Last year, Flip 7 took the gaming world by storm with its simple but enthralling push-your-luck gameplay making it appealing to both casual players and hobbyists alike. A part of its success was down to its straightforward probability formula: each card had a number, and there were that many cards of that number in the deck. That made it intuitive for players to have a feel for the chances of drawing another. Now Sea Scroll has borrowed that concept but turned it on its head: rather than trying to avoid duplicates, you’re collecting them. Can it build on its predecessor’s popularity?
What’s in the Box
Sea Scroll
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As is often the case with small-box card games there’s nothing in the box aside from a deck of cards. But as we highlighted in our Catan: On the Road review, there’s value in having a decent-sized box to store your cards. It’s more convenient, hard-wearing and physically appealing than a tuckbox, especially with the foil detail on the box here, making the lettering pop and the fish scales shine as they should.
Fortunately the cards included are visually rich enough to impress all by themselves. Unusually the game’s artist, Yulia Brodskaya, is already recognized and acclaimed outside of the tabletop gaming world. She uses a technique called quilling to layer paper, resulting in unique and intricate designs that rival the look and feel of paint and pen for detail. Hence the name “Sea Scroll.” Each of the nine fish species included in the game has its own portrait and they’re fascinating to study and enjoy between turns.
Rules and How It Plays
All of Sea Scroll’s fishy gameplay revolves around its fishy card deck in which, you’ll recall, there are as many of each fish type as the number printed on that species’ card. Twelve Clownfish, for example, or four Regal Tangs, these being the highest and lowest values available. Before play, you may remove certain fish from the deck, plus a selection of random cards, depending on the number of players at the table. If you frequently play with different player counts this can be a bit of a pain. You then deal two cards to each player and lay out four random cards face-up in a row.
Turns are fast and simple. You draw two random cards off the top of the deck into your hand. You may then choose one group of face-up fish and add them to your collection but there are two important caveats to this decision. First, any fish you take this way are placed in front of you, face-up, so everyone can see what you’re collecting and how many you have. Second, it’s something you can only do three times during each game, as tracked by the number of piles before you. Finally you discard a card into the row of face-up fish: if it matches a value already there, it stacks with it.
Once the draw deck is depleted and a final turn is played, it’s time to reveal your hand alongside your collection of face-up cards and tally scores. It’s simple, but vicious: if you have the most of any given fish type, you get the number of points printed on the card. If you have at least one of that fish type, but don’t have the most, you lose that number of points instead. Given how swingy and critical this is to the overall gameplay, the rules sensibly suggest that you double-check that everyone understands how scoring works before you start play.
This is a much more intriguing way to use the “card number equals number of cards” concept than Flip 7. Although it lacks the raw excitement of that game’s mechanics, with so much riding on each single draw, by spreading it out through the whole game while also increasing the overall stakes with the threat of losing points Sea Scroll gains a lot more strategizing and an absolutely killer reveal phase: all in something you can teach and play in a quarter hour (making it an excellent quick-playing game).
At each stage of your turn, you’re looking at a number of variables in deciding what to do. The key driver is knowing how many of each fish there are available, and how many are already in the player’s hands. You can’t know that for sure, of course, especially given that a few random cards are taken out of circulation before the game starts, but after a few turns you can begin to make educated guesses. Factors include taking note of what players are discarding and what face-up cards they’re choosing, as well as what’s in your own hand. It’s a lot of little things to weigh up, making decisions engaging without overloading players.
Initially the decision of what to keep and what to discard is easy but as the game progresses it becomes surprisingly fraught. The real kicker is when you draw two cards and you’re currently collecting neither value. Both of those are potential point bombs that could explode the moment the deck runs out, but you have to keep one! The obvious answer is to ditch the highest-scoring option but that’s not quite so obvious if other players are collecting them, or if it’s going into a sizable pile that someone else can grab for an impressive score boost.
Additionally, there’s a high-risk option in taking a face-up pile of cards that you know someone else is collecting. Sometimes, if you’ve got a couple of that value already, this is a statistical gamble that could pay off or hurt you badly. It’s on you to judge how likely either option is, or how brave you feel, but it’s a fun decision space in such a short game. Alternatively, you can also take a pile early as a bluff, trying to trick players into thinking you’re doing well in that number and encouraging them to discard it so you can corner the payoff. How good is your poker face?
All in all, while there’s not enough weight here to keep this on your table for years to come, there’s an impressive amount going on under the surface for such a simple game. Yet it has one more trick up its sleeve – or perhaps more accurately 13 tricks – to give it additional longevity. As well as the fish cards for actual play, and a few rules reference cards, Sea Scroll has thirteen “variant” cards each of which has a rule switch to make the game play differently.
They’re of variable quality. “Chaos” does what it says on the tin, changing the game into a mad blind grab for card sets as quickly as possible, which isn’t recommended unless you want to damage your lovely cards. Most are minor, such as “Heavy” which has you discarding two cards instead of one, which nevertheless does change the decision space around discarding, making it harder to collect sets but easier to avoid score penalties.
A couple are very much worthwhile, such as “Variety” which lets you place your discard into whatever pile you like, creating a fascinating situation where you can try and put traps into groups other players are likely to pick up. Either way, they certainly extend the shelf-life of this tiny box, making it feel like great value for money.
