Lifeboats: Plank of Carneades

Lifeboats is a 1993 game. That's more than 30 years old! I am pretty sure I have heard about it before. The version I recently played is a 2024 remake. This is a negotiation game for up to 7 players. This is the kind of game which I would cheekily say can destroy friendships, and I wouldn't be lying. Be prepared for hurt feelings. 

There is a disaster at sea. The ship is sinking, and everyone scrambles onto a lifeboat. You have a group of sailors and you want to get as many of them saved as possible. They don't need to be on the same lifeboat. In fact it's best to diversify. Now these lifeboats have not be well maintained. They are leaky and some might not make it to the nearby islands. 

You have two types of sailors - captains and just regular pirates. For any voting you need to do during the game, captains get 2 votes and pirates only 1. Also when they survive, captains are worth more points. Everyone has the same set of cards. They include cards in every player colour, which is both sailor colour and boat colour. You also have three captain cards (those on the right). 

Here's what happens during a round of play. Some boats will start leaking, or leak more. One boat will move forward one or two steps. Then players can choose to have one of their sailors switch to another boat. Most of this is done using a voting mechanism. Which boat will leak? Everyone votes. If you want the green boat to leak, play your green card face down. You can negotiate. You can lie. You can try to cut deals. When everyone is ready, reveal all the cards. The boat getting the most votes leaks. A leaking boat still moves, but if there are more leaks than sailors, the boat sinks and all the sailors are lost. A leak takes up space. If there is not enough space, the people on the boat vote on who to throw overboard. In this situation, only the players who have sailors on the boat get to vote. This is when having a captain is powerful. The captain has 2 votes. It's not a good idea to totally dominate a boat though. In the leaking stage, your opponents can easily agree to vote to give you the leak, because no one else has a stake in that boat. 

Voting to give the leak is voting who to hurt. Thus hurt feelings. The next important vote is which boat to move. The boats are only 3 steps away from safety. Leaking boats move 2 steps. That means a boat can reach safety in as few as 2 rounds. When voting for boat movement, often the vote will be for an outcome which is the most equal. No one wants to help the leading players more. Everyone prefers to help the trailing players. 

One very important aspect of the game is the three captain cards you start the game with. Instead of voting with a colour card, you can vote with a captain card. If you are the only player who has played a captain card, you get to decide the outcome. You can overrule the vote. This is very powerful. You might send a boat with your people to safety. You might save a boat with your people which everyone else is trying to sink. Captain cards are single-use. Once you play it, it is removed from the game, unlike the regular colour cards which return to your hand. That means you only have three chances to overrule a vote in the whole game. Think carefully when you want to use a captain card. 

If two or more players play a captain card, no one gets to overrule. You play with the regular rules. However if everyone plays a captain card, the start player of the round makes the decision. As you can see, playing a captain card is a very important decision and it can have a huge impact to how the game turns out. The start player role is an important consideration as well. In the case of ties, the start player decides. 

You are going to do a lot of voting in this game. This is the kind of game that triggers lots of discussions. You try to convince others to help you, or to attack someone else. You try to collaborate sometimes. Sometimes you betray your friends. You say you will vote for his boat, but you play a captain card to move your own boat. 

You can doom a boat by jumping to another boat. If a boat has three sailors and three leaks, and one of the sailors go to another boat, and no other sailor joins this boat, the two remaining sailors will be overwhelmed by the leaking, and the boat will sink. 

This is a perfect information game. Everyone knows exactly the board situation. The uncertainty comes from not knowing how your opponents are voting. The game is actually pretty simple. There is some risk that a game can drag. If people want to keep negotiating and can't decide, things can slow to a halt. But you don't want to play this game without negotiations. That would be missing the point. This game is more about gaming the people than solving a logic problem. It is also a lot about trying to read others' intentions. Will anyone play a captain card? Will they vote with the colour they said they would? There will be leader bashing, because everyone can tell who is leading. 

I find the game clever and clean. Negotiation games are a special niche. They offer an experience which is different from most games. Just remember to play it with the right mindset. Don't take attacks too personally. It can feel so, even more than confrontational wargames. In wargames, it is expected that you want to hurt your opponent. In Lifeboats, you are choosing who to hurt. You have options, and when you choose a specific person or persons, that attack feels more personal. There is a certain helplessness when you play this game. Whether you succeed depends a lot of other people's actions. The captain cards are an important tool to help you in critical situations. I find that with gamers, we do a lot of analysis during play, to see who is leading and by how much. We are rational and we argue logically how we should vote, so that no one gets too far ahead and everyone does more or less equally well. This can make things a little boring and work-like. How much fun this game is depends a lot on what your group is like.