SeaFall is the third true legacy game out there that doesn’t fancy itself a role playing game as well. For a refresher, in SeaFall, you take on the role of “pirates” or “explorers” who are discovering new islands and chunks of see. You are battling your opponents so you can expand and score points through various means such as raiding sites, exploring sites, buying upgrades for your colony and ships, or buying treasure. The game is a race to a certain number of points per game.

This game is actually fairly strategic. Each time you play you need to determine what is the best strategy you can take and if you can support yourself with the strategy throughout the whole game. At times this is a downfall  of a game though as depending on the strategy you take, have a ship sink might just completely wreck your strategy and will set you back a number of turns. Also with the number of things that you can do, remembering everything you can do is kind of tricky. It doesn’t help that this game has very poor rules. See the first post (linked at the top of the article) for a great video on how to play the game. I would say that this is probably 100% needed for every player who wants to play the game to watch that video and then have a single player as a rules expert.

So besides rules, there is another area that this game is extremely lacking. The story is really only pulled out when you are either exploring (and this isn’t too much in terms of story), or when you get milestones. So, I always recommend that you go hard after milestones. This is going to make the game feel like it’s moving, and it moves it from a more stale game into something that is a whole lot more fun. No spoilers as to what comes up, but there are some weird things that happen. Also, note that if you have any confusion about stuff, google it. We were playing with open sea cards (they have question marks on them) and research cards for a little bit of time. But the research cards had a compass on them, so we all thought it made more sense the other way around. But back to story, this game really really needs just a tiny bit of text at the start of each game as it would feel like the game is progressing.

So, would I recommend this game? I would say maybe. This is a game that really needs to have a more serious gaming group and it might not even work then. There are some random swings in the game that might really annoying a more serious player, so be aware of that. Also, this game isn’t great for an analysis paralysis player. AP players are going to want to do a lot of different things on their turn, and likely not in the same guild, so they are going to agonize over their decisions a lot and their turns won’t  move quickly. For a game that is already somewhat slow, having someone take even more time is going to really drag out a game that takes longer every time you play.

What are some things that I like about the game? I do actually like the story when it happens, and we’ve played 6 games now (or maybe 7) and it seems like it balances out pretty well for players as everyone gets upgrades. However, since the story doesn’t happen often and it doesn’t set-up some of the huge swings that happen in the game, it makes it frustrating for people who picked a certain strategy. I will say that I always did say that they were going to run into issues because getting something powerful wasn’t going to come without a cost. Be aware of that trap though, and it should be pretty obvious when the  mechanic comes up what is the trap mechanic.

Overall, I’d say that this game, while I enjoy it, leaves a lot to be desired. Some of why I like it is probably because I am a gamer, and I love playing board games. I do think that the game is pretty well balanced, but then there are certain moments that will throw it out of balance, but there are always ways to put it back into balance. There are some things that I really do dislike, mainly the rule book and lack of a consistent story, which you’ve heard me harp on already. These do make it a lot harder to really enjoy the game.

Overall Grade: C-

Gamer Grade: B+

Casual Grade: D

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1. Don’t just read from the rule book.
   This seems pretty obvious, but the amount of times people just start reading verbatim from the rule books is way to high. Instead know the rules yourself, and be able to teach them in the order that makes the most sense to you, and in the detail that you think your players need.
2. Show and Tell is Key
   Don’t just say, there are four types of cards, pull out one of each of those types of cards and point to them as you talk about them. Maybe there is a certain way a character moves, in that case, move the character on the board so people can see how they move.
3. Have Players Help
   How can you help if you are learning the game? Well, maybe there is a deck of cards that need to be placed in a certain spot after being shuffled, give that out as a job to someone. Or maybe there are resources that need to be placed out in certain spots that are fairly obvious, once you’ve taught about the resources, have a player or the players put them out.
4. Save Special Rules
   This might be just me, but I recommend that you save rare rules until the end or until they happen. If the rule is going to be common enough, but isn’t tied into any part of the game, save that rule until the end. If the rule is going to only come up in a given situation that is rare, save it until it happens as long as it isn’t too mean. You’ll have to be the judge of what too mean is, but if it’s going to seriously hurt a player or knock them out of the running, you have to decide if you’re either going to mention it at the start or if you’re going to let them undo the turn.
5. Let them Undo Their Turn (or part of it)
   This isn’t going to be something that players can do often. Once a player has made a mistake once, players don’t get free passes any more because they’ve heard the rule while you were teaching and seen the rule in play. Also, if it’s a complex turn, don’t let players undo their whole turn just because they forgot or didn’t understand a rule because that will slow down the game too much. Just call it a practice game or first game mistake, they are understandable.
6. Explain the Theme/Story of the Game
   Do this with the game at the very start of explaining the rules. This is going to keep people interested from the start. Along with that, tie stuff in to the story or theme of the game as you go along. In SeaFall, they have information about how to do an event for exploring (forget the title of it) and you do the same thing for other events besides exploring. Instead of just call it by it’s generic name, tie it into exploring as you explain and then tell what else it can be used for at the end. Since it’s tied into theme, people are likely to remember it better.

