Days of Wonder Deep Blue Board Game - Push-Your-Luck & Engine-Building Strategy Game! Fun Family Game for Kids & Adults, Ages 8+, 2-5 Players, 45 Min Playtime, Made

Reading all the Rules is helpful and you definately need to set down and go over them with everyone 30 minutes before your going to play, If you are not a regular gamer. Once you start to play the game it will all begin to make more since. Your cash to be able to buy crew members are in the cards. Once you play cards, they have to rest for one turn (a rest is your turn) then you can pull 3 cards out of rest as one of your turns. When u purchase a crew member, u can only purchase 1 at a time (that is your turn) doing a dive (is a turn) buying oxygen and "creatures or danger" can also be useful when u are diving! There are many other things to learn and strategize about in the game. Lots of fun and could be played in teams of two!

This game is so fun! I got it for my husband for his birthday and we just wanted to keep playing it over and over. There are cards in the game that change the gameplay up so people need to change their strategies to accommodate. It’s a good balance of strategy and luck. The directions are easy to understand. The game takes around 30-45 minutes to play. The board and pieces are a good quality, not easily broken.

The directions for this game are very complicated. However, my 11 and 12 year Olds adjusted the crazy and now enjoy playing it their way. May work for some.

This is a great lighter weight game. Perhaps a tab bit more complex than Ticket to Ride but more fun as well. The components are great and the storage tray is fun. (for those of us who like things super organized). My little kids like it and are able to win petty easily. The artwork is nice. When playing a two person game I would allow a two position move when someone goes for a dive. If you can get this game around 40-45.00 I would say its worth it.

I think what makes Deep Blue so accessible is the fact that almost everyone can get in on the action if they have have ships close enough to where treasure dives are happening. This is much more interesting than watching one player score a huge haul, and then waiting for your turn to try. Of course, that's a valid strategy here: get your ships to where the others ain't, so you alone get the loot, assuming you avoided a wreck-tile dysfunction. If you read that twice and choose to keep reading, you're a champion.One of my favorite aspects of Deep Blue is the multi-use cards. I am not a big fan of "play your entire hand every turn" deckbuilding. Here you build your crew from cards in a limited market, but you choose when to play them. The ability to strategically save cards for when you can best make use of them is much more fun for me than games like Clank! where luck-o-the-draw can force you to waste your best cards when they do you little good, and then sit in your discard pile when you actually need them.The bag-building aspect is simple. As new crew members appear at the market, some will cause various types of gems to be added to those already in the bag, thus increasing the probability of pulling loot, rather than a creature attack or an apparatus malfunction. Play your cards right, and the last couple of dives can make for a big comeback or expand a narrow lead.Deep Blue is better with high player counts. Two players basically spend their time carving out their own sections of the board and trying to get lucky on their own. With 4 or 5, the board is way too crowded for that, and everyone is rooting for the dive leader to pull the type of gem that will pay out biggest for them. The board is huge, the components are excellent as usual from Days of Wonder, and even with 5 players you'll be done in about an hour.

Have you ever wanted to own your own salvage boat and go diving for Treasures and Antiquities? If so, then this is your game. Each player (up to 5) has 2 boats under their control, and as the game progresses, they will hire crew members, move their ships to dive sites, rest their crew members and DIVE for treasure.As you hire the crew of your ship, you will have more and more options. Every time you use a crew member whether in a dive/moving your ship/or for money to hire more crew members, they will have to go to their bunks and rest. You can skip a turn and rest them, but this only brings back 3 random crew members from their racks.All of that is fun, but what everyone wants to do is dive for the sunken treasure. When you dive, if you explore the tile before the dive begins, you will have the option of placing your boat on spots that will give you protection from sea monsters, more oxygen, or bonuses to the gems that you will bring back up to the surface.One of the unique things in this game is that most times you will not be diving alone. Any other player who is on the tile with you before the dive or just 1 move away can rush to the dive site to join your dive. They will share in the profits of the dive, but cannot control anything about the dive. When you dive, you draw gems one at a time from a black bag. The gems can be Silver, Gold, Ruby, Antiquity, Artifact, Oxygen or Sea Monster. Each gem is worth different amounts with the Antiquities and Artifacts being worthless unless you have a specialist in your crew. If you draw one oxygen or sea monster you are fine, but if you draw a second one (of the same type) the dive will fail unless you have protection from either a scouting spot or a crew member. The dive leader will have the option to continue diving or stop at any time.One of the things I really loved about this game is the styling and theme. You really get drawn into the game from the intricate boats you use as pieces to the treasure chests you have to put your victory points in. The end of the game happens after the 4th Sunken City Dive site is explored and dove on with the winner simply having the most points.We have played this game 3 times this past week, and it is quick to learn and there are always choices you have to make. It is not heavy on strategy, but one of the nice things is that you have lots of interactions with the other players as they take their turns as you have to pay attention to what is happening to play your crew members to get more points.Conclusion: Highly recommended Family game night or for those nights you don't want to get deep into a game of Scythe.

Absolutely love this game. Not only is it super fun to play but it is beautiful. Everything is made from high quality material and is just stunning. The only room for improvement would be making the gold and silver tokens more distinct from each other. The colors can be difficult to tell apart. I higher recommend this game!