Captains of the Gulf

GaGarfieldstar5,0

Pick up and deliver that takes too long to gain speed. [c] Theme: ★★★★★ <!-- size 7]Aye Aye Captain! --> Gameplay: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Very good amount of decisions to make --> Interaction: ★★☆☆☆ <!-- size 7]Not that much. Have a look where others are fishing. --> Artwork: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Very nice --> Luck: ★☆☆☆☆ <!-- size 7]Nope --> Strategy: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]I think you have to specialize --> Components: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Nothing special --> Play duration: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]A little bit long --> Easy to teach: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Ok --> Rules quality: ★★★★★ <!-- size 7]Perfect --> Setup time: ★★★☆☆ <!-- size 7]Quite a lot to setup --> No downtime: ★★☆☆☆ <!-- size 7]But you can plan your move beforehand --> Replay value: ★★★★☆ <!-- size 7]Different strategies, different cards, modular fishing grounds --> [/c]

EvEvanstar4,6

This is a very interesting pickup and deliver game. Essentially you get a hand of multi-use cards. Each card gets tucked under your board on a different side to give you a different improvement, or you can save it to discard to harvest matching tokens from the board. Your board represents your boat, which holds a certain amount of fuel and can only store a certain number of tokens. Your actions are driven by a roundel action selection mechanism, where each cycle of the roundel you have two opportunities to pick up tokens from the map, one opportunity to play cards into your ship as upgrades, and one opportunity to sell your tokens to one of the ports. This creates some good tension as you get bonuses for selling different types of tokens to the same port in the same action, but this often means spending more actions fishing as for the majority of the game it's unusual to find two different tokens in the same hex. The mechanism by which tokens replenish on the board is really interesting, but the mechanism I enjoy most in this game are the way at some point you have to make the decision to stop spending money adding features to your boat, and start saving it as money is points at the end of the game. Then I also love how this is a pickup and deliver game that doesn't rely on recipes, which I feel like is pretty unusual. ★ Art, Iconography and components functional ★ Clever or interesting mechanisms ★ Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players ☆ Multiple plays stay interesting ★ Low or mitigatable luck elements ★★★☆☆ Raw enjoyment