Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef Review

At a Glance: Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef

“The hallmark of insecurity is bravado.”
― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings

Intro Story: Into the Fold

Axl sped through the arena on his rotocraft, intent on making the final jump one that would secure his place in Tidal Blade history. He would gain the title, no matter what.

I have to.

Cold, comfortable water splattered his coral skin, his natural blue hair waving in the wind as it stood on end like a spine down the middle of his head. His fin, he called it, because when he swims, some folks had a tendency to mistake it for that of an angry creature coming their way.

Before Axle could reach the last ramp, however, sirens began to bellow throughout the islands. Trouble at the Fold. Why now? Why, when he was almost done with his last challenge, would the monsters decide to break through their time-prison and attack? Typical.

However, without hesitation, Axl turned his rotocraft and sped toward the Fold, the place where the monsters were locked behind time and space. The place where the Great Battle took place fifteen years ago. The place that saw the end of the heroic Tidal Blade champions that fought for the safety of Naviri. 

As he sped between islands, thoughts of grandeur flooded his mind. Sure, he didn’t get to pull off his long-awaited challenge, but a monster? Helping to defeat one of those beasts would surely see him come home with the title! 

By the time he reached the Fold, three other competitors were already there. Shell shields polished and legs limbered up, the other competitors grinned at Axl and jumped to meet the monster head on. 

Axl didn’t linger. He swung his own shell shield from his rotocraft and tossed it into the deep. He jumped in after it and paddled his way to where the other competitors were getting ready to fight the behemoth that should have been locked away. Well, it was only a matter of time before they broke out. Fifteen years wasn’t that long of a reprieve, but here they were. The past few weeks had seen a monster emerge here and there, but not until the day before last had they started coming in at regular intervals. Time was running out, and it was up to the wannabe Tidal Blade warriors to put the creatures back in their place.

Competitors roared and bellowed as they launched their attack. The creature, a reptile larger than the arena itself with a rock-hard shell on its back and fire smoldering underneath, emerged from the ocean’s depths as spears and other weapons bounced off its impenetrable shell. Axl’s jaw dropped as he saw the size of the creature, a mutant turtle with claws larger than his own self. He set his jaw and came faster, determined to be part of the creature’s downfall.

The other competitors were harrying the creature so that Axl was able to sneak up on it. The beast roared as Eko, the small, pink creature that reminded him of a coral reef with a face and limbs, landed a hit in the turtle’s unarmored underbelly. From a distance, the would-be spectators for the tournament had shown up to witness this fight instead. Perhaps there would be a reward for defeating the creature.

Axl dove under the water as a massive foot took a swipe at him. The power of the foot rocked Axl as he regained his bearings. He blasted up through the water underneath the creature’s belly, coming up beside Eko.

“Nice of you to join the hunt,” Eko said with a smirk.

“Good hit,” said Axl, ignoring the barb. “But we’ll need more than that to take this brute down. I have an idea. Follow me!”

Without waiting to see if the living piece of coral followed, Axl swam toward the turtle’s rear. The burning from the creature’s shell warmed the water. What kind of creature could smolder even after being under the water? The implications made him shiver, despite the warmth.

Once at the creature’s rear, Axl explained his plan and, without hesitation, Eko was in motion. The small creature moved quickly and scurried up the monster’s leg. Axl dove deep, then, with a power he summed from within his own depths, he launched up and out of the water, landing atop the creature’s shell.

It was hot.

He had expected it to be, but now that he was on top of it, he realized just what foolery he had put himself up to. Still, with Eko underneath, he had to act fast. He hopped quickly from place to place, not daring to stand still for a moment, or risk burning his feet. Toward the back-side of the creature was a hole, apparently opened from its own smoldering. He danced around, waiting for the sign.

It came as the beast roared in pain and reared up on its hind legs. With nothing to grab onto, Axl leapt into the air and, with a flourish, speared his shell shield into the creature’s red-hot opening. The beast roared as the shield planted itself in its flesh. Axl came down after it, landing on the shield and using all of his force to bury it deeper into the creature’s side. With a final burst of energy, he jumped off the shield and dove into the sea.

The titan turtle creature roared in agony as it slumped onto its side, creating a wave to rival those spawned by typhoons. Axl tried to swim out of the way, but the creature was too big. There was nowhere to go. He took a last lungful of air as the creature pushed him further down into the watery depths.

