Seaside Review

boardgamequest.com:

As gamers, we are quite particular about our game components and keeping them pristine. Perhaps it’s how lovely many of them look, or, if you are like me, it could be because you grew up collecting comic books and “bagged and boarded” everything. So keeping things in tip-top shape is just part of your DNA.

The thought of playing a game at the beach, outdoors, or in an area somewhat near water is probably an anathema to most board gamers. It just isn’t done. Well, toss that all out the window as we get ready to play to Seaside. It’s a game about life at the beach that can also literally be played on the beach!

Playing a game of Seaside couldn’t be simpler. If you are playing with fewer than five players, grab a handful of tokens from the bag and set them aside. Boom, you are ready to begin.

On a player’s turn, they reach into the canvas bag and draw out a token. They then choose a side of it to play. Most tokens fall into one of two categories:

Sea Tokens: These are played into a shared central area and let the player take another turn. Most of these tokens are used by other tokens to score.

Seaside Tokens: These go in front of you. Most of them interact with tokens in the sea. Such as the Beach tile that lets you grab a Shell token for each beach you have, or the Rock token, where having two of them, allows you to scoop up all the Crabs in the sea (and also swipe one from a fellow player).

The only token that really breaks that mold is the Wave token. When played, it lets you flip one of your Beach tokens and apply the effects on the other side. Plus, at the end of the game, whoever has the most Wave tokens collects all the tokens left in the sea.

Turns continue until the bag has run out of tokens. Players then stack up all their collected tokens and whoever has the highest stack wins.

The components of Seaside are what first caught my eye. I always want to check out games with interesting bits, and the lack of board, cards, or really anything other than discs and a