Chaos & Confetti

Chaos here! One of the coolest (and sometimes most intimidating) parts of delving into the board gaming world is quickly realizing just how many board games are out there.  There truly are games that fit every flavor of theming and mechanics.  I firmly believe there is a game for everyone.

Like so many others, we quickly started amassing quite the collection.  It is tough to resist so many good games.  At this point, the number varies depending on how one counts expansions and rethemings, but our board game collection sits at about 200 games (which feels crazy to admit).  Sadly, like many others, we must also face the fact that time is limited and it’s not possible to play all our games regularly.  Honestly, some of the games we’re most excited for end up sitting unplayed because of time constraints or the inability to get together the right group.  Le sigh.

One of the reasons we created this blog originally was to help inspire and motivate us to have more games hit the table.

2021: We started reviewing puzzle/escape-style games to make sure we gave a good amount of time to one of our favorite hobbies.

2022: We introduced “Clash of Chaos and Confetti” where we competed in a different game every week.  This helped us play a wider variety of games and get to some that we had neglected.

2023: We introduced the “Chaos y Confetti Cooperative Challenges.”  This allowed us to extend our variety of plays to the cooperative games in our collection.  It also gave us a break from constantly being in direct competition.

Now, we enter 2024 with yet another theme to help us get play even more games.  Since this is such a big one in the U.S. for campaigning in the political realm, we decided to use that as inspiration for our game plays this year.  Don’t worry, we won’t be getting political here, but we’ll still be campaigning.  In fact,  we would like to introduce:

THE CHAOS AND CONFETTI CAMPAIGN TRAIL

This year, we will be giving a special focus to games that involve campaigns, series of scenarios, narratives between games, legacy elements, or other campaign-like elements.  Board games are often not just about wins or mechanics, but the experiences we have while playing them.  We hope to embrace some of that magic as we take on games that hope to build a unique experience through stories, campaigns, and rising difficulty levels.

Let’s see what the next chapter holds..

THE GAME – Sail

Sail is a cooperative tricking take game that has two players navigating their pirate ship across the ocean. They will need to avoid obstacles such as islands, krakens, and storms.

Sail works in the standard trick taking fashion of a leading suit being played and requiring a matching suit if possible.  Then, the highest number of the leading suit wins the hand.  Where Sail shakes up the formula is by creating a cooperative experience that has each pair of played cards translate into consequences for the players’ ship.

Depending on how played cards match up, many different results may occur: advancing the ship left, right, or forward, kraken attacks, attacks on the kraken, random results from the unused player deck, or nothing at all.  Since players cannot communicate about their cards beyond the one card they trade to begin the game, the game becomes about noting your ships needs, sussing out what cards are still available, and anticipating your partner’s future card plays.  

Players do not have unlimited time to meet their objective of reaching the finish line.  There are only five rounds for players to accomplish their goal, with each round ending once any one player has won four tricks.  Adding to the ticking clock are two storms brewing along the course.  If players don’t pass the first storm by the start of the third round or the second storm by the beginning of the fifth round, they automatically lose.  Creating even more hardship is the kraken.  There are many ways to take damage from the kraken: sailing to tentacles, playing kraken cards without a matching cannon, and taking automatic damage at the end of each round.  If players take too much damage without fighting the kraken back enough, they will soon find another path to the bottom of the sea.

To add a little extra spice and variety to Sail, there are several pirate characters which each come with their own unique abilities.  Players can play without the pirate, but they may also choose or randomly select a character to give themselves a possible advantage or at least slightly altered way to play.

The base game of Sail comes with one introductory scenario and five normal scenarios.  Each scenario increases the distance that must be traveled and the number of obstacles that stand in the way of the player pirates.

It will take swift but carefully measured movements to get across the board.  Will the players have what it takes to survive the pirate life?  

OUR PLAYS:

With our plays, we alternated who started the first hand of the game, and we always randomly selected our pirate characters.  

The rules of the game were easy enough to pick up and we very quickly set sail.  The players’ reference cards helped us keep the different card combinations and actions straight and before long, we no longer had to refer to them at all (though we totally kept the table just in case).

We found the introductory scenario and the first two official scenarios pretty easy to win.  Since we were just getting the hang of the game and reading one another, we definitely made some question decisions (and we’d both place the blame on the other person).  However, despite some setbacks, no-action turns, and wasted cards, we still made it to the finish line each game.  

It was during the third scenario that we finally had to step up our efforts.  Suddenly, the balance between fending off the kraken and advancing on the board became a lot more important.  Since we had further to go, which meant more rounds to survive, we no longer could ignore the kraken as much as we once did.  Also, a misplayed turn or two easily meant the difference between success and failure now.

We also had to make better use of our pirate powers, since the board offered a lot more possibility of getting stuck near an island or placing kraken tentacles in our way.  With a greater need to navigate more precisely any little advantage went a long way.

Even with our improved synchronicity and plays, we still hit some rough spots when our cards didn’t quite line up.  However, we also discovered the beauty of building a bit of a buffer with hits on the kraken.  We still needed to out race the storms, but not having to worry as much about any hit killing us or putting us on the edge of a loss did wonders.  During our final game, I feared we might have spent too time hitting the kraken, but that actually opened us up to some riskier maneuvers late game, when we had to cross the finish line quickly.

We didn’t finish with perfect records, but we did pick up more wins than losses.  As a whole the game was simple fun.  There is an expansion out there that we might be interested in checking out later.

FINAL RESULTS:

Intro Scenario: 1 attempt to earn success

Scenario 1: 1 attempt to earn success

Scenario 2: 1 attempt to earn success

Scenario 3: 3 attempts to earn success

Scenario 4: 2 attempts to earn success

Scenario 5: 2 attempts to earn success

Final Tally: 10 plays to complete Sail

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Chaos’ Thoughts:

Overall, I liked Sail.  It created some great moments when we were able to play perfectly in sync or when our double cannons lucked into shooting us forward.  We also hit a few frustration points where the card didn’t leave us a lot of options.  Thankfully, the game is quick to set up and play, so we were always able to jump right into a redo. 

While The Crew is still probably my favorite trick taking game, Sail is a good alternative for players, especially those looking for a cooperative experience.  Also, bonus win: thanks to our redos, we ended up playing exactly ten times, which makes this our official first game completed for our 10×10 this year.  Huzzah!

Confetti’s Thoughts:

I liked Sail a lot. I love trick taking games and I think the cooperative element always adds a fun twist. While I’d agree with Chaos that I prefer The Crew overall in the genre, I thought Sail stood strong in its own right. I liked the element of moving our ship on the board – Chaos bought me the upgraded token pieces, which definitely have a nice feel to them. I do think some character abilities are significantly better than others, so sometimes I felt like that impacted how the game went for us at two players. Overall though, I really enjoyed it and would definitely like to get the expansion.