Deep Regrets
- Board's Eye View
- 11 minutes ago
- 3 min read
Fishing has a reputation for being a relaxing pastime. Nobody told designer and artist Judson Cowan, however, because in this push-your-luck game from Tettix casting for fish can lead to madness...
There's a solitaire and cooperative option but the competitive game of Deep Regrets takes up to five players. Cards are placed face down on an ocean grid of 3 x 3 spaces so that the number on the back of the cards corresponds to the level (1-3). If you are fishing, you choose one of the card piles for the depth you're trying to fish and you flip the top card. Simply revealing the card may have an effect (for example, requiring you to draw a 'regret' card) but to catch the fish you'll need to pay its fishy value from the numbers you've rolled on one or more of your three custom four-sided dice (1, 1, 2, 3). Fish you've reeled in may have another effect but most will have a value you can claim by selling the fish in port. Regret cards have a numerical value (0-3) but other players will know only the number of cards you've drawn, not their numerical value, and it's the number of regret cards that determines your level of 'ocean madness'. The madder you are, the more you'll get for fish deemed to be 'foul'; and of course the reverse is true for fish that are 'fair'.
You'll have to spend a round in port rather than at sea in order to sell your catch and utilise the proceeds to buy upgrades and/or additional dice. The dice you buy are single use, and you draw them from a bag so you won't know in advance whether any one you draw will be blue (0, 0, 1, 2|), green (1, 1, 2, 3) or orange (2, 2, 3, 3). If you draw a blue die and roll it and get a zero, it's still of some value because, when fishing, you can pay a die of any value, even zero, to move your fishing boat to trawl the next lower depth. The other action you can take in port is to allocate fish from your catch as trophies. Nominated in this way they'll score two or three times their sale value in end-game scoring; so there are game-winningly high points to be won for making trophies of your highest value fish. Watch out tho' because the numerical value of your regret cards are revealed at the end of the game and the player with the most regrets has to discard one of fish they've mounted as trophies!
We've had few regrets about playing Deep Regrets but it's a game with a high luck factor. You can do your bit to mitigate the luck and hope to manipulate your madness level to profitable effect but you're always still dependent on the luck of your dice rolls and the cards drawn. You'll likely spend at least two rounds in port; typically, one fairly early in the game in order to buy useful upgrades and one near the end so you can mount your most valuable fish as trophies. There's a judgement call to be made over the timing of your port visits but more often than not you'll let your dice rolls decide: if you've a very low roll then that's probably a good time to go to port as the dice anyway won't catch you much if you remain at sea.
As you might expect, the 'difficulty' and value of the fish corresponds to the depth in which you are fishing but there's an additional indicator in the form of the shading on the back of each of the fish cards; so, for example, you should be able to tell from the shadowing on the back of a Depth 1 card whether it is in the range 0-2 (small shadows), 1-3 (middling shadows) or 2-4 (large shadows). The shadowing is quite suble tho', so you'll need good lighting and good eyesight to make out the detail. Unless you're the player who picks one up, you'll find it maddening that some of the upgrade cards are hugely overpowered in comparison with others; for example, the Narwhal Rod gives a discount on any and all fish whereas other rods give discounts that apply only to specific types of fish.
Tettix suggests allowing 30 minutes per player, and, judging from our plays at Board's Eye View, that's about right. Given the high luck factor, we've found it overlong if you're playing with four or five players, but it's definitely a fun push-your-luck contest with two or three players.
