Tranquility - First Play!

20th August 2022

It's a Saturday night and we're logged into Board Game Arena for some gaming goodness.

Cross an ocean, hop from island to island on a lonely journey to find your paradise island and tranquillity.

Tranquility is a cooperative, game about assessing risks and playing cards.
​Also, the rules state that players should not explicitly discuss their cards between them, so I guess that could be considered a form of tranquillity?

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What's in a game?
Tranquility is a card game that comes packaged in a distinctive looking cubic box. All the game's cards are an unusual square shape.

• Island cards: There are 80 of these cards and they are numbered 1-80. There are 8 pictures across the cards and each different illustration depicts a stylised picturesque island that has a reflection which curiously shows the island at night.
• Start cards: There are 5 of these, the illustration shows a boat at an island during sunrise.
• Finish cards: Again there are 5 of these, this time it shows the boat at an island at dusk.
• Border cards: These cards actually have no in-game function. Tranquility uses a 6x6 grid and since the packaging is too small to include a mat, these cards are used to create the border of the grid.
• Expansion cards: There are a number of expansion cards that add extra gameplay elements to Tranquility, although we've never made use of them.

Quality wise, the cards are pretty average. Not much more to say here.

The presentation and artwork for Tranquility is excellent. The illustrations show a series of unique and interesting islands. The colourful artwork has a bright, clean and stylised almost minimalist look to it that does a great job of conveying the subdued isolation of a sea bound journey.

There's barely any iconography in Tranquility and what there is of it is reserved for the expansion cards.

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How's it play?
Set up

• Grid: Use the border cards to create a 6x6 grid with 6 border cards per side.
• Players:
  • Start cards: Give each player a start card.
  • Player decks: Shuffle the 5 finish cards into the island cards and shuffle all of them into a face-down deck. Then deal the entire deck out to the players as evenly as possible, thus giving each player their own personal deck.
  • Starting hand: Each player should draw a hand of 5 cards from their personal deck.
  • Add start card: Now each player should shuffle their start card into their personal deck to create a new face-down personal deck.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
The objective in Tranquility is to cooperatively fill all 36 spaces in the 6x6 grid with island cards. Furthermore, all the cards must be positioned in numerical order (Although not necessarily placed in sequence.) going from low to high and left to right, starting in the bottom left corner and ending in the top right one.
It's worth noting that while cards are placed in a 6x6 grid, the numbers 'wrap around', this means they are essentially in a long line.

Tranquility uses a traditional turn order with the active player taking an action before player progress to the player on their left.
During their turn, the active player can do 1 of 2 possible actions.

• Play card: The active player may place a card into the grid with the following provisos.
  • Numeric order: The card being played must be of a higher value than the cards before it and a lower value than cards ahead of it.
  • No adjacent cards: If there are no adjacent cards to the left and right of the card being placed, then it can be placed 'for free'.
  • 1 adjacent card: If there is 1 card in play that would be adjacent to the card being placed, then the active player must discard a number of cards from their hand equal to the numerical difference between the 2 cards. Thus placing a 35 next to a 37 means the player must discard 2 cards.
    Since there is always a difference of at least 1 between cards, the player must always discard at least 1 card.
    Additionally, since a player only ever has 5 cards in hand, the difference between adjacent cards can never be greater than 4.
  • 2 adjacent cards: If a card is put down into a space between 2 cards, then the active player discards cards according to the side that makes them discard the least amount of cards.
    E.g., if there is a 12, then a empty space, then a 18 and the active player puts a 17 into that space, they only discard 1 card.
• Pass: The other action available allows the active to choose not to play a card and pass but must discard 2 cards to do so.
• Draw cards: Regardless of whether the active player played a card or passed, they must refill their hand back up to five cards, if there are less than the required number of cards left in their deck, then they draw whatever they can.
  • Start card: If and when a player draws a start card, it must be played as their card on their next turn, unless a start has already been played, in which case it just sits in the players hand until discarded.
    When a start card is played, all players must collectively discard 8 cards, then all players immediately draw back up to 5 cards.
• Discards: Whenever cards are discarded for any reason, they are done so face-down, players can never look through their own or other players' discard piles.
• Next player: Once the active player has drawn cards, player progresses to the player on the left.

Endgame
Tranquility continues until 1 of the 2 following conditions are met.

Cannot play: If the active player does not have a card to play or cannot discard 2 cards to pass, then the players collectively lose.
Finish card: If all 36 spaces in the grid have been filled and the active player has a finish card in their hand, they can play it and the players collectively win.

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Overall
​Tranquility feels like a puzzle orientated game with a minor element of mathematics.

The game is clearly dived into early and late game.
The early game is where players will look to put cards into play without other adjacent cards to avoid discarding cards.
The late game is where players have no choice but to discard in order to play cards and have to decide which and how many cards to discard and discarding is the crux of the game.

Discarding means getting rid of cards which may prove vital later in the game. Players will have to judge which cards are 'safer' to discard and hope alternative cards will appear. It is the chief risk that players take in Tranquility.
This is is why the start card rule can prove tricky for players, especially if it appears early in the game, having to discard 8 cards is harsh - it's nearly 10% of the deck.

Curiously though, discarding cards gets easier as the game progresses. Typically numbers will get locked out as cards are played. E.g., if a 51 is placed adjacent to a 54, then cards 52 & 53 can no longer be used and can be freely discarded. Additionally, once the first start card has been played, any others can be safely discarded. Conversely, it's always risky to discard a finish card.
All of this means that decisions in the early game are the most important and the game will 'settle down' as it progresses.

Having said all of that, there is a issue I have with the game; which is that there's definitely a formula we found that players can employ to greatly increase their chances to win.
It's not a guarantee and I never feel like we could be complacent when we played, even though we now generally win the vast majority of games we play and the game seems 'beaten'.

Tranquility is fairly easy to learn, especially considering it's a cooperative game - quite often cooperative games have complex engines to drive the gameplay but that's not the case here. 
The game provides some conundrums to face and problems to solve. Players will need to manage the risk of their discards and make decisive decisions.

If all of that sounds like some you'll like then Tranquility is definitely a game that's worth playing, just don't play it too often.