F@$ AquaSphere

AquaSphere

Plot:  Back Off Man, I'm A Scientist.

You and you're competitors are sharing an undersea research facility.  You need to do the most research...never mind.  Thematically this is a threadbare setting only used so you don't have to call items "generic point gathering apparatus number one".

Gameplay:  AquaSphere is a worker placement "point salad" game.

INTERLUDE - POINT SALAD

A points salad game is a game where every move earns you points in a variety of ways.
Named that, because game play is like working your way through a salad bar.

 Stefan Feld, the designer, is notorious for these types of games.  Castles of Burgundy is his most successful (per BGG's rankings), but he has 10 games in the top 300.  I haven't (and won't) break down the top 300 for a stupid blog post that 6 people read, but 10 sure seems like a lot.

I kinda despise the points salad label, especially if it's used as a pejorative.  There's plenty of games where every action furthers your game that aren't labeled "points salad" and investing in an economy to later clean up in victory points instead of just always earning points is semantics.  You're still searching for optimization.

END INTERLUDE

The game board consists of six pieces centered around a central core.   Each game piece is similar but has slight differences (the wild card robot changes).

So you have two main actions, ready a robot or place a robot.

There's 7 types of robots (color coded)

- black robots are miners, they acquire a rock asset.
- blue robots are submariners, they acquire submarines.
- green robots build lab upgrades
- red robots acquire bonus cards
- pink robots shoot squids
- yellow robots acquire "time".  Time is better described as action points.  More on that later.
- white robots are wild cards, they train an additional robot of the above 5 colors based on your location when you play them.

Readying a robot is mostly moving up a tech tree.   By picking a path you eliminate some robots from your pool, so planning ahead is important.  The tree changes round by round, so the same choices won't remain for the entire game.  You can also spend three "time" to ready any robot you wish.

oh yeah, minor blip.  You can only have two readied robots at one time.

Playing a robot is, well putting a robot into your current area.  You're allowed to move around first, which costs time.  The robot goes onto a board spot and can be displaced into a holding pen.  The robots further stay in the holding pen until enough (6?  I think?) enter then pen, and then may return.

When a pen is filled to capacity, duplicate player's robots return to their tableau into the unready position costing you points.  Don't take this personally, it will happen and it will happen multiple times a game.

You're also capped on efficiency by your lab.  Let's say you play a squid shooting robot, or a mining robot with your basic lab.  If there's 3 squids or rocks, you can only take 2.  So you need to upgrade!

Subs are also complex.  You start with one.  You have to pay time to build more (and the resource investment ends up being a lot for anything more than a handful of subs), but they increase your time income and "robot in play scoring cap"


Scoring

This is complex and interwoven.  Take a quick bathroom break if you need to.

So literally everything earns you points.  The simple act of readying a robot earns you a point.

Shooting squids earns you triangle points immediately based on how many squids you shoot that action.

Buying subs and cards earns you points immediately based on what round it is (late game acquisition earns you more victory points than earlier).

Subs also increase your "robots in play" cap for end of round scoring, and if you build 6 subs (maximum) you earn end of game bonus points.

Cards can give you some VP engine.  Really, cards are way beyond the scope of this review.  They give something that helps you.  Like a VP engine, a free robot a turn till the end of the game, or a one time resource bonus.

Yellow robots acquire time, which is end game points.

Miners get rocks; rocks score triangle points during end of round scoring but you also have to spend one (or a readied robot so generally a rock) to pass periodic scoring barriers.

Lab upgrades make your lab better (MOAR squid shooting, cards or rocks!) and/or send out additional robots onto the game board, possibly displacing control of that area.  

The robot displaces to an area labelled A-F.  That letter is important, because at end of game you get triangle points for each letter in your lab.  Additionally, you get MOAR points for upgrading your lab 5 times.

White robots are just ready an additional robot.  I said just, but this is actually pretty nice.  It keeps you in the round longer and can be used to duplicate an action (not a trivial consideration.)

At end of round you earn some income.  Timing is important, because part of income phase might be readying a robot from a card, and readied robots score points.

So you score for readied robots and robots in play and rocks on hand.  It's important to note that you score rocks first, before spending them on barriers.    You also score for area control.  If you control more areas than anyone else you get some points.  If you control an area with live squids, you lose some points.

After scoring you reset the tech tree and populate the game board with time, rocks and squids,

End of game is more of the same, except now you don't have to spend rocks to pass barriers.


Review

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(I think you'll find I'll use that emoticon a lot)

Ok, mostly positive.  I've played this game a half dozen times and am still intrigued.  That puts AquaSphere in the top 25% of games I've played.

I just have doubts about the long term replay.

Lab Upgrades are super dooper important.  The end of game points are really lucrative.  The additional robot launches are really lucrative.  The game play upgrades might be lucrative but vary pretty wildly in actual effects.

Rocks are really important too.  Paying for a barrier with a robot costs you both actions and points.  Plus, rocks score triangle points, which can be LOTS!

Shooting squids, getting cards and time are circumstantial.  They all could be good paths or depending on how your game is going, they can be ignored.  Everyone will probably do each of these a little bit regardless.

Subs are not worth the long term effort.  It's pretty important to a second one early.  It's not an entirely bad move to place a third.  But anything after that you have some harsh diminishing returns.  In practice the additional time income and increased scoring cap is not worth what you spent to get them.

So in a "points salad" game with 6 typed plays, 2 are must do's and 1 is an ignore after early, almost trivial progress.  So, like half the games actions are dictated by that.  I'm not sure I like that, I have to play more to make up my mind.