   

These are some of the big tips that I would give for teaching a game. I don’t always love teaching games, so understand that you might not always want to. Then the decision is with you do you want to struggle through it some, or do you want to play a different game? If you’re the leader of your board game group, you’re going to have to get used to teaching. So determine what is going to work best for your group. Maybe you can get into the small details of the game and that’s fine for your group, maybe you have to play a sample game so that people can see how the game works that way, but learn from experience and expect to still have to teach as you play.

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What is a Legacy Game

Legacy board games are games where you play for a certain number of times or until certain conditions are met, but each time you play you are updating the board/cards.  This means that the game evolves and changes each time that you play it. So your experience playing the game will be different than anyone else’s experience with the game. It also means that you’ve bought a board game that you can only play a limited number of times.

Why would I want to do that?

Because these games are capable of having a bigger and grander feel than other games. There is a consistent story and decisions feel like they are more important. So even though you can’t play it as many times as a normal board game, legacy games have more of an experience as you play it.

What are some of the good/bad things we’ve seen?

So, thus far there are three true legacy games, Risk Legacy which we haven’t played, Pandemic Legacy Season 1 and Seafall both of which we either have played, are playing, or will shortly be playing again. Pandemic Legacy is going to be where most good things come from, though as compared to our game group, I don’t mind Seafall as much as some of them do.

• Having a good/epic feeling story
• Feeling the pressure of the story
• Consistently progressing story

These are all important things that I would say make a good legacy game. When you have an idea of what is happening and the story is always moving forward at a consistent pace no matter if you win or you lose, there isn’t any point where you stagnate. It is also important for each of your decisions to feel important, but for there to be some story direction as to why you might want to head in a certain direction.

• Poorly Written rules/spelling errors
• Inconsistent story pacing
• Too many options without enough direction

So, these are all things that Seafall does, in spades. If you decide to play Seafall, look up a how to play youtube video to learn, don’t look at the rules, unless you are a seasoned gamer and patient you won’t learn from them. Also, if you have an analysis paralysis player in your normal game group consider having them not play, or at least be aware the game will come to a halt for five to ten minutes on their turn. If you have two, just don’t play this game.

Would we recommend either of the games?

Absolutely for Pandemic Legacy Season 1, and we are stoked for Season 2 coming out this fall. The information thus far on it make it look different but similar.

For Seafall, I would say yes, but some caveats. If you have primarily passive players,  meaning they aren’t going to push action/conflict, if you have primarily casual players,  or if you have primarily analysis paralysis players, don’t play this game. Also, realize that this is a slow burn game, with huge rushes of stories that add in awesome stuff. So, if you get Seafall, read up about it and decide if it’s right for your group.

What Games could get a Legacy Treatment?

This is the real reason that I wanted to write this, to do some games that could be turned into a legacy game, I’ll just do one now, but expect to see part 2 later this week.

Dead of Winter

Why it could work: Surviving a zombie apocalypse already has story elements built into it. In Dead of Winter you are trying to survive, but maybe it could be more than that, maybe you are trying to find enough supplies/clear out a path, and going from town to town in a way that is leading you to finding a cure, or more likely finding a safe haven where you and settle down and not worry. I’d play that story, and it lends itself to seasons as well, and good progression.

