Wreck Raiders
Designer: Tim Brown & Joshua Cappel // Publisher: Kids Table Board Gaming // Ages: 10+
Wreck Raiders is a deep sea treasure hunting game where players collect items during their dives to display in museums and large aquariums. At the time of this posting Wreck Raiders is in it’s last days on Kickstarter, but we were lucky enough to play a prototype copy lent to us by the designer, local to the Toronto, Canada, area. Here are our impressions after a preliminary play.
Right off the bat, we love it. It fills a gap in kids board games that we feel has plenty of room to grow. We consider this game perfect as a stepping stone to transition kids from typical “kids” games to full “grown up” games. It’s like taking the training wheels off. Wreck Raiders provides a few game mechanics that we absolutely love in heavier games, including worker placement (placing your meeple to take an action), dice drafting (selecting your actions to build a strategy), and set collection (long term planning to achieve a goal). Let’s first briefly describe how the game plays.
Gameplay Overview: Roll Dice, Select a die, place your meeple to collect a treasure item, place the treasure on your personal board
A round starts with the starting player throwing all the dice into a box. They can then select a die where the number indicates where they can place their player piece (meeple) on the main game board. There are four wreck sites, so where they place their meeple determines which type of treasure they will collect. They will take that treasure and decide to place it on display for the museum, or place it into their vault for the personal collection. These two areas allow you to score points in different ways.
The Museum: There are museum cards on display requesting certain combinations of treasures. They are open for anyone to grab on a first come first serve basis. Once you meet the requirement, you can take the card to score points. You fill your museum from left to right, and if you match the exact order on the museum card, you gain bonus points.
Personal Vault: The vault fills up from bottom up in stacks. On the back of each colour type of treasure is a specific treasure. You can get points in two ways: either by filling the row with the same colours (same wreck site) or by filling the row with unique types of treasures. If you qualify for both requirements you get both points.
Having two locations to place items provides a decision point when collecting treasures. If you collect a duplicate item that already exists in your vault, you can choose to place it in the museum instead, or place it in the vault and forego the bonus points for having unique items. You’ll start to strategize how you want to display your treasures.
Placing your Meeple: When you place a meeple in a spot next to another meeple, the owner of that other meeple gets to take a treasure too. You both help each other! If that neighbouring meeple is one of your own, you will gain two treasures! So sticking close to each other helps everyone. If a player is already on a spot you want, you can kick them out. However, that’s not a bad thing for the other player because they go to the beach where they collect bauble tokens that can be used in a few ways (we will get to that next).
Bauble Tokens: Bauble tokens can be traded in for various things like changing the value of the die you selected, or collecting and extra treasure at a wreck site. They can also be used to buy aquariums in the market. Bauble tokens can be collected when you are kicked out to the beach. They can also be collected at the start when the dice are thrown in the box. The inside of the box has spots indicating bauble tokens. If a die lands on that spot, the player who selects that die on their turn also takes a bauble token.
Aquariums: You can trade bauble tokens in for aquariums, collecting separately the bottom, middle and top of an aquarium. The top of the aquarium will indicate bonus points you get for the type of bauble tokens you spent to get the aquarium sections.
Game ends when a certain number of museum cards have been collected and the most points wins!
Impressions
Components: We played with prototype components but they all looked and felt great. The kickstarter campaign already achieved a number of upgraded components including meeples shaped like deep sea divers, shaped bauble tokens, and fancy dice.
Game Mechanics: Wreck Raiders brings together game mechanics found in the heaviest of euro games (worker placement, dice drafting, set collection) but keeps them simple and provides a theme and integrates everything smoothly. We think the theme brings it all together allowing for younger players to easily grasp all the concepts and run with it.
Age Range: The box says ages 10 and up, but we were able to play with our 6 year old and she easily grasped what she needed to do on her turns. She didn’t have the solid foresight to plan in advance what she wanted to collect, but she did well taking what she needed now and working with it. She enjoyed sending meeples out to collect things, display them, and trade in baubles to buy the beautiful aquariums (stellar artwork added tremendously to the appeal).
Player Interaction: Worker placement games often have limited player interaction, but here placement of your meeples was critical in helping yourself as well as others. Players were always paying attention to see if they collect bonus treasures or bauble tokens. Having other players benefit from your actions creates a family and kid friendly gameplay experience. There was no “mean” actions and there were always options on your turn. We liked this aspect of the game the most because it made the game enjoyable for all ages.
Strategy/Replayability: All the different choices for gaining points (museum displays, personal vaults, aquariums) adds to lots of variability and replayability. You can attempt different strategies in different games, so it never feels the same.
Verdict: Solid game mechanics, lots of decisions, great player interaction, and a theme that brings it all to life
Wreck Raiders is a huge hit for us. Our oldest always wants to play the “grown up” games that we play and for many of them she can keep up. Here is a game that works as a good transition from typical kids games and an introduction to heavier strategy game mechanics. There are very few games that fit this niche right out of the box. It definitely falls under that category of games that both kids and adults can enjoy together. We don’t recommend this game for beginners, but if you’re kids have been playing a lot of games and show interest in your own games, this would be a perfect place to start. We highly recommend Wreck Raiders for the experience child gamer.
You can see more at their kickstarter page here.