LogFAQs > #985930860

#02 - Endeavor: Deep Sea
My Score: 8.5
BGG Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/367966/endeavor-deep-sea

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Endeavor Deep Sea was a game in the hot games area, but we ended up checking it out from the library and playing it in the open gaming room on the third day. We had one stranger join us that had experience with the game and it's predecessor. I haven't played the other related games but he stated that this was the best one and no real reason to go back. He was a friendly guy and taught us everything we needed to know.

This game is a game that can be played cooperatively or competitively. I got the impression that it works better as a competitive game though. I would consider this a medium length game and the play time probably scales based on player count, but even with 4 players of which 3 were new and setup it probably took us under 2.5 hours so not a hugely long game.

The game is mission based, but the missions don't seem to change a ton other than the starting setup and how the scoring work for the game. It is most likely enough to change how the game feels to give some variety without forcing you to learn a bunch of new mechanics each time so that's a plus. The missions have 3 objectives that you are aiming to do, and in competitive there is a points bonus for first and second in each, while in co-op you have a goal for the team. I like the mission structure, and you could honestly just randomly pick one and be fine or go in order.

So this is another points game. In this one you play a certain number of rounds (I believe 6) and at the end you add the end game bonuses to whatever points you have and decide a winner.

So in this game you are using submarines and exploring underwater. At the beginning of the game you have one crew member, one sub and can only explore the surface. But as the game progresses you will get more crew members, get more subs and be able to explore deeper and deeper with 5 different depth levels. The starting map depends on the mission but generally each depth can have up to 5 areas in it (We started with 3 areas in our mission on the first depth) and each area has different things you can do in it. A lot of the things you can do in areas are limited in supplies or spaces you can go so you will be forced to travel and eventually go deeper as the higher depths run out of resources.

The game has two phases: a preparation phase and an activation phase. The preparation phase is made of 3 parts and everyone can generally do these simultaneous. One thing to note is that in this game you have 4 tracks which are two-fold, you score at the end of the game based in your progress in them and they also effect what you can do.

The first example of this is the Recruitment subphase. I said you start with one crew member who is your team leader. They are kind of a jack of all trades character, so very versatile and really strong early, but some of the later crew members can outclass him in certain aspects. At the beginning of each preparation phase (including the first turn) you will be able to recruit one specialist, but the tier you can recruit depends on your progress on one of your tracks. At the beginning you will be able to recruit Tier 1 only, who are generally weaker usually only having one or two actions they can do. But as you progress through the tiers you will get people who are more versatile or sometimes people who can do 2-in-1 actions (opposed to the team leader who can do any action but only 1 per activation). Once you get to tier 5 you start getting people who can give you victory points as well.

The other part of recruiting someone is they usually (but not always) give you some kind of immediate bonus, usually up a space on one of the tracks. But sometimes they will have a stronger ability for their tier but give you no immediate bonus, or have no actions at all but a stronger bonus. They can also be upgraded so sometimes they will have a weaker unupgraded side but a stronger upgraded side. Overall I think the system is very smart and there's a lot of consideration into picking your crew, my only fear is that with only 3 choices at each tier it may end up with you picking a lot of the same people in repeated playthroughs.

The second subphase of preparation is the effort phase. Here you gain discs from the supply depending on the relevant track progress. At the beginning you will gain 1 per turn but can gain up to 5. These discs are very important as they are used both to activate your crew as well as perform some of the actions.

The last subphase is the reassignment subphase. In here you reclaim discs from your specialists back to your supply, once again depending on a track going from 1-5. This is doubly important because it will help you get more discs (you can theoretically get 10 total if you have both relevant tracks maxed) but it also frees up the specialist you are taking the disc off of. Once a crew member has been activated you cannot use him again until the disc is removed (but if you can somehow remove a disc during your turn you can theoretically use them twice in one round). I will say that unlock the previous track, for this track it doesn't make sense to up it faster than you are getting crew members.

So I mentioned 4 tracks, three of them control the preparation phase and the last is perhaps the most important. The last track controls three things: how many subs you have (you start with 1, and can get up to 3 at certain points on the track), how deep your subs can go and how far your subs can move.

So once preparation phase is done you will then take turns performing actions until everyone passes. Usually an action consists of playing a disc on one of your crew members that does not have one and taking one of the actions available on that crew member. When you take an action it can be for any of your submarines, your crew members aren't tied to a specific ship so it usually makes sense to have your ships spread out and focused on different activities.

The first action to talk about is movement. You can move a sub a number of spaces corresponding to a track. Once you get there you get whatever the arrive bonus is for the space, usually up on a track or getting a disc. So this way movement isn't really a wasted action, although it usually benefits you less than other stuff. Another thing to note is when you get a new ship it generally starts at the starting square and you DO get the arrival bonus for it being put there. This includes your ship at the start of the game so you will start with something.

The second action is Sonar. Some zones have sonar spots that have places for discs. This means you need to spend 2 discs: one to activate the crew member and one to put on the board. You have to go left to right in each track and they sometimes give you resources of up on tracks, but a lot of times they allow you to discover a new zone. When discovering a zone it will tell you what depths you can discover (so if it says 1-2 you can choose either a depth 1 or depth 2 card) You pick the depth draw the card and then pick where you want it to go, now allowing to go wider than the scenario allows, and for deeper depths there must be an area above it. Once you place the area you then get the arrival bonus of the area you just placed.

Before I go further I want to go over green lines real quick. A lot of spaces in areas will have green lines between them with some kind of bonus on the line. This can be between any of the spaces on the board where you are putting a disc. How it works is once both sides of the green line are filled both players get the bonus of the line, but if a player filled up both sides of the line he only gets the bonus once, so it encourages you to cooperate with others a little bit.