What would have to change: First, the tone would have be a lightened a bit. The game is quite dark with the crossroad cards and the things that can happen based on them. Those crossroad cards would have to change to be stuff that’s a bit more general. Also, the whole traitor aspect, you’d probably need to drop that, otherwise someone who started the game playing with you might just end up torpedoing everything early on and getting exiled, then what’s the fun for them?

What would I keep: I’d keep the hidden objectives. I like this idea that each player has their own secret dossier that tells them that they are trying to do by the end of the whole first season. Or maybe it isn’t even that big, maybe it’s a secret objective that you have to complete each game or different ones per player in each city/town that you go to. I’d also keep the idea that you have a base in each town (with my story idea), but then the buildings in the town can be different for each town which would be simple to set-up as an in game mechanic. I would also keep it semi-cooperative, but how does that work without there being a traitor?

What I would add: I’d add rewards for completing your hidden objectives, and since this is a legacy game, the players who complete their’s would end up with more of a reward at the end of the game. So that there is real incentive to completing your objective. Also, besides the zombies, there should be a big bad guy at some point, doesn’t have to stay around for the whole game, but having one appear sometimes, or maybe sometimes you are even competing against another group trying to get to safety, and all of this is done mechanic wise in the game.

Would I play this game? Yes, I think that Dead of Winter is ripe for a bigger story to be added to the game, and they’ve already built on it, I think this game needs a legacy version.

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So, what is the premise of SeaFall? As compared to Pandemic Legacy which is built around the mechanics of Pandemic and Risk Legacy being built around Risk, SeaFall is a completely stand alone game that doesn’t tie into any other previous title. The story of SeaFall is that you are pirates who are going out to explore the world (or a small chunk of the sea), looking for the lost leaders of your clan and generally just trying to eventually become the pirate emperor. That’s basically what we know story wise at this point. All of this information is found out in the prologue, so I’m not really spoiling anything that is game central. It looks like a fun game with a ton of moving pieces and something that is going to be more challenging than playing Pandemic Legacy (which we did poorly at, but we knew how to play).

Mechanically, they have it split up into a number of nice different options. You can raid locations for resources, you can buy resources, you can explore (probably getting resources), and you can build in your settlement or upgrade your ships. Each of these actions is split into it’s own guild, so it’s not like you can all of these on a turn. A lot of these actions are built around rolling dice, and building that dice pool can be a bit complicated, but reading the dice, thankfully, is very simple. Alright, so let’s talk a bit more about how the game works. There are two different types of rounds, the first being the winter round. The winter round is when you can get additional money, refresh resources that were getting low, stuff like that. It’s kind of resetting the board so that you’re ready for taking turns during the six summer months. During the summer months the big thing that you get to do are the guild actions. Each guild has three actions (one always being sail), and you get to pick 2 out of the 3 to do. The other big thing that you can do in SeaFall, to help make it easier to complete a milestone or get points is buy an advisor. They can make buying or selling items cheaper, they can make it so that you are better at exploring or better at raiding, or they can make upgrading cheaper. A final nice thing is that with how the turns go, and once you get going, they don’t actually take that long, so you can really get rolling.

Let’s talk about one HUGE negative to this game though. The rules as written are kind of hard to understand to start the game. It took me probably an hour of reading them repeatedly to get exactly what they meant, granted that was during the first time we tried to play the prologue. So don’t let the fact there is a prologue fool you, it teaches you nothing about the actual game, you just get to play the actual game without consequences. So watch the video below, he explains the rules very well, and it’s faster than reading the book. Once I watched the video I was able to remember how to play exactly until we played, so it made it much faster.

So what else do you need to know about this game?

I’m not sure, we’re just starting it out and playing for the second time coming up here in about a week. I’m very stoked for it. If I were to give any more advice about playing the game, it would be, have someone who really knows board games be the person to “control” the game. Let them set it up, let them be in charge of the rules, and really lean on that one person. This game is intimidating for a casual player and there is going to be a learning curve. Also, pay attention to the balance of things. I’ve heard rumors that this game can break down a little bit and that once someone gets behind it is hard to catch up. There seems to be a mechanic in place in the game to help with that, but still, keep an eye on that. You are pirates in this game, but that doesn’t mean you always have to be cutthroat.

I’ll come back once we’re done with the whole game with a review of it and some grades for casual and more serious players, so look for that in a while.

Happy Gaming!

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