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Topicanother year of tabletop rankings and writeups
SeabassDebeste
12/27/19 7:15:26 AM
#19:


131. Survive! Escape from Atlantis

Category: Player vs Player
Genres: Dudes on a map, take-that
Rules complexity (0 to 7):
Game length: 30-45 minutes
Experience: 2 plays with 3-4 players (2016, 2019)
Previous ranks: NR (2016), NR (2018)

Summary - An island of hexes is sinking in a specific order. You want to rescue your survivors, represented by face-down tiles, of varying value. Each turn you can move a survivor toward the safety of the edge of the map through the water away from the island, but people can draw the sea monster cards as well, which may impede your progress or eat your refugees.

Design -.Thing about Survive is, it's just not very good. It's not intuitive for such a lightweight game; I remember forgetting multiple times in a single game the timing of drawing a card and playing the card. It can be kind of mean and random, though that is obviously one of the draws of the game (and it's too long for that).

That said, my main issue with Survive, which crystallized more after playing it a few months ago, is that the drama of the game is frontloaded. Early on in the game, there are the fewest hindrances and sea monsters, and the most boats, and the island's edge is closest to the sea. Therefore, it is easiest at the beginning of the game to send your guys off to safety. Why is this an issue? Because you get to choose which of your refugees to place in advantageous positions to get to the end, and you have full control of which of your refugees to move each turn. And these refugees vary drastically in point value, from 1-pointers to a 6-pointer. That essentially means that within the first ten minutes of the game, you'll have scored (or lost) up to 80% of your final score. The remaining 20-30 minutes might be spent squabbling over a matter of 20% of the score. If you lost your best dudes during that first mad rush, you're just playing out the string with zero chance of comeback.

There are some fun mechanics to Survive, but the dramatic arc of it makes no sense. Adding some additional rubber-band-y stakes at the end might actually increase its drama. There's just a little too long spent on the hidden potential of 1-pointers that are likely to be eaten anyway at the end of the game.

Experience - Nothing remarkable happened with my games of Survive. I lost the first time pretty badly and did decent at the second game, so I think the losing bias isn't massive here. Also played with fairly pleasant company

Future - No real desire to play this again, though with fast players I could seem myself persuaded.

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yet all sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable - they live in the varying outer weather, and they inhale its fickleness
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