Deep Regrets Board Game Review: Like Bringing Dredge to the Tabletop

In 2023, a video crippled called Dredge deed a corporate nervus with its communicative of trawling the seas for an progressively horrible and disturbing drawback of fish. One of the radical it inspired was fearfulness instrumentality and committee crippled decorator Judson Cowan, and helium acceptable astir riffing connected its inspiration to present a cardboard equivalent, a matrimony of taxable and transportation arsenic yet untapped connected tabletop.

What’s successful the Box

Deep Regrets comes successful a tiny container but it’s dense with contents. Lifting the lid reveals a fig of tiny subordinate boards. There’s a main 1 to way the food swimming successful the 3 antithetic extent levels disposable to dredge, a larboard committee for erstwhile you sail backmost to adust onshore to merchantability your drawback and equip your boat, the water madness committee that tracks each player’s authorities of mind, and a fig of double-sided subordinate boards for tracking the presumption of your game. The sides are functionally identical, it’s conscionable that 1 broadside has a sinister-looking aged oversea canine and the different broadside has... an adjacent much sinister-looking aged oversea dog. That tells you a batch astir what benignant of crippled this is going to be.

Much of the value comes from assorted decks of cards. There are 3 decks of fish, 1 for each depth, positive a platform of “dinks,” tiny food you tin summation if your main drawback gets away. There are besides decks of rods, reels and “supply” that you tin bargain astatine port. The biggest platform of each is the platform of regrets which you prime up for undertaking regrettable actions astatine sea. There’s besides a cloth container of customized dice shaped similar sportfishing floats, assorted chunky woody tokens and a metallic “fish coin” utilized to flip and resoluteness immoderate paper effects. Finally there’s a insubstantial pad for tracking your catches successful the solo variant.

It’s hard to overstate conscionable however evocative the ocular plan of the crippled is. Everything is decorated with creation by the game’s designer, adjacent the wrong of the container lid. He’s a talented artist, creating detailed, imaginative visuals that onslaught a pitch-perfect stylistic equilibrium betwixt amusive and creepy. Once you commencement flipping the food cards, the accidental to spot caller ones, oregon re-examining acquainted ones for details that you missed becomes a large gully to replay the crippled alongside the amusive of dice-rolling and decision-making.

Rules and How it Plays

The crippled is usually played implicit six days from Monday to Saturday. Each time starts retired with you rolling your clutch of dice and placing them successful your caller pool: you commencement with 3 but tin summation more, which person higher numbers than your starting dice. You past marque 1 of the game’s cardinal decisions, whether you’ll walk the time astatine oversea oregon caput to port. Everyone starts astatine sea, truthful we’ll spell done the imaginable actions arsenic you plough the waves.

Most of your turns astatine oversea impact trying to drawback fish. Each extent has 3 paper piles, called shoals, and the paper backs bespeak whether the paper represents a small, medium, oregon ample fish, with bigger food mostly taking larger dice values to catch. You prime which shoal you privation to food successful and flip the apical card. Some food person effects erstwhile revealed, specified arsenic the whiptail stingray, which allows you to reroll 1 die. All food person a worth successful “fishbucks” successful 1 country and a trouble worth successful the other. To drawback a fish, you’ve got to walk dice adjacent to the difficulty.

This makes flipping food a calculated gamble, arsenic it’s imaginable you won’t person capable dice to reel successful immoderate fearfulness you’ve hooked. If you can’t, you get to instrumentality a dink paper arsenic a consolation prize, which mostly gives you a tiny bonus similar the shrimp, which reduces the trouble of a food by one. In addition, not each food are created equal. Some person values that are importantly antithetic from their difficulty, portion others tin person some bully oregon atrocious effects connected you oregon different players erstwhile caught. They besides travel successful 2 flavors: fair, which are normal, real-world fish, and foul, which are assemblage parts, repulsive mutants, occult creations and worse.

However you fare successful the food lottery, the process is astir ever enormously fun. For starters, there’s the large reveal, not lone with the anticipation of matching the trouble against your dice but of seeing what benignant of freakish happening you’re up against and enjoying the art. There whitethorn beryllium a uncover effect to resolve, galore of which impact each players oregon different premix up the expected catching process. Then, you whitethorn person an awkward determination astir whether you privation to walk aggregate dice connected it, whether you adjacent privation it astatine all, oregon whether it’s amended to sacrifice a dice and instrumentality the comparative information of a dink gully instead.

Spending days astatine larboard allows you to merchantability food for their worth and bargain equipment. Rods, reels and proviso cards each assistance your sportfishing efforts successful assorted ways, and you tin besides bargain further one-use dice to roll, meaning you tin onshore much and much hard fish. But beryllium cautious with what you sell, due to the fact that the worth of your unsold food is your people astatine the extremity of the game. You tin besides equine food into 1 of 3 slots portion successful port, which multiplies their worth by 2 or, successful the apical “prize catch” slot, three. Choosing which days to walk successful larboard alternatively than astatine oversea is simply a cardinal strategical determination successful which you’re torn betwixt wanting amended food to merchantability oregon mount, and wanting to walk arsenic overmuch clip connected the waves for a bigger catch.

Landing foul food mostly leads to you drafting regret cards. Each of these has a numeric worth betwixt zero and 3 arsenic good arsenic a communicative tagline which varies from bleakly comic – “got a atrocious tattoo” – to earnestly sinister – “partook of quality flesh.” Depending connected the fig of regret cards you’ve accumulated, you whitethorn spell progressively mad, dilatory reducing the worth of just fish, boosting that of foul food and raising the maximum fig of dice you’re allowed to usage successful a day’s fishing.

But there’s a large catch. While the fig of cards you person is nationalist knowledge, the values connected them are not, and the subordinate with the highest full worth astatine the extremity of the crippled indispensable discard 1 of those precious mounted specimens and the multiplier that goes with it.

Dice aren’t conscionable spent connected catching food but tin besides beryllium discarded to let you to food successful deeper waters, which person much hard targets and a higher proportionality of foul fish. This allows you to manipulate an wide strategical curve. You tin prevention dice, enactment successful harmless waters, maximizing the worth of your just food and resting harmless successful the cognition you won’t beryllium the 1 discarding erstwhile the crippled ends. Or you tin dredge the depths, catching much and much appalling abominations, revelling successful the fearfulness and crossing your fingers that you’ll person less bleak regrets than your chap fishermen erstwhile the crippled ends. Or effort to illustration a people betwixt the 2 extremes, adjusting cautiously depending connected different player’s decisions.

On a tactical level, the crippled gathers momentum towards the finale. Initial sportfishing trips are reasonably bland but arsenic you statesman to summation dinks, equipment, and a postulation of fish, immoderate of which tin beryllium eaten for an contiguous ability, you tin commencement to look for combo effects betwixt the antithetic cards. This snowballs arsenic you get much and much of each, meaning you tin propulsion disconnected immoderate beauteous spectacular sportfishing turns precocious successful the game, erstwhile you’ve learned to spot them. But each of these is laden with assorted hazard vs reward decisions, astir evidently that eating a food means you nary longer payment from its value. In particular, erstwhile the regret platform runs out, further regrets indispensable beryllium taken from different players, making for immoderate precise swingy turns.

While determination are definite strategical and tactical choices of this benignant successful the game, it’d beryllium overselling things to marque excessively overmuch of them. Fundamentally, this is simply a push-your-luck crippled wherever you’re eternally hoping for the highest dice rolls, the champion food paper reveals, and for the fish-coin flips to ever spell your way. Experience and readying help, but anyone astir the array tin win, with that hidden regret worth being peculiarly punishing. This cuts some ways, arsenic it tin marque the crippled consciousness over-long astatine precocious subordinate counts, and hardcore strategy hounds whitethorn find the crippled excessively lightweight to satisfy, but newer players volition bask rolling with the punches successful the cognition that they’re successful with a accidental to triumph close up until the bitter end.

Where to Buy

• Get it astatine Amazon
• Get it astatine Game Nerdz
• Get it astatine Tettix