Sea Salt & Paper - First Play!

25th September 2022

Sunday is here again and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming goodness.

Sea Salt & Paper is a pun that plays on sea salt & pepper in this quirkily ocean and err... origami themed set collecting card game.

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Caveat: We've only ever played Sea Salt & Paper digitally.

​What's in a game?

• Cards: Sea Salt & Paper has a deck of 50-odd cards. Each card will have several icons in the top left indicating what they are, what bonus they might provide and what victory points (VPs.) they confer.
  Cards come in quite a few different types and also importantly, in one of about 10 colours.
  • Duo cards: Many of the cards in the game are duo cards, which means they are played as pairs. They have a icon in the corner along with the outline of the icon it pairs with. Most duo sets require 2 matching icons, e.g., a pair of crabs or a pair of boats. One duo pairing however, rather grimly requires a shark and a swimmer!
  • Collector cards: These cards have an icon in the top left corner with a column of numbers below. VPs will be scored accordingly, dependant on the number of that collector card that have been acquired.
  • Multiplier cards: Each multiplier card has a number and a icon. Each card with a matching icon scores that many VPs at the end of a round.
  • Mermaid card: Mermaid cards earn VPs based on the amount of cards of 1 colour a player has the end of a round.
    Additionally: If a player manages to acquire all 4 mermaid cards, they win the game, regardless of VPs, they just win!

Sea Salt & Paper makes use of a genuinely unique art style which looks like the creators constructed origami models themed after the game such as mermaids, crabs or penguins etc and then photographed them. Or perhaps high quality renders have been produced in a computer art program. Either way, the game has what I think a fantastic, eye catching theme, colourful and of course, they get to use the Sea Salt & Paper gag.

The game uses 10 colours for cards - and that's a lot. Fortunately each colour has a unique icon associated with it which a handy and welcome accessibility aid.
The downside is that Sea Salt & Paper has quite a lot of icons, there's about 4 icons for each type of card. Luckily most of them are intuitive or fairly obvious.
I don't think it's too difficult to learn may be off putting during early plays.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Deck: ​Take all the cards and shuffle them into a face-down deck.
• Discard piles: Next, the game's 2 discard piles must be created by drawing 2 cards and placing each one into the central playing area face-up in 2 stacks.

That's it for setup.

On to play
Sea Salt & Paper is played over a varying number of rounds until a scoring target has been met. Furthermore, rounds will have a varying length and after a certain point, each round can be ended by any player.
The game follows the usual turn structure with the active player taking their turn before play progress to the person on their left.
There are 3 actions a player can perform in their turn.

• Draw card: The active player must draw a card into their hand, there are 2 ways this can be done.
  • Draw from discard pile: The active player may draw a card from either of the 2 discard piles.
  • Blind draw: Alternatively, the active player may draw 2 cards blindly from the deck.
    Then they keep 1 card and place the other on either of the discard piles.
• Play duo: In addition to drawing a card, the active player may also play cards. Cards are always played in pairs (Or duos.). Each type of duo gives the active player a benefit of some sort.
  • Pair of boats: Active player immediately gets another turn.
  • Pair of crabs: Active player takes a card from a discard pile into their hand.
  • Pair of fish: Active player adds a card from the deck into their hand.
  • Shark & Swimmer: The active player takes a card from another player's hand.
• End round: Finally, provided the active player has scored at least 7 points from duos they have played and cards in their hand, they may choose to end the round. There are 2 ways this can be done
  • Stop: The active player declares 'Stop', the round immediately ends and goes to scoring.
    Scoring: there are various sources for scoring points. Unusually, both played cards and un-played cards in hand are scored.
    • Duos: Each pair of duo cards scores 1 VP, regardless of whether it has been played or not! However, cards in hand do not activate their special abilities in any way.
    • Collector cards: These cards will score points VPs depending on the size of their respective collections.
    • Multiplier cards: These will score VPs as per the number of that icon the player has in their possession multiplied by the scoring multiplier.
    • Mermaids: Mermaids score using something called a colour set. A colour set is all of a player's cards of the same colour.
      The active player scores 1 VP per card in their largest colour set. I.e., the player gains 1 VP per card for each card with the colour which they have the most of on their cards.
      Additional mermaids: If a player has a 2nd mermaid, it scores the second largest colour set and so on.
    • Finals scores: Once scores are calculated and tallied as described above, they should be recorded before play progresses to the next round.
  • Last chance: This is the other way the active player may trigger the end of a round. This method adds an extra element to the scoring criteria which is essentially a push-your-luck mechanic where the active player is betting that their score for the round will be higher than all the other players.
    Final round: When the active player declares 'last chance', all other players get one more turn to draw and play cards.
    Scoring: The game then goes to scoring. This is essentially identical to how scoring is calculated above but with a significant change once points are tallied.
    • Active player has highest score: If the active player (Who declared last chance) has the highest or tied highest score, they have won their bet! They then also add the value of their largest colour set to their score for the round.
      Other players: All the other players ignore their current scores, instead only scoring their largest colour set.
    • Active player does not have highest score: This means the active player has lost their bet! The active player ignores their score and only scores their colour set.
      Other players: All other players score their cards as usual.
    • Final scores: Once scores are calculated and tallied as described above, they should be recorded before play progresses to the next round.
• ​​End turn: If the active does not or cannot end the round, then play progresses to the player on their left.
• End of round: Regardless of how a round ends, players should record their scores and all cards are shuffled back into the deck in preparation for the next round.

Endgame
There are 2 ways Sea Salt & Paper can end.
Firstly and least likely, if a player manages to acquire 4 mermaid cards... they win!

Otherwise, the game has a endgame scoring target, which is 30-40 VPs depending on player count. When this target is reached during scoring it triggers the game end and players calculate their final total VPs.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Broadly speaking, Sea Salt & Paper is fairly straightforward; collect sets and play duos. There are several ways to collect sets, including based on colours. Players will often be faced with various on which card to take and optimisation is key here.
Although players will also need to adapt to circumstances as they may need to deal with cards they might not initially want.

Sea Salt & Paper however, puts some quite unusual and unique mechanics into play that have unusual impact on the game and the way some of these mechanics synch up is interesting.

I'm struggling to recall another card game in which cards that are played and cards in hand score equally. It's very important here though since it ties in with the mechanic that allows players to bet on 'winning' the round. 
When a player chooses to announce 'last chance', they'll know what cards other players have played but they won't know what they've kept in their hand. This means there's always an element of push-your-luck because the announcer will never know what others have kept back.
Canny players may decide to not play duo cards in an attempt to lure others into a false sense of security but the trade off is that they won't get utilise those cards' benefits.

There's also a higher level of play about noting what cards other players take and responding. 
Drawing cards blindly gives the player a useful ability of using one of them to cover a card in one of the discard piles, potentially denying it to another player if you think they want it.

While Sea Salt & Paper players has a moderately quick playtime and is mostly easy to learn, it's a bit fiddly when it comes to scoring.
Not only do players have to score both played cards and ones in hand but sometimes they need to discard their scoring and score again... but differently thanks to someone triggering 'Last Chance'.
I'm not sure the the gameplay this push-your-luck mechanic adds to the game is worth the extra hassle it causes with scoring.
Sea Salt & Paper is also seems like something of a slow burn when it comes to gameplay which boils down to choosing which card to take and whether to play duos or not. It can feel a little unexciting or unengaging.

Mechanically, there's some fun things going on with Sea Salt & Paper but the game didn't quite grab me in the times that we played it but as I said, it could just be a slow burn that requires a few more plays to grasp. I wouldn't object to trying it again.