*****

At the ceremony that night, Eko and the other two competitors who had been at the Fold were lauded with sheaves and honors for their part in taking down the brute. Eko took their reward solemnly, knowing that if it hadn’t been for Axl, they may never have defeated it. And now where was he?

Gone. Buried in the ocean by the creature he defeated.

“Thank you,” Eko said quietly. “But I think these honors mean nothing if we don’t acknowledge the heroic actions of one of our own. Despite being our rival, Axl put aside the quest for honors and enlisted help in order to defeat Akora.” Akora. Because that was the creature’s name, the name it was given the first time it came into view decades before it was sealed away.

The head judge nodded. “We would honor him were he here. But he is not, and his bravery will not be forgotten.”

“It had better not,” came a voice from behind.

Eko turned quickly. There, still dripping wet with burn marks across his leg and side, was Axl.

“What?” Eko stammered. “How…how did you survive? It…fell on you!”

“Turns out I’m full of surprises,” Axl said with a smirk. “So, what about my reward?”

The head judge coughed in an attempt to catch his thoughts. Then, he turned and took the trophy from the large, red crocodilian’s hands and gave it to Axl instead. 

“I think,” the judge said, “that this belongs to the one who finished the job.” He handed Axl the trophy.

Axl stared at it with a gleam in his eye. Then he walked back toward the crocodilian and returned it to him. “This isn’t what’s important,” he said, although he grinned when the crocodilian turned an even darker shade of red. “What’s important is that we defeated that…turtle thing.”

“Akora,” the judge prompted.

“Whatever,” said Axl. “Regardless, a trophy can be taken, as we’ve seen. But the Tidal Blades? We need them now more than ever. And so, it is with great honor that I accept the title of Chief Tidal Blade.”

The crowd erupted into cheers as the judged huffed, trying to make sense of what just happened. With the crowd roaring its approval, there was little to be done.

“Congratulations, Axl,” the judge boomed, albeit with a hint of resignation,  “on becoming Chief Tidal Blade!”

The crowd roared louder, and Axl smiled as he was carried away by the celebrations.

Overview/Roadmap

This review has two parts. First, there is the Short Review, where various aspects of the game are discussed. Then comes the Gameplay Review, in which the setup and gameplay are discussed in detail, along with initial thoughts. Following the Gameplay Review section are some final thoughts and a final verdict of the game. Feel free to jump around, or read it all in one go.

Short Review

Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef is a worker-placement game of wowing judges during tournament events and defeating dangerous threats emerging from the ocean. Highly thematic with solid mechanics, Tidal Blades knocks it out of the park.

Immersion

The creators of Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef know how to bring theme into the gameplay. Aside from the mechanics (which will be discussed further on), the game includes backstory for each hero, as well as an introduction that helps set the stage for what you’ll be doing in the game. While this level of world building isn’t always necessary for an immersive game, it certainly helps, and in this case, it adds rich detail to the game and gameplay.

While Tidal Blades isn’t exactly what you would call a narrative game, you can tell that the gameplay truly is running through a story. How that story ends is up to you, and there will most likely be some exciting surprises along the way.

Theme

With jet-skiing animals and behemoths rising from the ocean’s depths, Tidal Blades portrays an active fantasy theme mixed with extreme sports and other Ninja Warrior-like competition. While it may appear like an odd mix on the surface, once you get playing, it really does fit well together. Perhaps this is due in part to the various flavor text and backstories mixed in, or the game’s mechanics that puts everything together well. Regardless, the theme is strong, and it’s a fun one.

Components

There are two types of components you’ll likely see from Tidal Blades: those from the Kickstarter version and those from retail. My copy is the retail version, so I do not have miniatures, harsh shells, and squishy fruit, nor do I have a dice tray shaped like an arena. 

Still, what I have is all kinds of wonderful. The standees look great, and the shells and fruit are your generic cardboard punch outs. Having played with both component types, I’ll admit that the Kickstarter quality is very nice (I love squishing the fruit between my fingers), but the retail version is not held back by lack of squishy fruit (and other component variations). While the miniatures do look great on the board, I kind of like the look of the standees better, as they come in full color (let’s be real, I’ll never end up painting my minis).

The custom dice look great as well (in both versions), and are fun to collect and sacrifice. Overall, the entire feel of the game comes together nicely, and the components don’t detract.

