Sail or Die

• Designer: Andreas Preiss
• Publisher: Loosey Goosey
• Players: 2-5
• Age: 10+ 
• Time: 20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Sail or Die supplies you with 15 points and a handful of cards. You want to keep the points and ditch the cards.

To start a round, the first player deals a hand of cards to each player (13 in a 4p game).  Then, the start player plays any single card to the center of the table. Each subsequent player can:

• Play as many cards as the previous player, but in a color that’s not face up on the table.
  • Place a point token in the center, then play as many cards as the previous player in a color that’s already present.
  • Place a point token in the center, clear all played cards, then play exactly one more card than the previous player in any color.
  • Retrieve their tokens from the center, then pass, sitting out until play resets.

When only one player hasn’t passed, reset by removing all played cards and point tokens in the center of the table from the game, after which this player takes the start player marker, then plays a single card of any color.

When a player has no cards in hand, the round ends when the player to the right of the start player marker has finished their turn. For each card still in hand, a player removes one of their point tokens from the game.

After three rounds, the player with the most points wins. In a tie, the tied player who had the fewest cards in hand at the end of the final round wins.

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My thoughts on the game

Sail or Die comes from the publishing house that produced one of my hits of Spiel 2023, namely Surfosaurus Rex.  As a result, I was pretty sure that I was going to get a copy of this game to try to see if they could keep the hits coming.

Sail or Die is a solid game, with a bit more strategy than you might expect at first glance from the rules.  The goal is to rid your hand of cards, but trying to do it while losing as few VPs as possible.  In our first game, it felt like there weren’t any decisions to be made at all, you simply played cards as long as you could and then dropped out when you couldn’t play – after all, every card left in your hand is a point penalty, so play them all as soon as you can, right?

Upon further reflection, there are actually a few times when it may benefit you from dropping out early – depending on how many point chunks you have in the pot already; if you feel that most other players are nearly ready to bow out, it could be beneficial to quit first so that you can get your point chunks back.

Secondly, if you are fortunate enough to be dealt a hand with a large number of cards in one suit, you do have to make some decisions on how/when to play those cards.  Given the rules that you can only play the same number or number+1 cards on a turn, you’ll have to try to gauge everyone else’s hands to decide whether a round will ever go on long enough for you to play a set of 5 or 6 cards of a color.

That being said, it is true that a lot of hands kinda play themselves.  It is fairly easy to decide to play a combination that is free, and/or the groups of cards in your hand gives you a pretty easy stepwise progression of plays to make.  Most plays fall into the 1, 2 or 3 card size, so you can group the cards in your hand in similar quantities to see how your hand might play out.

The artwork is cute and whimsical, and the butt motif from Bag of Butts is definitely apparent here.   It’s a perfectly fine filler game, and it will definitely not outstay its welcome as most games finish in around 15 minutes, even with rules.  The catch is that I have a bookshelf full of perfectly fine small filler card games, and other than newness, I’m not sure there is enough here to let this one stand out from the other games on that shelf.  I’d be more than happy to play it again if someone suggested but I don’t know if I’ll be the one to ever pull it off the shelf.  Also, depending on the maturity level of the game group, this one will either be well received or frowned upon.  FWIW, to paraphrase Vince Vaughn, it is possibly the most asstastic game that I own.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor