Aquatica

Aquatica is an honest, minimal engine builder from the company behind Smart Phone: no ornamental clutter, but one exploration idea fresh enough to stop it feeling like another card game in a crowded genre. Its asymmetry is light and, crucially, does not appear to open any balance fault lines; it simply gives each player a slightly different place to begin.

Everyone begins with the same deck, four basic submarines with broadly similar capabilities, and a distinct King card that is generally powerful enough to set the pace of a game. This is not a deck-builder in the usual sense: there is no draw-and-reshuffle cycle, and a played card is played, save for the special card that stays out of the discard and lets you recover options, rather like a well-timed reorganising turn in a worker-placement game.

Cards and submarines generate money or military strength; these acquire regions from the board, which you then explore and eventually score, while everyone races for the same shared objectives. The interesting decision is when to invest in opening and exploiting a region, and when to turn towards an objective before somebody else gets there; the interaction is not hostile, but the contest for timing is enough.

It is good with two, I think it finds its ideal depth with three, and I would not take it beyond that. This is a neat, pleasant game of an evening, with a mechanism that does exactly as much work as it needs to and then quietly gets out of the way.