Played Coldwater Crown at my friend Troy's house last Friday. A game that brings two of my favorite hobbies together; board games and fishing. Was it a match made in heaven or a mistake to use this odd theme? I'll supply a brief overview of the game and my thoughts. Overview In Coldwater Crown players compete against each other in a fishing challenge. Anglers Attempt to collect fish from the Lake, River and Shore regions. Players place "bait" in the form of color crystals drawn from a bag, onto their player board resembling a bait/tackle box. By "casting" their player token (alternating between values of 1 to 2) onto an available location on the board. Colored locations allow for the player to remove one of that colored bait from each section of the player bait box (if the token is indicating the #1). When activating a token with the number 2, all of the bait of that color may be removed from the player board. When "reeling in" or retrieving the cast, a player removes a token from the board from a different location and playing the associated action, much the same as the cast. When at the special port location, players may choose to select a master angler card or to draw additional bait pieces from the bag and populate one of their bait box sections. When the result of your actions clears all the bait from any number of sections on your bait box, you have "caught" the fish associated with that section or sections in the region you took the action. The corresponding card(s) are selected and added to your player area in front of you. Players continue to collect fish from sections, noting the weight and time each fish was caught (indicated on the back of the card). Players also use removed bait to fill in the slots needed to collect the Master Angler cards. There are also different tackle tokens which give special abilities when catching fish. For instance, when using the rod tackle token the player may choose the fish from any region in the appropriate section, not just the current region. These special tokens are exhausted after one use, however you can earn new ones by catching fish in the #5 section of your bait box (player board). Crown points (victory points) are awarded for a number of things. Each region has varying trophies with decreasing VP amounts for the most weight of fish caught in that region. There is a small species challenge awarded for players who catch one of each of the smallest fish in each region. Each Master Angler card that is completed is worth a victory point and additional points awarded for collecting three of the same and/or four different ones. Catching a fish of a specific weight can gain a bonus. Awards are also given to anyone catching 8 different species and the first to catch 12 fish. Catching 12 fish also triggers the endgame. At the end, players compare weights in each region and award points based on ranking. After adding in all other victory points, tagged fish bonuses and challenges, the angler with the most crown points wins. Thoughts Troy put Coldwater Crown on the table for his game night selection. A game none of the rest of us had played. I don't think any of us had even heard of it. Unfortunately the player count was one to four and we had five players. As usual, Troy did an expert job of modifying the game to allow for a fifth player. Essentially he printed out a separate player card and used a substitute token - new five-player game variation! The components were fairly standard. The board, cards, plastic crystals (bait), and tokens all seemed nice but nothing particularly unique. The artwork was nicely done. Illustrations of the fish seemed well drawn, but not quite to the level of the bird illustrations in Wingspan. I'll stop for a second and compare this game to Wingspan due to the similar subject matter. The gameplay itself in these two games is quite different, however both games require players to collect the respective animals in a player tableau area. The idea that a game about birds would be any good, seems about as odd or mundane as a game about fish and fishing. I think both games pull it off quite well. And Coldwater Crown was released before Wingspan. Coldwater Crown didn't have the promotion and commotion when it was released, yet it is a very good game about a subject matter few would have thought would be interesting. Continuing with my thoughts on the game... I think Goldwater Crown has a lot of interesting mechanisms. Casting out with one token and retrieving with another which supplies your actions for each turn. Using bait as an indicator of when a fish is caught. There were so many possible areas to concentrate on: trophies in each region; master angler challenge; small species challenge and more. There was some randomness in which color bait was pulled from the bag, however that was part of the fun and challenge. I think its got a lot of replay value. New strategies to try and areas to focus. We even told a few fish stories as we played, adding to the social enjoyment of playing. Even though I've only got this one play under my belt, I think its solid and would recommend it... especially if you have an affinity for fishing. If you want to read more about Coldwater Crown on the Board Game Geek site, click here. Please continue checking out King's GameNight blog and follow the Facebook page.
Until next time... Game on!
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