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Saltlands: Survival is Not Enough

Hot
S Updated January 30, 2019
 
3.0
 
0.0 (0)
12464 0
saltlands review

Game Information

Game Name
Publisher
There Will Be Games

Saltlands – Sail Through the Desert! is a recently published boardgame from Antler Games for 1 to 6 players and set in a Mad Max-style future.

Saltlands – Sail Through the Desert! is a recently published boardgame from Antler Games for 1 to 6 players and set in a Mad Max-style future. Although it was a Kickstarter, I only learned of the game shortly after it shipped, and managed to pick up the base game from a reseller on Amazon. I also got the Lost in the Desert expansion from another reseller on eBay.

The Saltlands are a former inland sea which dried up during an unspecified apocalypse. There are some small settlements on the edge of the Saltlands which are overrun by ruthless raiders at the start of the game. Each player controls a refugee character who is fleeing the raiders and chasing rumors of other settlements across the wasteland.

Saltlands has strong visual appeal. The starkness of the salt is seen throughout the game, on the box covers, the white space on the cards, the salt hexes on the map tiles, and the artwork on the back of the character cards. The art is crisp and evocative, and nearly realistic. The closest comparison I can make would be a non-porno Milo Manara.  The characters are depicted on standees, while the raiders are all represented by small tan plastic miniatures of their vehicles.

Each player starts with an over-sized character card, plus some playing cards representing a spear, a water skin, a unique item, and a landsail. Each character has a unique ability and their unique item, and these small differences can have a significant impact on your strategy. For example, the Scout gets a movement bonus if he is driving a gas-powered vehicle, and can use his binoculars to reveal even distant terrain tiles. The Scientist is constantly tinkering, so he gets a free card draw each turn and can use his water distiller to retrieve water cards from the discard pile.

The landsail is like a small sail boat on wheels, with some room for cargo or passengers. Movement with a land sail is very tactical, because it moves faster when travelling at an angle ahead of the wind. And movement against the wind is only possible by tacking back and forth at angles. The wind periodically changes direction and force, causing land sails to move faster or slower. The land sails travels over both salt and sand dunes, but not through rocky terrain.

The raiders all drive gas-powered vehicles, which come in six varieties. Some gas-powered vehicles can’t handle sand dunes, but they all drive well on rocky terrain. Some of the gas-powered vehicles also have armor, and all are generally slower than the land sails. If you kill a raider, you get to draw some loot cards, and you can potentially abandon your current vehicle and drive off in the raider vehicle.  A wounded raider is flipped on its side, which would work better with cardboard chits, but the minis are helpful for recognizing the different types of raiders.

There is a lot of open information in the game. When a new terrain tile is revealed, it is immediately stocked with some random face-up tokens representing allies, card draws, rumors, and victory cards. The four starting land tiles are also stocked with these tokens. Players scramble to grab those tokens while fighting or fleeing from raiders. The rumor tokens cause the rumor markers to migrate about the map, possibly revealing new terrain tiles and eventually a way to escape to safety. The victory cards represent items needed to buy a way into one of those safe havens, though these items could also get used during the game by desperate players.

Certain game elements do a great job of connecting mechanics to the setting. Water allows you to refresh (“untap”) characters for additional actions. Gas can be used to burn enemies or to increase your movement with a gas-powered vehicle. Cargo and passengers reduce your hand size.

Combat is brutal and unforgiving, which suits the theme of Saltlands. If it is a player’s turn, that player can potentially attack raiders. If it is a raider turn, only one type of raiders can attack. A player attack consists of tapping a character and a weapon card to generate a fixed amount of damage. The damage is reduced by raider armor, and any remaining damage kills first the raider passenger and then the raider driver. Raider attacks are similar, except that their damage is determined by flipping a raider activation card that shows their attack value and movement modifier for the turn. Some attacks are armor-piercing, which means that your only defense is using medical supplies or losing passengers.

