Sea Salt & Paper

Sea Salt & Paper is popular. It is a set collection card game. It is eye catching because of the art - photos of papercraft. When I first played the game, I didn’t understand the appeal. It’s just lots of different cards with quirky art and different scoring criteria, like Forest Shuffle, which I didn’t find very interesting. However as I played more my opinion changed and I now find it pretty clever. 

On your turn, you either draw two cards from the deck and pick one, or you take a face-up card from a discard pile. There are two discard piles. If you draw two and pick one, the other card must go to one of the discard piles. This a clever mechanism. When deciding which pile to discard to, if one of them has a card you want, you probably won’t cover that card. If one has a card you think an opponent wants, you probably want to cover it. This means your action gives some clues to your opponents about what you might have, or what you might be thinking. It also means you can intentionally mislead them. 

There are two main types of sets you try to collect. One type requires you to collect many cards of a same type, e.g. sea shells or octopi. The more you have, the higher the point value of the set. Another type requires you to collect pairs, for example shark + swimmer, pair of fish, or pair of paper boats. When you get a pair, they are worth 1 point, you may play them on your turn to trigger an ability, e.g. stealing a card at random from an opponent, or drawing an extra card. 

The game is played over multiple rounds until someone reaches the target score. One important aspect of the game is when you reach 7 points, there are a few ways you can end the current round. 7 points means you have the option to end the round. You can choose to keep quiet and let the round continue. If you do want to declare the end of the round, there is a safe way and a risky way. If you want to play safe, the round simply ends, and everyone scores. If you want to take a risk, you will be betting that you will have the highest points, and this is after giving everyone else one last turn. If you are right, you force everyone to score only a colour bonus (pick one colour and score the number of cards in that colour). Their cards don't score normally. You get to score your cards normally, and you also get the colour bonus. However, if you are wrong, you only score the colour bonus, and your opponents score normally. This is the exciting part of the game. It's not easy to judge how well your opponents are doing, so this is not an easy call to make. Betting right can put you far ahead, or help you catch up if you are behind. So it is very tempting. 

This is a pretty relaxing game. There certainly is a fair bit of luck, but being a light game, this is fine. You are playing multiple rounds so luck evens out a bit. Your actions are simple, but there is some thought you can give to how you want to play. You can bluff. Pretend to do well so that your opponent doesn't dare to bet. Or you can set a trap. Go over 7 and pretend to be struggling. Get your opponent to bet then lose the bet. This is the kind of game that can be played with old friends who are non-gamers or who are casual gamers, and you can chit chat while playing.