Pandemic: Rising Tide

Designers: Matt Leacock and Jeroen Doumen

Published by: Zman Games
BGG Rating: 7.9

TL;DR

1) A great theme that creates wonderful narratives at the table.

2) Plenty of replayability.

3) Fiddly components.

4) Board can be hard to discern and read.

5) Punishing game.

6) Definite play if you enjoy cooperative games, especially other games in the Pandemic franchise.

With three out of four hydraulic stations constructed our team was feeling confident that this time we would be able to stave off the flood waters that had been ravaging the Netherlands. Our confidence quickly waned for as we drew flood cards we knew trouble lay ahead. Over the past few turns, we had decided to strengthen the seawalls and Western zones as much as possible neglecting the Eastern regions. This was folly and the slackened look on each team member’s face as the flood cards were revealed showed a shared understanding that this was the end. Water had crested the banks of a river in Rijn En Ijssel, the location of the final hydraulic station, and caused flooding in the region that spread throughout Eastern Netherland. None of us wanted to put that last blue water cube on the board, and possibly none of us felt we had the energy to; after multiple playthroughs with no success Pandemic: Rising Tide left us battered and weak. This isn’t the first game that left us feeling crushed under the weight of its difficulty curve, nor would it be the last. The question is, is Rising Tide punishing enough to not recommend?

The simple answer is no, a game is a puzzle to be solved and some puzzles are more difficult than others. When we purchase a game or agree to play one that someone has brought to game-night we enter an agreement with that game and its designer(s), an agreement that says, “I accept the challenge of this puzzle”. Rising Tide is fun in the way that most games of strategy are, where you try to plan several turns ahead, choosing the best route, and making efficient use of each and every action. In Rising Tide, this is most notably found in the decisions around where to build dikes and windmills (pumps), and when a dike fails in a region with multiple dikes in place which dike gets removed. Sometimes these are easy decisions to make, sometimes the game makes them for you in-as-much that if you don’t take a certain action you will lose after the next turn. Like any good cooperative game, it is the decisions presented that create discussion and interaction between the people at the table.

Let’s get right to the point about table interaction with cooperative games, that ten-tonne elephant that tries its best to hide under the table but eventually raises its trunk to blare out at players is alive and well in Rising Tide, and that elephant is what is known as “quarterbacking”. Quarterbacking is when one player tells another player what to do on their turn. This is not one player recommending an action to the other player but blatantly telling them how they should play the game. It looms strongly over cooperative games and very much so in Rising Tide. I lost count of the number of times I wanted to shout, “No idiot, do THIS!” The solution that worked for our team was to never tell the active player, the player whose turn it was, which dikes to remove. We could discuss what the results of removing a dike would be but not tell them either objectively or subjectively whether it was a good or bad idea. Same went for pumping water or moving their character to a different region, it was up for discussion after the active player prompted discussion but once that player made up their mind that was that. This is not a con for me because I know that it is part of the contract when playing cooperative games and my group can handle it. And you will need to be able to handle it because Rising Tide is incredibly stressful, but in the best way possible. 

Matt Leacock and Jeroen Doumen pull you into Rising Tide with well-executed game mechanics you come to expect from them. You feel like you are strategic planners sending people out to save these places from floods. You become invested in these regions and, if playing with the alternate rules included, the lives of the people who live there. The frustration you feel when a dike you just built gets taken off the board and water begins flooding in is real, it is a visceral punch to the gut and it is great. Any game that can get me emotionally invested will almost assuredly get my recommendation to play if not own. What about this game then causes me to not recommend that you run out and buy it today?

I like game pieces with a presence; big chunky objects that are easy to discern and pick up. Unfortunately, the only pieces like this in Rising Tide are the hydraulic stations and you only pick them up twice, when you put them on the board in setup and once again when you build them. Throughout the rest of the game, you will be playing with some of the most fiddley game pieces I have ever been subjected to. Thin slivers of wood that represent dikes move across the board at the slightest bump or sneeze (yes, I sneezed and all the dikes that were nearest me went flying) and can be annoying to pick up. You are constantly adding and removing dikes from the board and yet they are the most obnoxious pieces to play with in the game. And there are fifty of them (50!).

Another area where Rising Tide falls short is the game board. Typically, game boards are bright and colorful to the point where they can make your eyes bleed just looking at them. Studios and artists will usually go this colorful route because it looks nicer and is easier to read, especially for those players that are visually impaired. The graphics team on Rising Tide decided to forego bright and colorful in favor of dull, muted tones. The value differences between the games four major geographical regions are practically non-existent. Even for those of us who are not visually impaired, it left us with tired eyes. In areas where rivers and dike placement indicators overlapped our eye strain increased. The only help they give you is the red or blue dot indicating where the dike goes. Lastly, regions are separated by incredibly narrow dotted lines. These regional borders twist and turn which makes it even harder to follow the dotted lines and difficult to tell the boundary between two regions of the same color. Maybe if the regions were more simplified shapes and not as representational the border demarcation they used would suffice, but in their current iteration, they do not.

Can you see the value difference between the purple, orange, and green areas? Yeah, me neither.

Flood and objective cards fall prey to the same poor color value decision as the board. Luckily the names of the regions are printed on the flood cards because we had a hard time telling the orange and yellow region cards apart (although as an English speaker with no experience speaking or reading Dutch the names didn’t really help all that much, but I can’t fault a game for my own ignorance). The objective cards, which in general are fantastic as is the variable gameplay, proved disappointing right out of the gate. On the first playthrough of the variant rules that used the objective cards we drew all four basic game objectives (and yes, we thoroughly shuffled). I cannot overstate the disappointment we felt, so much so that I removed all four basic objective cards from the deck, returning them to the box before drawing 4 new objective cards. If we wanted to play a game with basic objectives we would play the standard version of the game and not the variant included.

One last gripe. I adore the theme of this game but something about the character artwork has bothered me. The cover art shows this Rembrandt van Rijn type gentleman in a beret style hat and a woman holding a pick and both wearing outfits that makes one think they are from the late 19th or early 20th century. A few characters on the cards, such as the Carpenter, Pump Operator and Port Master, and even the game board itself lend themselves to evoking that same era. Then you get to the Director card, with the character screaming into a mobile phone from the 1980’s, and the Hydraulic Engineer who looks like she stepped out of the 1960’s. Which decade are we supposed to be playing in?

CONCLUSION

All things being as they are I have no regrets about my purchase of Rising Tide and it will live on my cooperative game shelf for some time. Should you go out and buy Pandemic: Rising Tide? If you took the time to find and read this review it means you already have an interest in the Pandemic franchise, cooperative games or both then chances are you will probably enjoy Rising Tide. If you have never played a cooperative game before but have experience playing board games beyond Monopoly or Scrabble, then maybe grab something less punishing like one of Matt Leacock’s other titles such as Forbidden Desert or the original Pandemic. Yes, this game has some issues with the artwork and some fiddly components, but this is not enough for me to not recommend it.