Friday, May 11, 2012

Surviving 'Survive'

Currently 'Survive' is on top of the list of my favorite games. I was actually considering replacing "Ticket to Ride USA" as my all-time favorite.

This game is about survival, as the name suggests. :P There is an island, Atlantis. Your task is to take your people out of the island before it completely disappeared. Taking your people out of the island is not that easy because you have to compete with other people who want to survive as well. And of course, there are perils. There are hungry sharks who won't stop at nothing to eat your people. Whales who are too eager to destroy your boats to make you vulnerable to sharks. Serpents who can destroy both your boats and people. And the one you should be most afraid of, the heartless players in the game who would do just about anything to survive without you.

This game is not for the faint at heart and vengeful people because if you take everything here seriously then you might end up hating your friend for killing 3 of your VIPs (people with 4,5,6 points) even if there are other moves than that.

This is how the board looks at the start of the game.
The colored ones are the people (Red, Yellow, Green, Blue).
Guarding the 4 nearby islands where your people can go to survive is a serpent.
There is a serpent at the center of the island too.
There are 8 boats.
Aside from the game play, I love how attractive the components are. When everything is set up like the above picture, it can surely catch anyone's attention.

Setup
1. Make 'Atlantis'. There are 3 kinds of tiles that would comprise the island. You have the freedom on how to form your island as long as it follows the outline on the board.
Each people of survive has a point.
The accumulative points will determine the winner of the game.

2. Put people. There are 4 players of the game. Each of them will have 10 people and will take turns in placing their people on the island. The 10 people has a point each (see above picture). There are 1 people with points 4,5 and 6. 2 with points 3 and 2. 3 with 1 point.

Note: No 2 people can occupy the same tile.

3. Put boats. Each player will be given 2 boats. You will place the boats on the island. Anyone can use the boat you place. You don't own the boat.


How to play


When all the pieces are setup like the above picture, the player who puts their people first will start his/her turn. Usually, the person who wins the previous game will get to be the first player.

On a turn, the following can be done in order:

1. Make at most 3 moves.
The moves can either be: Move a people to a tile, boat or to the sea. Move a boat. Move a swimmer.

Note: A swimmer is a people who is in the sea space. When your people become a swimmer, it cannot go back to the island anymore. You can only swim until you reach the safe corners. A swimmer can only have 1 move per turn.

2. Open a tile. The order of tile opening is as follows, open the sand(cream-colored) tile first, then the forest(green) then the mountain(gray).

3. Roll the dice. There are 3 components in the dice: whale, shark and serpent. When you roll a whale, you can move it at most 4 spaces. Shark for at most 2 spaces. Serpent for 1 space. You can only move the components if they exist in the board already.

That's it. I think I've blabber most already or at least the meat of the game. It's not complicated right?! Actually, this is just the base game. There are lots of game plays that we haven't played yet. There are components like the squid and dolphin too. We haven't played that yet. I will post about it when we played it soon.

Strategies


There are lots of ways on how to win the game. But it's not guaranteed to work every time. Well for this, you just have to explore on your own when your playing already. I'd be rubbing you off the fun if I tell you about it too.


I hope this post makes you interested to play "Survive"! BTW, I don't mind answering suggestions, comments and violent reactions. :)


Hope to hear from you! =)



------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------For the boreds on Wednesday night... You can join our board game session! :) Naa ra mi pirmi sa Pan de Manila sa eBloc, IT Park! From 7 PM - 11 PM, usahay malapas! :P Dili ra mi malain if mu-try mu ug duwa... Ehehe! The more, the merrier! :D

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