Wreck Raiders
A group of shipwrecks have recently been discovered, and a nearby museum has charged you with the task of investigating the remains of these ships – and retrieving valuable treasures in the process. Of course, you can’t do it alone – you must lead a team of divers through the lagoon and collect as much treasure as possible before other teams claim it all for themselves! Naturally, you will want to collect some treasure for yourself. Try not to be too obvious when you spot that loot, or other divers might take notice and get some too!
The goal in Wreck Raiders is to be the player with the most points by the end of the game. Points are gained through collecting exhibits, storing up treasure in your vault, and building aquariums.
Set out the board in the center of the play area, and place a pile of shells along the beach side. Separate the treasure tokens by their backs, shuffle them, and place them face down in their own piles.
Shuffle the exhibits, and reveal one more than the number of players. Create three stacks for the aquarium tiles – bottoms, middles, and tops, and reveal three of each type.
Each player gets a player mat, along with the wooden components in their player color (refer to the rule book for how many divers and dice are used for each player count).
Flip the lid of the box upside down and roll the appropriate number of dice into it. Move the dice from the box lid to the appropriate zone on the reef matching where the dice landed in the lid.
Throughout the game, players will be drafting dice, placing their divers to collect treasures and shells, claiming exhibits, and building up aquariums. Here’s how the turn structure works:
Draft a die – pick a die from the reef and gain any shells indicated. If there are no die on the reef, reroll into the box lid and refresh the reef before drafting.
Move a diver – move one of your divers to a wreck or beach space and collect associated rewards. Place any gained treasure in your display or vault.
Claim exhibits – If your display matches any of the revealed exhibits, you can turn in your treasure and claim those exhibits. You get a bonus if your treasure is in the exact order listed, but it is not required.
Buy an aquarium piece – If you have the required shells, you can purchase an aquarium piece. When you buy a bottom, it starts a new aquarium. Middles and tops must be placed on bottoms or middles, and you can have as many aquariums as you want – you do not need to finish one to start a new one.
There’s a lot to like about the mechanics in this game. Many of your best moves will also end up benefiting your opponents, which makes decisions tough and meaningful. For example – when you move a diver, you can displace other players divers and bump them to the beach or back to the player’s hand, but if you do bump a diver to the beach, it gains the shells in the beach space it is bumped into. When you place a diver on a wreck, not only do you gain a treasure for that diver, but every adjacent diver also gains a treasure. You can use this to your advantage and gain up to three treasures in one move, but you can also end up giving treasure to your opponents. Do you care about getting the bonus for your exhibits enough to risk the potential that another player might get there first?
They even include a remarkably good solo variant, even considering it is one of those “try to get the highest score” rule sets I usually dislike. There’s no real way to lose, but it somehow works anyways. The rule changes for the solo variant make for some pretty significant strategy changes – for example, on my own turn, I might ignore the vault completely, knowing that I will have chances to fill my vault during the AI turn. I don’t know that I’d buy Wreck Raiders only for the solo mode, but it is solid nonetheless.
We initially only played the base game, but our copy also included some mini expansions, all of which are worth talking about briefly here.
My favorite of these was the Shark micro expansion. It adds another die to the die pool, and wooden shark that causes divers to flee as it moves around the board. Really fun and thematic, and it fits into the game without a second thought – I will always be playing with this one.
The Giant Clam Mini Expansion adds a new mechanic to the game as well, and offers yet another avenue to score points. The clam is surrounded by pearl tokens with hidden point values on them. Every time the dice pool is rolled, the clam opens a little wider, revealing numbers. If it opens all the way it immediately snaps shut. Instead of moving a diver to a wreck or the beach, players can use their action to move a diver to the clam. When they do, they pick a pearl token and compare it against the revealed number on the clam. If it is equal or lower, they keep the pearl, which translates directly into points at the end of the game.
While I really like the concept of the Giant Clam, in practice there were only very specific points in the game where it made sense to use an action to go to the clam. At those times, we inevitably had other goals we were racing towards, and ended up pretty much ignoring the clam for most of our plays. I personally probably will not take the time to set up the clam for future games, even though I enjoy the mechanism.
The Relic Hunter micro expansion gives each player a hidden end game scoring goal – not a new concept by any means but it works well here. The game already includes enough of a variety to score points (especially if you opt to include the Giant Clam Mini Expansion, so I wouldn’t call this one essential, but it accomplishes its goal of adding another small layer to the game, and has barely any rules overhead – we’ll be playing with this one going forward.
The rule book is put together very well and explains the game clearly. There are tons of illustrations to help explain concepts, and clarification text where it is needed. All of the components are high quality – it even came with stickers to spruce up the little wooden divers (and a few sea creature stickers, which the kids loved).
I’m always a fan of using box lids for dice trays, and KTBG upped the ante on that front, implementing game mechanics and a score track into the lid. The artwork is great, and ties the game mechanisms and theme together wonderfully. One of the crab markers in my copy had a broken claw, but a little wood glue fixed him right up. All in all solid production across the board.
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Wreck Raiders thus far. It’s a wonderfully puzzley worker placement game that takes just the right amount of time without overstaying its welcome. I probably wouldn’t play multiple games in a row, but that’s fine with me. It gets bonus points for an ocean theme which my wife and I both adore, and great overall production value. For just over $30, its a steal. Highly recommended!
Review copy provided by KTBG
Publisher: KTBG
Number of Players: 1-5
Age: 10+
Price at time of Review: $35
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