Jeremy’s Gaming Gratons: NASSAU (first impressions)

Board Game Gumbo is pleased to present another game night recap with Jeremy Dobler. This time, Jeremy gives us his first impression of Nassau, a 2024 game designed by Stefan Feld, and published by Queen Games. Here is Jeremy with his initial impressions after his first session:

The second of the two Stefan Feld City Collection games that were on my Shelf of Shame is Nassau. Nassau is another one that felt like it would be daunting to learn and play for the first time. It turns out that like most other Felds, while it does have a lot going on in each phase, what you do is pretty straightforward and almost entirely language independent.

You’re captaining a ship, in the First Phase roaming around Nassau to collect supplies, recruiting pirates, gaining hat dwelling pets, and/or opening up more storage spaces in your hold by creating pirate conga lines from one intersection to another, never doubling back over a path full of pirates. Once you’re done or out of pirates to send ashore, you prepare to launch from the port of Nassau gaining a few additional provisions, before finally setting sail in the Bahamas.

In Second Phase you sail around the seas stopping in regions to perform one of a handful of actions, like trading with the Old Sea Bear to gain a few small supplies, dropping off ammo crates to Towers for a bit of area control and point multipliers at end game, defeating various opponents (not players) via a mini game that requires specific weapon types based on which kind of opponents they are, dropping off a pirate Meeple to man an outpost that gives you an immediate benefit, plus a bit of income each round end, or threatening the local island markets to gain their goods tokens (more on that later).

After you’ve done all you can, or wish to, you visit your secret hideout, stashing those ill-gotten goods tokens for another potential avenue of multiplied VP at end game. Your next turn will be spinning a pirate yard in the form of goal cards, wherein if you have achieved X thing, you’ll get a number of VP now, but also, if at the end of this Phase, you’re the pirate with the biggest yarn (e.g. most VP from those cards), you get an extra 5 VP, but beware, tell nothing and lost 5 VP. Lastly in that phase you gain some income based on pirates in outposts, ammo crates on Towers, and hit tokens on opponents you didn’t defeat on the seas.

Phase 3 is a bit of cleanup, and you do it all over again thrice more before the end of the game. After which, in typical Feld fashion, you gain VP from a plethora of sources, all your goods in your hideout: the raw VP multiplied by the number of goods in there, Weapons collected multipled by the most of a single weapon you’ve got, VP on your conquered opponents multiplied by how many unique types of opponents you’ve defeated, VP for your Towers: where ammo crates are multiplied by the number of towers you’ve occupied, 8 VP for every paired pirate and pet on their hats, and then left over resources are a 2:1 ratio.

There’s points to be had everywhere, but if you’re not careful, those multipliers, or lack thereof, will get you. The wife managed over 60 points higher than me, mostly from her Tower control at the end of the game.

I cannot wait to check this one out at a higher count.

Jeremy is an omni-gamer from Lafayette, Louisiana, who games at home with his wife and young son, but also can be frequently hosting or visiting game nights with friends all over Acadiana. Jeremy loves games about nature, IP games involving turtles and batmen, and games appropriate to play with his young son, but expect lots of different games discussed here each time.  All photos courtesy of Jeremy Dobler.