Dead Reckoning

At our table, Dead Reckoning turned into a proper naval soap opera: Captain Vex’s proud Mariposa kept giving seamanship lessons, with plenty of cannon fire and a great deal of confidence in the colour purple. And yes, the aggressive strategy is entirely viable, provided your opponent does not tuck themselves behind their forts and make a run for it.

The game revolves around naval development and conflict, with the aggressive option able to genuinely pay off rather than merely being a flashy, self-destructive idea. Forts provide safety, but our experience showed that they do not invalidate attacking play; they simply require the other player not to remain permanently entrenched.

The campaign adds cards and quests that should, in theory, open up more possibilities from game to game. In our run, however, we played so efficiently for points that we finished the first campaign without seeing even half the material and without opening a single envelope. That is interaction in a rather odd way: the game pushes you toward immediate gains, perhaps at the expense of what the campaign itself wants to reveal.

It remains a very good game, and I still like it a lot. Even so, after 8-9 plays I have mentally dropped it from a strong 10 to a 9. I cannot point to one specific rule and say, “there, that is the problem,” but something about the way a game ends and the way the campaign is structured does not sit quite right with me. Perhaps we were simply ruthless point-chasers; perhaps the system needed to be set up a little differently.

Updated session

Having completed the first campaign, my initial impression has not been overturned: the game remains enjoyable, especially when the cannons start firing. My concern about the campaign simply became clearer because we finished it so quickly without exploring much of it. Someone at the table also suggested that three players might let us see more cards and complete more quests than four players did — and that is probably worth trying.