Reef Encounter

Designer: Richard Breese
Published By: Z-Man Games
Players: 2-4
Duration: 90 Minutes
BGG Rating: 7.72 (Total votes 957, standard deviation 1.34)
BGG Ranking: 36

So I've been struggling trying to learn this new game on www.spielbyweb.com for the past few days and thus far I've yet to make much sense out of it. The game itself has an unusual theme which doesn't exactly help. As suggested by its name Reef Encounter is about the fascinating rich world of corals, shrimp and parrotfish. Players use tiles to attempt to grow different types of corals which they then protect from attacks by judicious placing of shrimp counters (apparently in real aquatic life prawns do have a role in protecting corals....). Ultimately the harvested coral is fed to one's fish and the player who feeds the most wins. I did mention before it had an unusual theme...

Anyway what made Reef Encounter that much more difficult to learn than other games were probably nothing more than its poorly written rules. There are plenty of options for players to pick from each round (ala Caylus, Puerto Rico), but these are badly explained and poorly illustrated. There are sufficient bits in the game to allow you to keep track of where its headed and yet not overwhelm the board, but again details were glossed over and I hardly know what some of these bits look like let alone figure out what they do. And to top it off most of them have rather foreign names e.g. larva cyclinders, alga cube, polyp tiles... what in the world are they????

Nevertheless with 2 days worth of reading up my sleeve I decided I have finally had enough and signed up for a game anyway without knowing completely how to play it. I figured that would be the best way to learn and couldn't care less if I finished dead last. Hopefully I'll be able to locate a mentor dedicated enough to run me through each turn of my game. I will report back in the next couple of days when I've made my way through enough of the game to form my own preliminary opinion.

The progess of the game can be followed at http://www.spielbyweb.com/game.php?games_id=14623&action=auth Remember it can take a while to load :)