Blue Lagoon Board Game

When our latest box arrived from Asmodee Blogger Board Games club the first game the boys wanted to play was the Blue Lagoon with the youngest asking if it was a Moana game! It isn’t but isn’t a fabulous release that had the boys hooked from the start. 

 It’s a really good family board game and we were whisked away from the damp grey outside to island settlers and coloured huts in a tropical location. It’s a strategy game that does require a little planning at the start as you start to settle your villages. 

The game is played in two phases. The first thing to do is to set out the board and all the resources are placed inside the bag and blindly withdraw then and place them around the various island on the stone circles. You then choose your colour of villages and settlers and you’re ready to start the game.  Settler tokens have two faces, one side is land and the other a boat. 

Phase 1 starts with your initial move of placing a settler in a clear sea space – boat side up. After that first move you can choose to place either a settler or a village on land, however to place them on land they must be next to one of their tokens already on the board. If you’re lucky enough to place your settler or village on a space that has a resource on it you gain that resource. Once all of the settlers and villages have been placed on the board Phase 1 Exploration has finished and you can move on to Phase 2 Settlement. Before you move though you need to add up your score total and points so far. 

Phase 2 Settlement – at this point all the pieces except for the villages are now removed from the board unless the villages are on stone circles in which case they  get placed back in the box. The resources are once again randomly placed across the board. This time only Settlers are placed on the board. They must be placed only on the unoccupied spaces next to one of their own pieces. So at the start they have to start next to one of their villages. This also includes the sea spaces too. Once all the settlers have been placed on the board phase 2 has finished and the points are again added up. The winner is the person with most points when you add phase 1 and 2 together. 

The game is aimed at 8yrs plus. Not for much other than the fact that it would be difficult for younger players to plan strategically. When we had younger players playing they really enjoyed the fun and making large settlements and getting as many resources as possible.

It’s a quick game to play and theres completely different ways to gain points:

Islands: Players with at least one piece on all 8 islands scores 20 points. Players with a piece on 7 islands scores 10 points.

Links: Players earn points for their continuous chain of pieces that connects the most islands. They score 5 points for each island linked in this chain.

Majorities: The player with the most pieces on each island scores 6, 8, or 10 points as shown next to that island on the board. If there’s a tie, the points are split.

Resources: Players score for sets of resources they collect – 4 of a matching resource earns 20 points, 3 of a resource scores 10 points, and 2 of a resource scores 5 points. In addition, if they have at least one of the 4 resource types, they score an additional 10 points.

Statuettes: Players score 4 points for each statuette they’ve collected.

All in all we really enjoyed the game, we thought originally it was quite a simply game to play but actually there’s so many ways to win and trying to figure out what the other players are doing as well bought in a fair amount of competition! We enjoyed the second game far more than the first and each game since then. It’s a great game to have on the side ready to whisk out and enjoy for a half an hour!