For those that haven’t played it, Sea Salt and Paper is the wonderful, small box card game from Bruno Cathala of 7 Wonders Duel, and Kingdomino fame and Théo Rivière who worked on Draftosaurus and The Loop. It’s simple to teach, quick to play, scales well at all player counts and has been a go to of mine for weekends away and fitting in my coat pocket when I go to the pub. Sea Salt and Paper was recommended for Spiel des Jahres in 2023 as well as being nominated and winning a whole host of other awards, and also features absolutely gorgeous origami art! In the game, you will be drawing cards from a deck or one of two shared discard piles, looking to make pairs of cards for their effects or collect sets in hand, with the aim of getting more points than your opponents each round. OK, that’s a quick overview, but then why are you reading a review for the expansion if you don’t know anything about the main game?
So enough about the game and more about this little expansion, which is the second for the game following on from the Extra Salt expansion. Extra Salt added a few new cards, and some additional pairings for old cards providing some excellent new effects that at the time helped to refresh a game I had played an awful lot. Extra Salt, like Extra Pepper, comes in a trading card game booster style pack, and easily fits into the core game box.
For those that haven’t played it, Sea Salt and Paper is the wonderful, small box card game from Bruno Cathala of 7 Wonders Duel, and Kingdomino fame and Théo Rivière who worked on Draftosaurus and The Loop. It’s simple to teach, quick to play, scales well at all player counts and has been a go to of mine for weekends away and fitting in my coat pocket when I go to the pub. Sea Salt and Paper was recommended for Spiel des Jahres in 2023 as well as being nominated and winning a whole host of other awards, and also features absolutely gorgeous origami art! In the game, you will be drawing cards from a deck or one of two shared discard piles, looking to make pairs of cards for their effects or collect sets in hand, with the aim of getting more points than your opponents each round. OK, that’s a quick overview, but then why are you reading a review for the expansion if you don’t know anything about the main game?
So enough about the game and more about this little expansion, which is the second for the game following on from the Extra Salt expansion. Extra Salt added a few new cards, and some additional pairings for old cards providing some excellent new effects that at the time helped to refresh a game I had played an awful lot. Extra Salt, like Extra Pepper, comes in a trading card game booster style pack, and easily fits into the core game box.
After numerous games with Extra Salt added to my Sea Salt and Paper experience, it was time for something new and spicier, and here we have Extra Pepper. Where Extra Salt added cards that would go into your deck, Extra Pepper adds a new mechanic, an event deck that will alter the scoring conditions each round.
In the booster are 12 new event cards that will be shuffled at the start of each round, at the start of the round, reveal the top card which will reveal a special rule that will apply to all players for the round. The event card will go to the player who wins or loses the round depending if it has a trophy with a plus or minus in it and the new rule will apply to only that player for the remaining rounds as long as they are still first or last. A player can only have one event card, and if they were to gain another in a subsequent round, they choose which to retain. Some of the effects apply to the effects of the duo cards from the core game, some will change the point values of cards, and some will add new rules.
So is it any good? Well one of the things I love about Sea Salt and Paper, is that it is a fun and simple card game, where you are often facing the luck of the draw and scores can sometimes swing wildly depending on your luck. This adds to some of that chaos, but also opens up some more routes to follow towards points depending on what event card you have in front of you. The Dolphin card for example, will reward you for discarding a set collection card, or that you can suddenly play two swimmers or two sharks for different effects. I think the new cards are a wonderful addition, particularly at higher player counts, at just 2 players though you might sometimes find the effects of the cards can be much more impactful at affecting the players scores. If I was also to have one minor criticism, it is that it would have been nice to maybe have a couple of additional event cards that would have interacted specifically with the cards from the Extra Salt set but I can understand why the designers decided to just stick with cards that interact with the base game.
Overall, good things do come in small packages, and if you’re as much of a fan of Sea Salt and Paper as I am, the low cost and whole new additional way to interact with the game that this expansion brings makes this a must buy for me. The fact that both expansions fit inside the main box, and are optional (although I’d never play without Extra Salt again), means that you can choose to play the events or not on games going forward depending on your mood. Extra Pepper only increases the complexity of what is still a simple and joyous game a little bit while adding in something to make playing a little spicier.
Zatu Review Summary
Zatu Score
80%
