Aquatica

Aquatica is set in an underwater world. You have a team of fighters with various abilities. You use them to capture locations, which offer various rewards. Locations need to be developed, and they are worth points after being fully developed. At every step of development they provide some benefit, which help you in different ways. There are four objectives in the game. The earlier you complete one, the more points you score. When a player completes all four, the game ends. The game can also end by the location deck or the fighter deck running out. 

On the game board you lay out locations you can claim and fighters you can recruit.

You start the game with all fighters in hand. On your turn you simply play a fighter card to use its power. Once used, the fighter goes to your personal discard pile and you can’t use it until you do a reset action that returns all cards to hand. One type of action you can do is to recruit a new fighter. This augments your hand. So there is a bit of deck building in this game. 

This is the fighter who lets you reset your hand of fighters.

Locations can be captured by force or by cash. Some of your characters provide these. You can control at most five locations at the same time. Every location has a little development track, with each space offering some benefit. Some spaces give you extra strength or money. Some simply help you advance on the development track of another location. Some let you score locations which are fully developed. Managing your set of locations is interesting. They can help you a lot, supporting the fighter you play. You also want to develop them quickly so that you can score them and free up space for new locations. 

Location card. Cost on top, development track and benefits at the bottom left.

Location cards are tucked into slits in your player board. The topmost exposed icon is your next development step and also the benefit you can gain.  

These are the four objectives you must work towards.

Aquatica is a pleasant mid-weight strategy game. It is mostly a card game. You have much freedom to plan your actions because you have access to all your fighters unless they have been recently used. The locations you capture help you in making big moves, and planning such big moves is satisfying.