Dead Reckoning

By our fifth game, Captain Vex's Mariposa was teaching seamanship again, chiefly through sustained cannon fire. Purple may not be broken in any objective sense, but it had an extremely persuasive advocate at our table. Dead Reckoning remains the sort of game where you watch the player across from you, not merely your own plans.

At its centre is a race played across a campaign: cards, quests, and the hunt for points keep asking what you are going after before the game ends. You cannot see everything on offer, so every choice leaves another possibility sitting there, looking mildly offended.

Then the cannon fire starts. You can play defensively, tuck yourself behind fortresses, and let everyone else sort themselves out, but that is not the only reliable route. This is not a game that merely asks you to build a defence: if your opponent is not hiding behind fortresses, aggression works. Someone runs. You chase them. Suddenly the quiet pursuit of points has acquired gunpowder.

After eight or nine plays, I dropped it from a 10 to a 9. It is still a very good game, but both the way an individual game ends and the way the campaign is assembled leave me with a vague, persistent feeling that something ought to have clicked into place differently. I cannot point at one rule and announce the culprit; the final act simply does not always carry the weight the voyage promised.

Updated session

Finishing our first campaign did not change that feeling. Perhaps we played incorrectly; perhaps we were just ruthless point-chasers who saw treasure and forgot about adventure. Either way, we finished having seen less than half the content and without opening a single envelope. At four players, it also felt as though the game may give up a little if you want to encounter more cards and pursue quests; three may give it more room to breathe.