Underwater Cities Review - with Tom Vasel

[@ArmadilloAl]

"It's very in-depth" Well, yeah, a game about underwater series BETTER be in depth.

[@patrickrochel9827]

So cool to see these older reviews from Tom. Tom, trust me your opinions, good bad or indifferent carry much more weight when contrasted with the rest of the crew you have now. Chris, Camilla, Wendy etc…it’s so cool to see more sides of a review. Keep it up!!!!

[@Ras137]

Love ya Tom, but does Siegfried and/or Roy know you raided their wardrobe?

[@EternalSushiMusic]

I think it's pretty high up there for me! It's similar to Terraforming Mars when it comes to my personal rating. Might even be less complex than TM by a small bit.

[@BlazblueFan]

I dig the theme of this game and gameplay seems quite deep.

[@brettmartin3529]

Definitely my favorite board game. It has some similarities to Terraforming Mars, but much more versatility and considerations in decision making. The game is very balanced. It's great at 2 or 3 players. There's a good amount of player interaction through worker placement, fighting for turn order, and securing your end game scoring cards, but not in a mean way. The only potential downside is the complexity (which i enjoy), as it can be too much for many people.

[@Hunszi]

I heard that the game has one major problem, because there is one strategy that wins the game all the time. It`s called Kelp strategy, when you build double 2nd level farms in every connected city and getting VP all the time at the end of the round. Reaching around 120+ points every game, especially if you build 5 double farms in total. Any opinions on this?

[@Syncopator]

Love the theme and it looks interesting, but the length is a killer for my group.

[@willyum3108]

I suspected the component quality would be subpar with their very first print. I wasn't aware that Rio was going to get involved. Probably a good thing.

[@queerchameleon]

You think Rio games have good components ?

[@willyum3108]

No, not really, but they have experience making games.

[@danielwoltanski1413]

Love the vest, Tom!

[@BrianStever]

Fantastic 2 player game.

[@bigjim6888]

What does "crunchy" mean?

[@Crs9072]

Wow, someone managed to make even worse player boards than what Terraforming Mars has. Those stacked discs are just going to be sliding off all the time.

[@Judge021979]

C r s I understand why you’d say that, but because there’s little fiddling with the board, it’s not really a problem.

[@rainerahlfors]

You can easily just place the discs next to each other instead of stacking them. Problem solved.

[@WanderingLunatic]

They're a little fiddly to place, but in my experience they never end up sliding off once they're on. Once they're there you don't touch them again for any reason so there's no reason for them to slide.

[@MattCrawley_Music]

Maybe you need a level table

[@FranzBinder20]

Can't concentrate on final thoughts. The vest reflections are blinding me.

[@FedouBC]

Love the tom, vest!

[@ziomalZparafii]

Hearing Tom's pronunciation of Suchy took me a few seconds to get it's the name of the designer read in English.

[@benjaminnadeau7305]

Perhaps if you separated the tokens, you wouldn't complain they are a jumbled mess

[@TheRicekreem]

Tom is rocking a totally fly vest in this one.

[@xugreatone1]

What is this Underwater Cities you speak of? Clearly, this is a game called Sunken Cities.

[@GameCrawler]

"Still a lot of depth to be discovered in this game, no pun intended. Alot of fun, underwater Cities - I highly recommend it"

[@stevegeorge7773]

It Appears there is a significant unbalanced fault in the rules with kelps strategy being to unbalanced against other ways to victory.

[@undersci]

I haven't found this to be the case in my plays. And even if ultimately kelp is determined to be overstrong, I'm pretty sure that 99% of players won't notice.

[@stevegeorge7773]

Tony Faber that is a silly response given the fault is already known! If it’s known, to mean this very peep and others, then that is a real issue.

[@undersci]

@@stevegeorge7773 Have you even played the game? I have, with about a dozen other people. None of them has complained about kelp, and heavy kelp has yet to win one of our games.

[@argel1200]

@@stevegeorge7773 I just read through the BGG thread on it, and the game designer himself denies there is an issue and backs it up with end game photos.

[@windycitymeeple8677]

​@@argel1200 Here is the thing, if you are letting someone constantly building kelp farms, then you aren't taking advantage of having a couple cities with two kelp farms each. I always try to have a city with double buildings of each type, and then based on end game S cards, build more according to what I can get for end game scoring. I also watch what people are doing and what the end game scoring is, so I can make sure I don't let them get a card that can overpower their strategy. This game is very balanced. I had someone do a all in kelp strategy and they only won by 2 points and that was my fault since I messed up placements of buildings on my city board and lost 6 points because I forgot to spread out two sets of buildings and doubled them up

[@grisuderspielteufel]

Yes!!! I love Underwater Cities. My Spiel ‘18 highlight!!!

[@kylehasegawa5472]

obligatory WODER

[@HaviccB]

The box sucks. Cereal card board

[@sete121]

Best game 2018

[@dubiouslycrisp]

There is a lot of symbolism on the cards, not symbology. The cards aren't studying symbols, only people do.

[@Blackwarrior2003]

I've seen people whine about this before. You (and they) need to read a dictionary. Symbology: "the use, study, or interpretation of symbols"

[@dubiouslycrisp]

@@Blackwarrior2003, touché.

[@samiamagaimagain]

@@Blackwarrior2003 Exactly the reason that the idea there is symbology on the cards is quite funny. LOL

[@TheHouseofPanda]

I just call it iconography and avoid the whole issue.

[@BrZi38501]

Boondock Saints

[@arcubal]

"crunchy eurogames"? "lots of options"?.... sounds like a designer I would not care to play the games of...

[@revimfadli4666]

You want few to no options(that might be so automatic they're barely options)?

[@queerchameleon]

In this day and age of boardgaming poor component quality and graphic design is inexcusable. To many other great games that nail it to play with mediocrity.

[@pyziakkos]

Yeah and that is why games like Castles of Burgundy or Tigris and Euphrates are still considered to be one of the best out there. If you prefer looks and graphics over well constructed mechanisms then that's your choice, but I will take an ugly, interesting game over all the KS plastic trash that gets churned out every month now.

[@revimfadli4666]

@@pyziakkos very well put

[@revimfadli4666]

What if the excuse is "affordability to reduce economic gatekeeping"?