Jaws!

Nearly three weeks after the event (and at least six weeks after ordering it), my birthday present arrived today!

Needless to say, Catherine and I played it this evening.

The Jaws boardgame is for 2-4 players, although really it's a two-player game where one of the players is a team. One person plays the Shark. The other person, or people, play the Crew - Brody, Hooper and Quint. It's a game of bluff and deduction, and ... well, actually it's two games of bluff and deduction. Let me explain ...

The game is split into two Acts, which are (and can be) played as distinct games in their own right. In Act One the shark stalks the beaches of Amity Island, picking off swimmers as they venture into the water in a card-driven random manner. The shark's movement is kept hidden, with only the result in terms of triggered motion sensors (see below) or eaten swimmers fed back to the other player(s). The Crew each have distinct roles in this one - Brody runs about on land, closing beaches, scanning the sea with his binoculars and delivering barrels to the docks. Hooper has a speedboat and can cruise the waters around the island, rescuing swimmers, moving barrels around and using a tracker to try and find the shark's generall location. And Quint cruises around in the Orca. He can also rescue swimmers, but his role is to launch the barrels the other two crew are moving around into the water. If he launches one into an area without the shark, then it acts as a motion-sensor, triggered is the shark moves through that space. But if he can correctly launch one into a space containing the hidden shark, then it attaches.

This game ends when either the shark has eaten nine swimmers, or if the crew manage to attach two barrels to the shark.

Here we are, set up and ready to go.

A lone swimmer off the North Beach disappeared. Shark attack!

Quint shouted at some swimmers off the South Beach to get out of the water.

More swimmers off North Beach - and Brody spots the shark!

This triggered a fairly quick chain of events. Catherine was playing the shark, but it being our first game she hadn't quite worked out how the Crew can coordinate their efforts. Quint got round to North Beach and attached a barrel to the shark, but Catherine's next move ended in a feeding-frenzy at the West Beach which, whilst it cost me four swimmers, allowed me to deduce that the shark was still off the beach. Thanks to an event card Brody was able to rush a barrel to  Hooper, who used his boat to deliver it to Quint who attached it to the shark ...

... and Act One was over.

Catherine had eaten six swimmers in total. Not a bad score for a fairly short reign of terror.

The board was cleared and flipped for Act Two - The Orca.

In this Act, Brody, Quint and Hooper head out on the Orca to hunt the shark. The results of Act One dictate how much gear they have with which to fight it, and how many special ability cards the shark gets for the inevitable fight.

The Orca is made up of eight segments. A segment can be flipped to show it's damaged, or removed when it is destroyed. The shark's goal is to either destroy all eight segments of the Orca or to kill all three crew. The crew simply have to kill the shark, using the various weapons they acquire as part of their gear allocation.

Each turn, the shark secretly chooses one of three card-driven locations in which to appear. The crew know the possible locations, and move round the boat trying to target them with weapons.

Each card not only dictates the location, but also the shark's attack and evade scores, and they are visible to all players, so the crew can use deduction if they think they can understand the shark's strategy.

Here's the shark popping up at the rear of the boat. Quint had guessed this would be the spot, hence the green target marker, and rammed a flare into the shark's mouth. This does continuous damage until the shark can shake it off (a process also drive by the location cards).

The shark has ability cards it can play each turn. In the first turn it used one to attack two sections of the boat, damaging the stern. Then it hit the port side, and knocked Hooper into the water. Once in the water the shark can opt to directly attack crew, instead of the boat, but also gets a basic bonus attack against them if they are close.

The shark shook off the flare, so whilst Brody and Hooper used a rifle and pistol to take on the beast, Quint went in with his trusty (and potentially lethal) machete.

The Orca was now badly damaged. Hooper had used all the ammo for the rifle and Brody was down to his last pistol shot. Quint was in the water, hunting the shark with his machete.

(Yes, you can use weapons whilst in the water. It's a bit of an abstraction, but keeps the game simple. And crew in the water ar more vulnerable to attack, so it's riskier than being on what's left of the boat.)

Where's that shark gone now?

.Quint managed to entangle the shark in a fishing net, reducing its ability to evade attacks.

The Orca was almost gone, as the shark picked off the remains of the stern.

The badly injured Quint was attacked again, and escaped death only by use of a shark-cage. The shark had also accumulated a fair bit of damage and had run out of ability cards. But the entire crew were down to hand weapons, and the boat was almost gone.

The shark attacked again, and Hooper, in a splendid display of aggression, bashed its head in with a hammer as it tried to chew the vessel's bows.

So a win for the crew. Quint was one hit away from death, Brody fairly badly hurt but, somehow, Hooper had received but a single hit. And got to be the shark-killing hero.

This is a splendid game. It took us a couple of hours to play it, but we were learning, and I think the game's claim of 60 minutes is about right once people know what they're doing and can crack on. It captures the feel of the film, and has the lovel components you'd expect from Ravensburger. Highly recommended.

Next time it's my turn to be the shark.