Diving for Fortune & Glory: Deep Blue Board Game Review

By Christopher Guyton | December 12th, 2019 | Categories: Board Game Reviews, Board Games, Product Review

Explore the depths and find fortune and glory in Deep Blue! Your gaming group will love this gorgeous and thrilling board game challenge.

Deep Blue is a 2-5 player game from designers Asger Harding Granerud and Daniel Skjold. This is the latest of the “big box” offerings from publisher Days of Wonder. A typical game will play in around 45 minutes.

Deep Blue: $49.99

Get It For Less At Miniature Market

Buying this fabled map was a stroke of genius. The most ancient, legendary, and extravagant underwater wrecks are waiting for divers. Diving suits and oxygen tanks are aboard, and the ship is ready to weigh anchor. There’s no time to lose! The increased hustle and bustle of the harbor, with ship captains attempting to hire the best divers and historians, can mean only one thing: Other captains have the same map, and the biggest treasure hunt of all time is about to begin!

Deep Blue is a press-your-luck and engine-building, family game in which players dive for wealth and may join and benefit from other player’s diving fortunes. In this game, players have to collect the right crew of divers, sailors, and archeologists, race to wreck sites to claim the best spots to dive from, and scout the seas to discover new wrecks. Players have to take risks if they want to be the most wealthy diver!

Contents:

1 Main Game Board
10 Plastic Boards
50 Crew Member Cards
5 Player Boards
1 Dive Site Board
120 Victory Point Tokens
15 Wreck Tiles
1 Diving Bell Pawn
31 Plastic Gems
1 Cloth Bag
6 Starter Bonus Tokens
7 Captain’s Log Scenario Cards

Ages: 8+
Players: 2-5
Game Length: 45 minutes

Diving for Fortune & Glory: Deep Blue Board Game Review

In Deep Blue, each player is part of a treasure hunting team aboard a ship. You will hire a new crew and conduct deep-sea dives in hopes of a huge find. Players can all participate on the same dive, but only the dive leader will determine how far down to search.

Each player has a team of two ships and can spend rudder symbols you move them about and discover underwater wreaks. You can split movement between your two ships, however, you wish. Once you land on a dive site you can flip it over to see what scouting can be done as well as the value for leading a dive.

When you perform a dive any players one space away can rush over to join in. Scouting spots can grant safety or bonuses. Once everything is in place the dive leader pulls gems out of a bag one at a time. There is a push your luck element here. Gold, silver, and red gems are worth money. Green and purple gems represent arcane or mystical relics that are worthless except to certain crew. Blue and black gems are what you don’t want to pull. These represent oxygen issues or sea creatures attacking the dive team. Too many of those and the dive will be forced to abort mission.

Another action you can perform is to hire new crew. These crew members can earn extra money for certain types and amounts of gems pulled from dives. Some can help with movement and money for buying more crew. Most importantly, some crew are able to defend you against the threats brought on by the dreaded blue and black gems.

Every card you play goes facedown onto your player board. One way to get them back into your hand is to take a rest action. When you rest you shuffle the facedown cards on your board and draw three into your hand. Now you can just keep resting until they are all back in your hand but that is precious time lost hunting treasures. So you definitely have to balance how often to rest.

Toward the end of the game, some of the higher level dives are special. These four special tiles form a mosaic when you place each onto the map tile. After any player completes the picture the game will immediately end.

Deep Blue is a wonderful game with a fun push your luck gameplay and beautiful artwork. These elements combine to create a fantastic world to explore. Fun fact, this was almost a gold prospecting game, back in prototype form several years ago. I think the deep-sea diving theme works better with the push your luck mechanisms.

I definitely recommend Deep Blue, it has a lot of fun stuff going on. Days of Wonder tends to pick up really good quality games and this is no exception. I hope you get an opportunity to check this game out.