Tortuga 2199

Tortuga 2199 arrives with rather too much noise attached, which is a shame: a game deserves to be met across a table, not through wild praise or a quick dismissal. There is something quieter and more useful here than deciding whether it is “the best”: an experience with several good ideas, capable of pulling you in on a tired evening after work.

At heart, it is a deckbuilder. You gradually build your deck and look for the choices within it that will make the next move work better. It need not be burdened with claims it does not make; its appeal lies in that familiar, immediate process.

The game keeps returning to the small question that makes a deckbuilder tick: what do you keep for now, and what are you trying to have available later? Player interaction is not the part that stands out in the experience as described; the weight is on the development of your own deck and the decisions it opens up.

It will not convert someone who is completely finished with the genre. But for anyone who likes deckbuilders and is weary of playing the same ones, Tortuga 2199 has enough character of its own to deserve table time — quietly good, which counts for rather a lot.