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Abyss
Every now and then there comes a board game with art as beautiful as an ocean sunset while displaying what looks like Aquaman’s illegitimate dumpster children. A game that shimmers like diamonds held in the hands of fishy turd mutants. A game bound in a hauntingly gorgeous underwater world populated by bipedal nut sacks. If you haven’t guessed that today’s game is Abyss, then you’ve probably never played the only game that can make eye contact with you.
Abyss is a set-collection, point-salad with non-consensual trades. Seriously, you spend most of your turn watching opponents take the best card on the chopping block while you gain numerous shiny marbles …. Ok, actually, everyone enjoys getting the shinies in return for being robbed like a peasant. There are two kinds of people on this planet, they both love this G*d d*mn game. One group loves Abyss’s set-collection strategies and the other loves swirling the little bowls of pearls until they fly out like bullets and scatter under furniture never to be seen again. Look out for those psychopaths.
The goal of this game is to attract as many of the repugnant fish lords as you can seduce. Which ain’t hard cause nobody drops out of a speed-dating event faster than these bottom feeders. And when I say repugnant, I mean re-PUG-nant. These coked-out water slugs are the creeps that creep Lovecraft left out. They make blobfish look like Ryan Gosling. Rosenburg box art looks like a Vogue cover when placed next to your tableau.
But though these characters are ugly as sin, they do manage to give you all kinds of points and fun asymmetrical powers. Plus the art really is beautiful … even if the characters look like their parents fell from the ugly tree and then drowned in the ugly pond.
Gameplay
Abyss is a hand-management, set-collection game with a unique bidding/auction mechanic. Each player acts as a wealthy highborn who is trying to become the next king. Mechanically, you will spend most of the game acquiring ally cards and pearls. Ally cards are spent/discarded in sets to purchase lord cards which are worth victory points and offer unique powers while pearls can be spent in three different ways (Explained later). The end game is triggered when someone buys their seventh lord card.
Ally Cards: Each ally card has a number and a suit. There are 5 different suits, each representing one of the underwater factions (squids, shellfish, crabs, seahorses, and jellyfish). The number is the ally’s strength (1 through 5) and the higher the number the better. There are many 1s of each suit and only a few 5s.
Lord Cards: Each lord card has one of the suits printed on it. To purchase a lord, discard ally cards matching the suit AND POSSIBLY cards from additional suits. Each lord has a number, and the total number of all ally cards discarded needs to match, or surpass, that number. In addition, you will keep the lowest numbered ally card discarded for possible VP at game’s end (Thematically representing the loyal allies lords bring to your kingdom).
On your turn, you will take one of three actions:
- Exploring (Most common action) – Reveal the top card of the ally deck. Each other player has a chance to claim it before you can. If they want the ally card, a player must give you a pearl. If a player takes the ally card, flip over another ally card and the process repeats. The cost of ally cards increases by 1 pearl each time an opponent claims one (Meaning you can end up with a handful of pearls by the end of your turn). Each player can only gain one ally card per Explore. If the ally card is not taken by any opponent, you may claim it for free. If you choose not to take the card, you will flip another and repeat the process. If you flip five unclaimed cards, the sixth card will automatically be yours AND you receive a free pearl. Any cards unclaimed are placed into piles matching their suit in an area called The Council.
- The Risk of Exploring – While exploring, a player risks fighting a leviathan. A row of monster cards sits at the edge of the main board. When a combat card is revealed during exploration, the active player must choose to either fight or run away. If they fight, they discard one ally card from their hand and roll the dice (The power of the ally is added to determine the attack strength, possibly defeating the monster and gaining a reward) or the player runs away, allowing them to continue exploring (However, they must spawn a new monster when they do so, risking a potential penalty).
2. Request Help: Gain all cards in one pile from The Counil area. Your hand limit is 12 cards. These piles increase as players take the explore action.
3. Recruit a Lord: The whole point of the game. Discard sets of cards to gain a lord from the shop. Each lord has a number and a required amount of different suits needed to purchase. Discard cards consisting of the needed suits with a total matching, or surpassing, the number on the lord card. All lords reward you with VP, some cards have unique powers, and some have a key pictured. If you ever get three keys, you gain a free lair (Which offers a whole new way of scoring). Each time you get a lair, all unique powers you control are lost. It’s a trade – abilities for points.
The Hook
Pearls and Big Ally Cards
Every player begins Abyss with a single shiny pearl and a trashy crab ally card with a strength of, you guessed it … one. It’s one of those epic beginnings where you feel comfortable in your own destitution since everyone else is just as destitutey. The battle for the powerful ally cards begins right away – any 5-power card that flips is worth a pearl no matter the suit. So you can try and be patient, saving your pearls like some mid-level poker player. But you can’t order food a restaurant ain’t serving – players WILL spend pearls on anything remotely tasty. And since everyone is unthinkably far from having enough cards to buy a lord early on, the exploration action (Where people give you pearls to take allies) is spammed.
