Aquaria

• Designer: Tomas Holek 
• Publisher: Delicious Games
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 45-120 mins
• Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4vGl4O3
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In Aquaria, you and your friends compete to have the most expertise in maintaining a thriving aquarium. Build your aquarium from scratch to see who can maintain the best aquascape and fauna. One to four aquarists will see who can best accomplish their marine goals.

Throughout the game, players will buy new fish, feed them, and keep their aquarium in tip-top condition. Players will also show how they have progressed in their aquarist studies by how far they have moved on the encyclopedia tracks. Whoever has the most points at game’s end wins.

With an approximate playtime of 45-minutes per player, this game from award-winning best-selling designer Tomáš Holek is crafted to delight even the most seasoned gamers. Featuring breathtaking artwork throughout, it immerses players in a captivating experience – where you can build the perfect aquarium, no water changes or live fish required!

Assemble the board by putting the 5 sectors together in random order, then randomly place bonus tiles into the semi-circular slots as well as random Active Color tiles in their places.  The Encyclopedia board is placed next to this, with red tokens on red circled spaces and uncolored tokens on black circled spaces.  2N Lionfish cards are set up in a display. The main Aquarium deck is shuffled and a display of 6 cards is made next to the Lionfish cards.

Each player gets their own aquarium as a playerboard, 2 starter tiles (choosing 1 to play with) and 5 Aquarium cards (choosing 3 to keep).  Starting resources are determined by the starting tile kept. Players look to see what the active color is in the first round, and then turn all 8 of their microflora tokens to the color opposite the first active color.   Player order is determined from low to high on the number found on the chosen starting tile; players put their markers in this order onto the player order track.   Markers are also placed on the Pet Shop track, the Encyclopedia track, the oxygen track and the VP track.

The game is played over 4 rounds, and in each round players will get 4 turns each.  There are 7 phases in the round

1] Action Phase – players will use their dice to take actions; each turn, the players die must move to a different action circle and the dice will increment by one to keep track of the number of actions. If the die is moved to an adjacent circle, the player will also get a bonus action shown by the arrow of that circle.  Whether or not a bonus is taken, the arrow will move one spot clockwise of the action circle chosen.  Stronger actions can be taken if a player chooses to spend Pearls.  The central circle has more basic actions but players will always get a bonus Wool filter for going there.  The types of actions include:

• Place Aquarium cards – paying a cost in oxygen show in the upper right, players play the card into their aquarium, then getting any bonuses shown in the bottom right. 

courtesy Henk Rolleman

• Study the Encyclopedia – Move along the Encyclopedia track, always moving forward. The first player to reach any of the larger spaces will pick up the Encyclopedia token which confers a special ability or end game VP. 
• Improving the water’s Oxygen level – Move up the Oxygen track.  You cannot go higher than 11. 
• Gain Aquarium cards and food cans – cards can be chosen from the display or from the top of the deck. 
• Advancing on the Pet Shop Track – Discard 2 cards of the same color from your hand to move up the Pet Shop Track found on the right of the Encyclopedia board.  Players automatically gain the bonus in the upper portion of the level. If players want to get one of the two lower bonuses, they must discard an additional card of the same color used to move up.  Some bonuses trigger effects based on the location of the player’s Encyclopedia token. 

There are also a few free exchange actions that can be taken at any time; these are summarized in the lower right corner of the player board.

2] Microflora Phase – Players gain a bonus for each Microflora dial that points to the active color for the round.  If it is necessary, these bonuses are taken in player order. 

3] Player Order Phase – the player who fulfilled the lowest amount of color requirements in the Microflora phase goes first.  Tied players exchange their relative order.

4] Income Phase – Players gain bonuses from all their played Aquarium cards that have an Income bonus on them

5] Feeding Phase – Players discard food cans of the appropriate color for each card in their Aquarium that requires feeding. Lose 4VP per fish which cannot be fed.

