Endeavor Deep Sea is a game where you will be exploring the ocean in submarines diving, researching and moving around the ocean, while recruiting new specialists to your team in a bid to gain the most points after 6 rounds. The game can be played both competitively and cooperatively or solo but I’ll primarily focus on the competitive play here as once you understand that, playing the cooperative mode doesn’t add too much complexity. It is also a game based around scenarios meaning there are lots of different ways to play the game and discover the depth (pun intended) that the game has to offer. I’m going to cover the main concepts of how to play, and this should be enough to get you running through the first scenario, but as always please refer to the rules for more information and clarification if needed.
Setup
There are 10 scenarios to choose from in Endeavor Deep Sea, with increasing complexity and challenges as you move through them. For your first play, I would recommend starting with the first scenario as the players understand the core mechanics of the game before trying to achieve more complicated goals and impact boards.
Give each player a player board, their team leader and all the coloured pieces of their colour. Place a submarine in the staging area for each player and receive the arrival reward of one activation disc.
Place the recruitment tray within reach of the players, separating each role by rank but shuffling the tier 5 specialists. Set up the map according to the scenario, shuffle and draw 4 of the starting journals, and shuffle the main journal deck and place it near the starting journals.
Core concepts
You will be taking various actions in Endeavor Deep Sea, and the strength of these actions will be based on the tracks on your player board. Many of the actions you take will allow you to move up the 4 main tracks improving the actions you can take, both in the Preparation phase and in the Activation phase, and there is a fifth track which records your research points which need to be spent to research and journal but more on those later. The game takes place over 2 phases and 6 rounds, in which you will be accumulating end game points through a variety of different ways, but primarily through upgrading the tracks on your board, end of game goals and placing discs onto the Impact board.
How to play
Phase 1 – Preparation Phase
The goals each time you play are based on the scenario, and are printed on the scenario sheet. Let’s split the round down into two phases. The first phase is the preparation phase in which you will be preparing for the actions you will be taking by following the flow chart on the left hand side of your player board. At the beginning of this phase you will recruit a new specialist to your team, and the level of specialist you can recruit from is based on your reputation track. Place the specialist on their junior side (they can be upgraded later) and then increase your tracks based on the bonus for acquiring them, if your other tracks increase into the next section this round, that does apply to the next steps.
Secondly you will be gaining new action discs based on your position on the Inspiration track, these will determine the number of actions you can take in the upcoming round (although some actions do require a second disc). Place these discs in your staging area.
Finally, recall discs from your specists depending on the Coordination track, freeing up those specialists to be used this round. Again place the discs gained this way in the Staging Area.
Phase Two – Activation Phase
The second phase is known as the Activation Phase and this is where the bulk of the game will take place. In the Activation phase you will be taking actions, turn by turn until all players have passed starting with the player with the first player marker. During this phase you will be placing a disc from your Staging Area on to your specialists and the board to perform one of 5 actions. Note that you can only take an action where your submarine is present, and if you have a space on a specialist that enables you to take that action. Your starting specialist allows you to take any of the 5 key actions, but others will be more limited.
First action is to move by taking the Travel action, by placing a disc from your staging area onto a specialist who allows you to move. You can move spaces up to the level on your Ingenuity track, which is also the track which allows you to gain more submarines. Move your submarine to a new area and gain the bonus for arriving in that area, which is normally moving along a track. The depth and distance you can move is limited by your technology level.
The second action is sonar, this requires a disc to be placed from your Staging Area onto a specialist with sonar, and another onto the leftmost sonar space on the location of one of your submarines. If there is a bonus under the sonar space that is covered by your disc gain that, and if there’s a number indicating a depth then take the top two boards from either one or two different depth stacks and choose on you wish to place, gaining the discovery bonus in the top left of the newly discovered location. Place the new board ensuring it meets the placement rules, of being adjacent to an existing space, and that there are other zones above it, and populate it with any dive tokens if required.
Dive is the third action which allows you to reveal the top dive token at a location you are at, again by placing a disc from your Staging Area onto a specialist who can take that action, and revealing it. You can discard it at any point to either gain the research icons printed, or gain the other part, which may be an action or track upgrade. You can carry just one of these between rounds but you can use it in conjunction with a specialist to take a linked action, like move and conserve. You’ll need research gained through diving to allow you to carry out the next 2 actions which are Conserve and Journal.
Conserving, like the Sonar action, requires a second disc to be placed from your Staging Area onto the board. Unlike Sonar, you can choose any of the available spaces available, providing you can pay the research cost. You then gain the bonus of the space you have covered. Some conservation spots are linked, and if you and another player or just you cover both sides of that link, you both gain the bonus in the middle. Note the bonus only triggers once if you are the sole player to have discs on each adjoining side.
Finally the Journal action, again this requires a second disc to be placed out onto the appropriate journal space where one of your submarines are located but it also requires an appropriate journal to be present in the display, matching the symbol at your location. Spend research points to publish a journal which provides opportunities to upgrade your specialists. There may also be a bonus that applies to all the other players when you publish a journal.
Promoting requires you to flip a specialist to its promoted side, gaining the displayed attributes of the new side. If there was a disc on the specialist, discard it to your supply not your Staging Area. These upgraded specialists often bring improved action spots for you to use, both that round and in subsequent ones.
End of Round and additional areas not covered
At the end of the round, you move the first player marker on to the next player, and repeat the steps covered above until 6 rounds have been completed. At which point, we move to final scoring which I will cover shortly.
This covers the main concepts of the flow of the game but there are a couple of things I still need to cover. First some zones have special features, which will indicate a general effect, action effect or special rule and these are covered clearly in the manual.
Additionally, I would like to cover the Impact Board, which has the hexagonal which requires you to place one of your hexagonal discs on whenever you gain impact during the game. Here you will place a disc onto the board, adjacent to an already placed disc, or at the start of a new track. The adjacent disc doesn’t have to be one of your coloured discs, and you will gain the bonus of the space you have covered up. At the end of the game, certain highlighted spaces on the impact board are worth 1 or 2 points for each disc you have in them, and these count towards your end game scoring.
Final Scoring
Well done! You’ve completed the first scenario. Now score points based on your final spot on each of the attribute tracks, the markers on the impact board, journal and specialists that have points listed on them and mission goals which score for the most discs placed out on the board in the first scenario, plus 1 additional point for each disc you placed. If there is a tie, the top players earn all the top points, but the second place is not scored. Finally score leftover research and staging discs and score 1 point for every 3 you have. There is no tie breaker so if it is a tie, share the victory otherwise the player with the highest score wins.
Solo and cooperative
Endeavor Deep Sea features a solo and cooperative mode that uses the setback deck and bonus goal cards, a number of the goals will need to be met depending on the difficulty level you select with fuller information provided in the instructions on how to operate this mode.
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