This is The Hook – gaining valuable ally cards on opponent’s turns. The exploration action feels like a night in Vegas. Players wait with anticipation for their chance to either declare “Hell No” or chuck pearls like fast balls at the exploring player. It can leave the active player thinking “Will any good cards get back to me?” The answer is usually, of course, f*ck-no-okay-maybe. A lucky flip when no one has pearls left is always possible. So how is this a Hook for the active player?
Two things make the active player’s turn exciting – the obvious benefit is you could be buried in pearls by the time you get an ally card. It makes exploration an unreliable resource gathering mechanism. In addition, players often flip as many cards as they need to get the free pearl at the end, which can lead to the council filling up. This makes the second action (request help) a fun alternative to pearl gambling. Sure those piles are filled with “1”s and “2”s, but it’s a LOT of those little guys.
This Hook really does have a Vegas feel. Players are hooting when they score a 5, yelling when one is taken, and hollar a “Yes!” when a card they’ve been waiting for falls into their greedy little hands. Those first few turns may look like just push-your-luck fun, but it feels more like you are running the Blackjack table.
The Turn
Claiming Lords and Facing Monsters
“Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them?” Sh*t yes I can Mr. Gandalf. When it comes to battling one of the insane amount of tumor-headed leviathans gathering along the border, I will sacrifice any ally card I think can do my dirty work. The leviathans can really become a problem during the Turn of Abyss. Each time a player chose to run back to exploring meant another one is flipped. They line up like ugly children gawking at zoo lions.
The Turn strikes when the first lord is bought. While the rounds flyby like the HMCS Bras d’Or, players may not realize how big everyone’s hand of cards have become. And then it happens – A lord is purchased. Its the moment tension appears – its the whole point of the game. It’s like buying a Province in Dominion. Only with artwork that is somehow uglier.
Now that players have been hoarding allies of certain suits, they have begun vetting their which allies they take – not all 5 power cards are worth a pearl. Active players start to get the allies they really want.
You can also calculate which lords your opponents are gunning for by the council piles they have grabbed – which can affect your decision making. Is an opponent planning to buy the same lordas you? Should you pivot? Do you compete with them? This is also brings into play the second function of the pearls – they can be spent to lower the cost of a lord.
For every pearl spent, the cost of a lord lowers by one. So if there is a seahorse lord that costs 9 and you only have a 5 seahorse ally, you can spend 4 of the shinies to lower it to 5, spend the 5 ally to buy and KEEP THE 5 since it is the lowest card you spent. Pearls aren’t just eye-candy, they are crucial in quickly earning lords instead of waiting for some jerk to steal it from you.
The Bite
Points, Properties, and Pummel
The Bite of Abyss strikes when someone buys their 5th or 6th lord and the entire table lets out a Marge Simpson moan. It will not be long before someone buys their 7th; the end is nigh. In general, you can respond pretty quickly. This isn’t an engine builder that holds you to one path. However, there is one teeeeeeeny tiiiiiiiiiiny end game concept that players need to know. And that concept just happens to be the most batsh*t confusing end game rule ever seen in a Cathala game. It has to do with scoring.
First you do the obvious – add up points from your lords and lairs. Simple and easy. But then you do something comically confusing. You address those affiliated allies – the ally cards you got to keep when buying a lord. In an average board game, you would just add their strength to the final score. Oh you braindead rube. Not even close. Instead, you do the following:
- From your hand of unspent ally cards, place the lowest card of each suit beside the affiliated allies you have collected over the game. From this group, you will add, to your final score, the highest card from each suit. The remaining affiliated allies (and the ones still in your hand), can suck a fat c*ck. They don’t matter. Only the highest one of each suit, including an arbitrary one from your hand. The rest will be torn to shreds by the ghosts of the unaffiliated allies you fed to monsters.
Why on Earth do you do this? Only Cathala’s overworked therapist could tell you. I believe it’s to reward those who stole the good cards but were too dumb to use ‘em. Either way, it’s just another mechanism you can exploit to gain as many points as possible.
The Bite does not cause a change in strategy – it is a squeezing of the time you have left. You feel the need to maximize your turns to get points through the following:
- Buy lords with high VP
- Buy a lord with a key to earn your 3rd, and therefore another lair
- Battle monsters to kill them for VP tokens
- Save only high point ally cards in your hand to reveal at the end
Unlike many engine-building point-salads, you are not forced to continue the same strategy you’ve been doing most of the game. It’s a reactionary finale, like many of Cathala’s other games, and has you hoping you have a handful of turns left. It’s a climactic ending to a game with many joyous moments, all wrapped in a theme of uggo-fish monsters vying for King of Uglytown.