6] Prepare for the Next Round – Flip over the current active color tile. The next tile in the row is now active. Reset the bonus arrows for each circle; however for the actions which were taken the least, reset the arrow to the red box all the way on the left.  Turn all the dice back to the empty side so that they can start the next round.

7] Refresh the Supply – discard the cards in the face up Aquarium card display and draw 6 new cards

After the 4th round, the game is now scored

• 1VP per pearl and wool filter on the filter board
• VPs based on oxygen track position
• VPs from the Encyclopedia board (if your marker has gotten to the end of the track)
• 1VP per 3 food cans left
• 3VP for each row and column in your Aquarium that is full of cards
• VPs for unused Encyclopedia tokens
• VPs from Lionfish cards
• VPs from Anemone cards – scoring 2VP for each orthogonally adjacent Clownfish
• VPs from Schools of Fish cards – based on the size of the connected group

The player with the most points wins.

My thoughts on the game

As with many other Holek designs, Aquaria challenges the player to juggle so many different things as they try to optimize their game.  When I first saw the game, I thought the bulk of the game would be in the playing of cards to my Aquarium; but there is so much more going on than just that.

courtesy of Henk Rolleman

While you’re trying to get the right cards in the right places; you have to manage your oxygen in order to afford those cards.  You are also trying to progress on the Encyclopedia track, both as a race to the finish for VP but also for the bonus tokens. Furthermore, the Pet Shop track awards some bonuses based on your Encyclopedia position, so you’ll have to optimize your actions to be in the right place to get the bonus you want.

Speaking of actions, there is also a bit of a ballet in moving your die around the action circles, trying to weave a path through adjacent circles when possible as that’s how you generate the extra bonuses.  Of course, the bonuses are constantly changing as the arrow moves forward one space for each time the circle is used; so if there is a particular bonus you want, you’ll also have to discern what your opponents are doing in order to get into the right action circle at the right time (and coming from the right previous circle).  

Let’s not forget about the bonuses that come from the Microflora dials – so don’t forget to be moving these around.  There is a bit of a long term play here as well because you know the order of the active colors.  Even if you can’t make it to the needed color in the current round, you can still set yourself up for a later round.

As you can see, there are plenty of combos that you can create, and the game is essentially built around this optimization puzzle.  It can feel very rewarding to get things set up just right and then seeing a grand cascade of combotastic things happen.  For me, I like the fact that this is NOT a worker placement game – there is no limit to the number of players that can use an action dial, and there is no penalty for going where someone else is.  So…as far as your own personal strategy goes, your opponents can’t really do anything to stop you from the actions you want (though I suppose they can take cards from the display and beat you to Encyclopedia bonus tokens).  

The number of options available can definitely cause some AP, though again this is mitigated by the fact that you generally can’t be blocked from doing what you want to do – so players should be able to work out much of their turn during their downtime.

For me, this game is right on the border of being fiddly – there are definitely a lot of small things to consider each turn, and while they can sometimes combine into a great play, there are also many times when I feel like I’m spinning my wheels to determine which of my possible plays leads to a marginal gain.  At lower player counts, this is suitable, but with 30-40 minutes per player, this becomes a slog for my group at 4 players, and I frankly would never play this game at the full count again.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

Dan B. (1 play): This is a pretty typical modern Euro: the core system is interesting, but there’s so much stuff grafted on to it that it takes a long time – too long for me for a game that has little player interaction. Granted, I played with four, but I wouldn’t play with three either.

Larry (1 play):  I continue to be impressed by Holek.  This the third game of his I’ve played (the terrific SETI and the very good Galileo Galilei were the first two).  Aquaria is also really good.  There’s much more to think about than the cozy theme would lead you believe and there’s plenty of ways of optimizing your personal aquarium.  I played with 3, which I suspect is the optimal number, but it would probably be very good with 2 as well.  I’d be open to playing it with 4, but only with non-AP players, and I have no reason to think that the extra player would add anything to the game but more downtime.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it. Dale, Larry
• Neutral. Dan B.
• Not for me…

Amazon affiliate link: https://amzn.to/4vGl4O3