Do you remember that in 1954 the Castle Bravo nuclear test ruptured the mantle of Earth, flooding entire human civilization? This is what you have explored in a previous WizKids board game called Flotillas, where players were constructing a massive flotilla – the main resort for humanity. The new Wizkids board game, called Seastead explores the theme even further and also offers a completely new game experience.
Seastead – a brand new strategy board game for 2 players, with a custom solo game mode. Here, you construct buildings, ship docs onto already constructed 4 flotillas & dive into ocean depths to gather resources, such as fish, metal, and kelp. It is a semi competitive-cooperative game, where players’ actions result in mutual benefits to both players, but players prioritize their personal gains, to obtain more benefits thank to the other player & score more Victory Points.
Thematically similar, yet very different board game. Players have 2 action options: either construct or dive to collect resources. The construction of buildings requires the resources, so at first, players collect different resources to be able to construct buildings.
To do dive action, players draw cards from the dive pile. The cards indicate two options of obtainable resources, and the player he drew a card decides which option to collect, which to pass to the opponent.
Players are capable to construct 3 types of buildings – ports, academies, and shipyards. Construct these buildings to acquire docks, specialists & ships. These structures, tiles & individuals provide various benefits, from the increased capability to collect more resources, do additional actions, up to custom victory points scoring conditions that are applicable to both players.
The Victory Points scoring options include (but are not limited to) the number of structures constructed, the positioning of your structures, the number & types of resources collected, player boards bonuses, or collecting clean up tokens.
All in all, Seastead seems to be a quick to play, pretty replayable strategy game that is not only easy to get into but also budget-friendly. And to get those replays more entertaining, feel free to increase the game difficulty by adding more variables – advanced rules, side B’s of Flotilla tiles, or Decree cards, that is an optional game component, included in the base game edition.
Seastead board game is scheduled for approximate release in October 2020, by WizKids, the publishers of the Fury of Dracula, Mage Knight, and Flotilla board games. The preliminary price of the game is around 30 US Dollars. You can check Noble Knight Games for a possibility to obtain the game below the retail price.