Players: 2-4
Time: 2 hours
Difficulty: 4 (of 10)

This is a review of the second edition of the game, produced by Z-Man and What's Your Game, not the first edition previously produced in limited quantities by Richard Breese directly.

The Components

When the original edition of Reef Encounter was produced by Richard Breese, he said that he didn't expect anyone to pick it up for a wider distribution because there were too many bits in the box. Fortunately he was wrong, and this new edition of Reef Encounter comes with a huge set of beautiful pieces:

• 1 open sea board
• 4 coral reef boards
• 4 turn action cards
• 200 polyp tiles
• 10 coral tiles
• 16 wooden shrimps
• 20 wooden alga cylinders
• 50 wooden larva cubes
• 4 parrotfish
• 4 player screens
• 1 cloth bag
• 1 rulebook

The Boards: The open sea board, the 4 coral reef boards, and the 4 turn action cards are each printed full-color (in delightful shades of blue) on medium-weight, linen-textured cardboard.

The open sea board and coral reef boards together comprise the "playing" area for the game. The open sea board simply holds all of the coral dominance tiles and the five draw piles. The coral reef boards, meanwhile, are where the game is played. Each is a 6x7 grid used for tile placement. There's starting locations fo each type of coral, a "free growth" space, and "holes", where coral can't grow. The only slight problem with these boards is that the holes are a little hard to distinguish.

A nice aspect of the coral reef boards is that you use as many as your number of players, which is a great method for adjusting gameplay, and yet doesn't leave large parts of a singular gameboard unused.

The turn action cards remind each player of the ten actions they can take. They're noted graphically on the front and textually on the back, which is a very nice bit of redundance. The turn action cards are also color-coded to the four player colors, another nice touch.

Tiles: These are also printed on medium-weight, full-color, linen-textured cardboard. The 200 polyp tiles include 40 from each coral color (white, black, yellow, orange, pink). The larger coral tiles show "dominance": which coral eats which coral, and which alga is needed to change that. The coral tiles are double-sided, and helpfully you can always see a preview of the alga which will appear on the other side of a tile, which you may need to know for strategic planning. (From this point on I'll call the "coral" tiles, "dominance" tiles, which I find much more intuitive.)

Wooden Bits: The 16 shrimp figues are nicely cut and even feature painted-on eyes. They're entirely precious. They appear in the 4 player colors (red, green, yellow, purple). The alga cylinders are just wooden circles and appear in red, blue, green, and purple. The similarity between alga and player colors confused some players, but only very briefly. Finally the coral larva cubes come in the coral colors (white, black, yellow, orange, and pink).

There are two slightly annoying color mismatches between the wood bits and the cardboard. A dark purple alga cylinder matches a light purple alga, which could be really confusing if not for the way the alga are actually used. Less confusing was the light gray coral larva which matches the black coral.

Parrotfish:These scoring receptacles are constructed from four pieces of cardboard, which form a cube. Each of the sides shows a beautifully illustrated parrotfish in one of the player colors. The cubes are a good size for a pile of tiles, and do actually keep them hidden from other players.

Player Screens: Each player also gets a screen to hide their selection of cubes and tiles. They're light-weight cardbard, but sturdier than most player screens I've seen. Again, they're printed with beautiful parrotfish and other undersea critters in the player colors.

Cloth Bag: A black cloth bag, big enough for holding all the polyp tiles.

Rulebook: A 12-page full-color rulebook. I've heard some complaints about it, and I think that's because it's really laid out for reference, not for reading. As a result, it's great for in-game lookups, but I had to read it very carefully to make sure I had a good handle on all the game systems when I was learning the game. The rulebook is well-illustrated and includes lots of useful examples.

Overall you get an immense amount of stuff in Reef Encounter It's all high-quality, beautifully illustrated, and full of good usability. Reef Encounter without question receives my top Style rating: "5" out of "5". The components are a pleasure to use.

The Gameplay

The object of Reef Encounter is to build up valuable coral reefs, take control of them with your shrimp, then feed the coral to your parrotfish, while at the same time increasing the value of the eaten coral with dominance tiles.

Setup: Each player takes a turn action card, player screen, parrotfish, and four shrimp in his color.

The open sea board is placed in the middle of the table with the 10 dominance tiles either all face-up or all face-down; these indicate which corals eat which corals at the start of the game. In addition, five draw piles are created on the board. Each has one wooden larva cube (with all five colors represented in the five piles) and 1-3 randomly drawn polyp tiles.

2-4 coral reef boards are laid out on the table (depending on the number of players). Five starting coral, one per color, are placed on each board, thus creating the start of 10-20 coral reefs.