There are three levels of difficulty and four modes of play. Medium and Hard difficulty levels unlock additional spawning locations for raiders, and restrict or disallow re-spawning your dead character. The four modes of play are: solitaire, co-operative, “classic”, and competitive. Classic mode allows players to cooperate, compete, or even betray one another. Solitaire mode is nine turns long instead of the usual six.

At any level of difficulty, winning is hard, because you don’t know where to go to win until all you have gone through all the rumor cards. To play rumor cards, you must grab rumor tokens. Grabbing rumor tokens means that you are giving up chances to attack raiders or gain cards or allies. Once you find where to go, you can’t win until you have also cleansed that map tile of all raiders. And you have six turns to accomplish all these things.

The game components strive for language independence. The cards and tokens share an alphabet of icons, but they are mostly intuitive. At least 50% of nearly every page in the rulebook is a picture that helpfully demonstrates a relevant aspect of the game. That said, I think that it would be tough to just jump into a game of Saltlands without carefully reading through the rules at least once.

The expansion adds a modest amount of everything: more cards, more terrain tiles, more tokens, and more raiders. It also allows for seventh turn to the game, with a larger map setup. Most importantly, the expansion has useful cheatsheets and six new characters. With a little effort, all the expansion components can fit into the base game box.

Saltlands is a good game that offers a distinctive take on a Mad Max-style setting. It has the right mix of chase and combat, and occasionally offers up difficult tactical and strategic choices. However, the wealth of open information on the table can really slow the game down with inexperienced players, and that slower pace partially undermines the theme. Even experienced players will occasionally need to pause to figure out which way a given raider will move to attack the nearest target. And the changing wind makes movement a minor puzzle each turn unless a player acquires a gas-powered vehicle. All that adds up to a fair amount of downtime. In co-op mode, the downtime is either longer or shorter, depending on how you feel about kibitzing during another player’s turn.

If you enjoy AmeriTrash games and Mad Max movies, you will appreciate Saltlands – Sailing Through the Desert. Unfortunately, Antler Games is based in Budapest, so you may be looking at expensive shipping unless you find a seller on eBay or Amazon.

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Editor reviews

1 reviews

(Updated: July 25, 2018)
Rating 
 
3.0
Saltlands
Saltlands is a good game that offers a distinctive take on a Mad Max-style setting. It has the right mix of chase and combat. However, the wealth of open information on the table can really slow the game down.

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SuperflyPete's Avatar
SuperflyPete replied the topic: #253234 28 Aug 2017 12:36
charlest's Avatar
charlest replied the topic: #253236 28 Aug 2017 12:47
Thanks for the review!

I think us three are the only ones who have played it on FAT. I found it to be fine. There are interesting elements, but overall I thought it was a bit weaker than other similar games.
Shellhead's Avatar
Shellhead replied the topic: #253240 28 Aug 2017 13:53

SuperflyTNT wrote: My thoughts:

www.miniaturemarket.com/reviewcorner/saltlands-review/


Your review does a better job than mine in analyzing what you did and did not like about the game. Good points about the setup and takedown being a hassle, though I found the tokens to be more work than the cards. I also agree the combat fell a little short, though what bothered me most was the attacking vehicle never takes any damage in a fight. You can partially injure raiders, if you do enough damage to wound a passenger, but not enough to take out the driver as well.

My initial reaction to the cardboard character standees was similar to yours, but I concluded that they were a necessary evil due to the potential to trade up on vehicles. And the standees are readily identifiable as specific characters, and stand out easily from the various raider vehicles, which is handy when resolving the raider AI for movement and attack.

So far, it seems like semi-cooperative mode might be the easiest way to win. With co-op mode, all the players are screwed if just one player lags too far behind to fight it with raiders. Or if that last vp card that you need is too far out of reach. In semi mode, you could just leave one or two people behind and still get a win of sorts. Or a noble player might sacrifice himself to lure the raiders away. With competitive mode, the addition of intelligent opponents on top of the big horde of raiders seem like one degree of difficulty too many.
Ancient_of_MuMu's Avatar
Ancient_of_MuMu replied the topic: #253363 29 Aug 2017 19:56

charlest wrote: Thanks for the review!

