cards with if this-then that type effects and muttered that he didn't know how to use them. Andrew expanded quickly. I built and upgraded Farms, mindful that when Stanley beat me earlier in the week, I'd been crying for Kelp. Andrew and I eyed Ian's growing engine and voiced our concerns. The first production arrived reasonably quickly and we all relaxed as our buildings paid out like fruit machines... only to find that our expanding networks swallowed it all up rather quickly.

As Andrew and I hit the government contracts (meet the requirements: grab the rewards) Ian's plethora of cards were starting to combine in worrisome ways. Even when he paid for an action with a non-matching card he hoovered up compensatory steel and credits, and after the second production phase our concerns looked justified.

Action slots around the edge of the board; contracts and special cards in the middle

However (#1) the game seemed to to turn in my direction when I played a special card that would reward me for my insatiable farm-building. Ian was convinced I'd won, seeing as a metropolis on my board - everyone has three - also rewarded upgraded buildings. As we surged - if you can call anything in Underwater Cities surging - through the final three rounds, Ian felt it was a fight for second between he and Andrew. In turn we were worried about his mahoosive pile of resources: at the end of the game players score for their network of cities (the more diverse the buildings in them the better) their end-game cards and metropolises, and their resources. Ian had tonnes - far more than anyone else. But I still had my bonza rewards for the aforementioned insatiable farm-building...

However (#2) I'd slightly misunderstood the scoring for my Metropolis tile, and got precisely zero points for it.

However (#3) Ian's score was so advanced up the track anyway, even if my interpretation had been correct, I'd still have been back in second! Scores were something like:

Ian 84
Sam 72
Andrew 69

As we surfaced for air we reflected on the game which Ian likened to Lords of Waterdeep and Andrew Terraforming Mars. It was long - I wouldn't even attempt it with four - and that simple nub of action-taking, abetted by cards, slows down considerably when any player builds a tableau with as much choice as Ian did. Unlike Terraforming Mars, however, the hand-size limit is three cards, which goes some way to confining the AP moments. We all had do-overs. But playing it again - which I would like to - I do think that would drop considerably. I felt despite one or two cards it avoided the sinking-into-abstraction of many long games, and it isn't a point salad either. One for the Euro-lovers no doubt - we all agreed that Adam would enjoy it, and probably show us that Ian is catchable after all...