Finally each player randomly draws 6-9 polyp tiles (depending on where he's sitting). He then selects two larva cubes as initial resources (presumably matching the colors of some of his tiles) and secretly places one of his tiles in his parrotfish (giving himself a slightly hidden score).

Now players take their turns around the table.

Starting a Turn: At the start of his turn a player may decide to feed one of his coral reefs to his parrotfish. (As you'll see he'll build these reefs with tiles, then gain control of them with a shrimp, all later in the turn, so there's no feeding on the first turn.)

The coral reef must be at least 5 polyp tiles large to be eaten. The player returns 4 polyp tiles to the bag, and places the rest in his parrotfish, along with the poor shrimp that had been guarding it. This is how you score points in the game. Each tile you feed to your parrotfish is worth 1-5 points at the end of the game. Eating coral is also the main way you end the game, as the game finishes up after someone has eaten all four of his shrimp (and thus four coral reefs).

Note that the first time you eat a coral reef you actually put your eaten shrimp on the open sea board, rather than in your parrotfish. This is to note that you can lock down dominance tiles (about which, more presently).

The Main Turn: During your main turn, you can take a number of different actions, in any order. A few of the actions are limited, but others you can do as much as you want. Though there are a lot of actions, most often you'll just play 1 or 2 larva cubes and the associated polyp tiles, and put one of your four shrimp on the board, if they aren't all there already. Other actions are only used when you're being particularly clever.

The possible actions are:

• Play Tiles (2x max)
• Play Shrimp (1x max)
• Move Shrimp
• Exchange Consumed Polyp for Larva
• Exchange Consumed Polyp for Alga & Play
• Exchange Larva for Polyp

You can also choose to take none of these actions if you're short on resources and/or there's nothing particularly good to do. This will probably happen a couple of times a game.

Play Tiles: In order to take the play tiles action you must have a larva cube of the appropriate color. You discard the larva cube, then play up to four tiles of that color from behind your screen, plus any tiles of the same color that you've consumed, and are thus in front of your screen.

You can play tiles on any board. You can either create new coral by placing it in an empty space, or you can expand an existing coral by placing adjacent to a coral of the same color. You might expand your own coral, or that belonging to someone else. There's only one restriction to coral placement: you can't connect up two corals of the same color if they each contain a shrimp.

Attacking Coral. If you're adding to a coral reef that's at least two tiles large, you can attack coral polyps of other colors. In order to successfully attack a polyp tile the attacking coral must be dominant over the other coral. This is shown on the dominance tiles, each of which depicts one coral having dominance over another; between the 10 tiles the relationship between all 5 types of coral is shown. In addition the polyp that you're trying to attack can't be directly guarded by a shrimp, which means there can't be a shrimp on that coral reef and either on the polyp you're trying to consume or else orthagonally adjacent to it.

If you can attack the polyp, you "consume" it. You take the tile, and place it in front of your screen, and replace it with your new tile on the board. Consumed tiles may later be used to aid growth (as noted above) or to generate larva cubes or alga cylinders (as noted below).

Note that you can get tiles for not just consuming polyps with your own reefs, but also for doing the same by expanding a reef belonging to another player. This adds quite a few tactical surprises to the game.

Play Shrimp: You can play a shrimp from behind your screen to on top of a coral reef. There can be only one shrimp on each reef (meaning each set of polyp tiles that are all connected and of the same color).

Move Shrimp: You can arbitrarily move your shrimps around during your turn. This is often used if you want to move from one reef to another, or if you want to temporarily give up protection over part of a reef so that you can attack it yourself. (As odd as that might sound, it's often beneficial because it gives you a source of consumed polyps to use, and also may give a better reef room to expand.)

Exchange Consumed Polyp for Larva: You may exchange a consumed polyp tile for a larva cube of the same color. (This will then allow you to play polyp tiles of that color.)

Exchange Consumed Polyp for Alga & Play: You may exchange a consumed polyp tile for an alga cylinder, which you then must immediately play. This affects the set of dominance tiles, each of which show one of the four alga colors.

When you play an alga cylinder all of the dominance tiles depicting that cylinder color flip over (unless they've been locked down), reversing their dominance.

Alternatively, if you've already eaten at least one reef you may place an alga cylinder directly on top of a dominance tile of the appropriate type. This "locks" the tile, preventing it from ever being flipped again. All of the other dominance tiles depicting the same alga cylinder flip at this time (unless they're already locked down, of course).

Flipping dominance tiles does two things. First, it may allow you to eat a coral type that you want to (or alternatively temporarily protect your own coral). Second, it sets the scores for the coral types at endgame. The more dominant a coral is when the game ends, the more valuable it is if you ate it.