I think us three are the only ones who have played it on FAT. I found it to be fine. There are interesting elements, but overall I thought it was a bit weaker than other similar games.

I am curious as to what titles you think are similar but better.
charlest's Avatar
charlest replied the topic: #253399 30 Aug 2017 09:38

Ancient_of_MuMu wrote:

charlest wrote: Thanks for the review!

I think us three are the only ones who have played it on FAT. I found it to be fine. There are interesting elements, but overall I thought it was a bit weaker than other similar games.

I am curious as to what titles you think are similar but better.


My main complaint in my review was:

The problem with Saltlands is that it comes across as somewhat mundane. At its worst, it can feel as though it lacks drama and fails to offer surprise or tension. There’s no event card system or unexpected shakeups in the environment, so it’s mostly about efficiently managing your hand and action allotment. It can feel repetitive and the inclusion of additional scenarios beyond the standard setup would have helped alleviate this.


My favorite Post Apocalyptic game is Waste Knights. That's a bit longer and heavier than Saltlands though. If I'm looking for something lighter I'd much rather play Wasteland Express Delivery Service. It just moves much quicker and is more interesting, despite having many euro elements.

If we're just talking adventure games, this doesn't come close to being as good as Merchants and Marauders or Xia either.
SuperflyPete's Avatar
SuperflyPete replied the topic: #253430 30 Aug 2017 13:56

Ancient_of_MuMu wrote:

charlest wrote: Thanks for the review!

I think us three are the only ones who have played it on FAT. I found it to be fine. There are interesting elements, but overall I thought it was a bit weaker than other similar games.

I am curious as to what titles you think are similar but better.


It's a race/survival game. Thus, Salvation Road and Hit Z Road are both better (Salvation has a similar theme). I don't think it qualifies as an adventure game really, but if a PA adventure is what you seek, Defenders of the Last Stand is the king of those with a PA setting.
charlest's Avatar
charlest replied the topic: #253435 30 Aug 2017 14:36
All adventure games are race games. Whether it's to VP or collecting items.
SuperflyPete's Avatar
SuperflyPete replied the topic: #253438 30 Aug 2017 15:22
I don't know that I agree with that. I've had games of Runebound last for a whole day! :)
charlest's Avatar
charlest replied the topic: #253442 30 Aug 2017 16:16

SuperflyTNT wrote: I don't know that I agree with that. I've had games of Runebound last for a whole day! :)


Haha fine, but if you classify Saltlands as a race game as opposed to an adventure game, then you'd probably classify Merchants and Marauders and Xia as well. Wasteland Express is for sure a race game according to those standards.
Shellhead's Avatar
Shellhead replied the topic: #253444 30 Aug 2017 16:42
Saltlands works like a race game (plus combat), but like an orienteering type of race where the course is discovered during the race.
SuperflyPete's Avatar
SuperflyPete replied the topic: #253456 30 Aug 2017 18:02

charlest wrote:

SuperflyTNT wrote: I don't know that I agree with that. I've had games of Runebound last for a whole day! :)


Haha fine, but if you classify Saltlands as a race game as opposed to an adventure game, then you'd probably classify Merchants and Marauders and Xia as well. Wasteland Express is for sure a race game according to those standards.


Xia really does feel like a race but Merchants feels like an adventure. Same with Defenders. Saltlands really does feel like a race to get clues or something but really only superficially has an advenure feel to it.

Maybe I'm just stupid and don't know what I am talking about though. I get that a lot LOL
Frohike's Avatar
Frohike replied the topic: #253467 30 Aug 2017 20:06
Off topic: they did a pretty great job with the Xia expansion(s). Pieces of it are supposedly modular but I just threw everything in without any problems. My only complaint with the game now is that I'd still like to see more tiles; we managed to explore all of them in a 10 point game.