Exchange Larva for Polyp: You can exchange a larva cube for a polyp tile of the same color. This doesn't seem to get done a lot, because larva cubes are very valuable resources, but it can be useful if you end up with an accidental overabundance.

Ending a Turn: At the end of the turn you get to select one of the draw piles, each of which has one larva cube and 1-3 polyp tiles. Afterward you replace the larva cube with one of the same color (so that they're all always available). Then each draw pile which has less than 3 polyp tiles is dealt one more.

Ending the Game: Usually the game ends when (1) a player eats his fourth shrimp -or- (2) all 10 of the dominance tiles are locked down. The player gets to finish his turn, then each other player gets one last opportunity to eat a reef they control, but at a disadvantage: the reef must be at least 6 tiles large, and they must throw away 5.

Players then add up their scores. Each coral tile is worth 1 point, plus one point per dominance tile currently showing that coral dominant. Thus each coral tile is overall worth 1-5 points. Whoever has the most points in coral tiles wins, with other resources acting as tie breakers.

Relationship to Other Games

Reef Encounter is a non-edge-matching tile-laying game, with a set-collection & resource-management elements. It's most similar in feel to two Moon & Weissblum games, Oasis and New England. In all three games you're taking control of sets of tiles, which are each homogeneous in color, and you're trying to expand those tiles to later score points with. As in Oasis you can jump from one set of tiles to another with your limited control markers.

Unlike either of those other games, Reef Encounter allows conflict, via the consumption of other tiles. It's also a highly tactical game. It's not action-point based (like Tikal, Torres, or others), but you can similarly make very clever moves on your turn, by figuring out a sort of "puzzle" that reveals the best move. It's also a longer & more complex game than either of the others.

The other game which has generated some comparisons with Reef Encounter is Reiner Knizia's classic Tigris & Euphrates. There are definite similarities, with each player keeping a secret stash of tiles which they use to expand empires on the board, and with each player having a set number of leaders (shrimps) which they can use to jump around the board. I think Oasis or New England are better comparisons, however.

Richard Breese is an indie game designer. His other recent game is Keythedral, which ironically people compared a lot to another classic, The Settlers of Catan. From these two Breese games I'd generally say that his games are somewhat chaotic, long, and relatively deep, but I actually haven't played most of his designs. (The only other widely available Richard Breese game is Aladdin's Dragons; his other games were released by his indie company, R&D, and so aren't that widely available.)

The Game Design

Overall, Reef Encounter is a superb strategy game that allows for lots of intense and strategic play. The design really comes down to two separate areas of gameplay.

First of all you have the resource management, where you're trying to gather the right cubes and tiles to make good moves. There's some delightfully tough decisions here because of the random pairings of those cubes and tiles in the draw piles. You never get quite what you want. In addition, there's some interesting tactical play involving gaining "consumed" tiles, then using them. Some clever, and not entirely obvious, tactical plays involve consuming your own reefs or augmenting another player's reef in order to create consumed tiles, then using those tiles to flip dominance tiles and/or lay additional tile sets.

Second you have the tile laying itself. This is not nearly as obvious as you'd think because you can uses board edges, board holes, and other reefs belonging either to yourself or other players in order to try and protect your reef. I've started to develop some strategies on how to successfully save my reefs, but the fact that you can augment anyone's reef really makes this difficult to always do well.

There's also quite a few timing issues that you need to strategize, especially surrounding when you lock down dominance tiles, when you decide to consume your first reef, and when you make a push to end the game by consuming your third reef and your fourth in rapid succession.

My only real concern with the game is that the start is a little slow. Since shrimps can protect up to five polyp tiles, the first several turns are often pretty staid growth rounds where not a lot interesting can happen. I would have preferred to see a more mature setup which would have shaved time off of a long game and would have removed the less interesting gameplay.

I also have minor qualms about how much variability there is in the strategy, which will ultimately go to how replayable the game is. I repeated some of my first-game strategies in my second game, but since have seen those strategies picked apart on the net, meaning that a better player could have defeated them. Hopefully there is no right strategy.

Finally, it's worth noting that Reef Encounter is a slightly tough game. You have to do some heavy thinking, and you probably won't play well the first time, because the learning slope is steep.

Overall, Reef Encounter is the most delightful new strategy game that I've played in several months. It's got great strategy and allows for wonderful "oh yeah!" moments as you make a really clever move. As such it earns a full "5" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

It's great that Z-Man Games has made Reef Encounter available to a wider audience, because it's a superb strategy game. It's got great tile-laying, great resource-management, and great tactics. Combined with many beautiful components, Reef Encounter is surely one of the best heavy strategy games of the 2005/2006 season.

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