Standout Performances

• Strong, well-developed theme/story
• Smooth worker-placement mechanics that don’t make it feel like “just another worker-placement game”
• Wonderful artwork
• Solid solo variant with simple enough AI
• Gameplay matches theme

Breaking the 4th Wall

In theater, breaking the fourth wall refers to when characters (or something else) directly address the audience, thus pulling them out of the narrative and making the astutely aware that they are, in fact, watching a performance and that’s it’s not actually real.

Perhaps the biggest downside to this game is how much table space it takes up. My table is 3×6 feet, and I used up nearly a 3×3 space. Of course, you can always spread it out the long way on your table, but if your table is of the small variety, you may have to squish things a bit, and I’m not talking about the deluxe fruit tokens.

There is a slight learning curve, which is to be expected, considering everything going on in this game. That said, it’s not too steep a curve, so even during your first game things should start making a lot more sense. When you see all of the everything out on the table, don’t stress—it’s not too difficult to learn.

Gameplay Review

First Impressions

When first laid out on the table, it looks awesome. And don’t worry, it looks awesome throughout gameplay as well. It may be a tad intimidating at first, but don’t worry; it’s not so difficult—especially if you’re familiar with worker-placement games. But it looks great, with colorful art on cards and locations. Overall, it’s a great first impression.

Setup

Setup isn’t so bad either. I’ll leave the rule book to you for the finer points, but right now, let’s talk briefly about what setup is like. There are lots of cards, so you need to keep the decks separate before shuffling. Basically, you’ll put each island out on the table and populate it with its specific things, usually a deck of cards. Each player also has their own deck of cards specific to their selected character, so don’t mix those up. Although there is quite a bit to separate and set up, each player can take care of their own character-specific cards and tokens, which really speeds up setup. Sure, there’s quite a bit of stuff, but it’s all going to specific places and is easy to separate. Despite looking like a lot to do, it’s actually not that bad.

Gameplay

Like I mentioned above, Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef is a joy to play. The game’s mechanics tie in well to the theme, and everything is pretty intuitive. I appreciate the fun, lighthearted nature of the game, but also the looming threats from the ocean nearby. 

Throughout the game, players take turns placing their character (i.e. their “worker) on various islands. Each island has various places to go to, which will depend on what you’re trying to accomplish. Some islands provide dice, some stunts (i.e. bonuses), market cards, fighting monsters, and more. One of the great things about Tidal Blades is that if all of the spots on an island are taken, you can still place your character on that island for the basic island bonus (which everyone gets as well as their worker place). The only difference is that you won’t be getting your worker placement reward. But, sometimes you just need the island’s bonus, so at least you’re not completely out of luck.

Players start with the ability to move to just a few locations, but as the rounds progress, more character discs (i.e. your workers) become available. So the first rounds go faster than the later rounds, but it’s a good escalation. 

Throughout the game, players are working to upgrade their dice. Players do this mainly by fighting monsters and completing challenges. By doing these things, your dice get better and more specific, making it easier to complete more challenges and fight stronger monsters.

You’ll want to complete challenges for points, and if you don’t attack monsters, bad things come your way. You can avoid a lot of the bad monster things if you land some hits on it, even if it’s not defeated. However, each monster has specific symbols you need to roll, so make sure you have the right dice for the job!

The way the islands are designed make it so you need to balance your resources, dice, and other things in order to more fully take advantage of everything. There’s a tight balance, and if you can walk that line well, you should be sitting pretty. Of course, this is a dice game, so the luck of the dice will play a part in your success. But that’s why upgrading your dice is so important; this way, you are stacking your deck (so to speak) in order to get the results you need. Likewise, you have a shell shield that collects shells throughout challenges and monster fights, which shells you can trade in to further manipulate your dice results. There was a good deal of thought put into the dice manipulation side of things, and while random dice chucking is always fun, being able to plan ahead to get the results you want—nay, need—is even more fun, not to mention satisfying.

The game plays round from round until the end of the fourth round, after which scores are tallied and the winner crowned. Points come from a variety of places, so feel free to play around to see which works best for your strategy.

Thoughts on Gameplay

Gee wiz, I really like this game. It’s straight fun. It would be more “open” with fewer players, but with solo or 2-players, there’s a rival AI you control to put the squeeze on worker spaces. I’ll talk a bit more about the solo rival in the “Solo” section, but for what it’s worth, it’s a simple AI to control and works pretty well. 

I think the gameplay is well designed and is very competitive between players. I found it easy to catch on to, and the various locations and island abilities make for some fun hopping around. The first player can change, assuming players utilize that worker space, and it can be important as to when you take your turn. Otherwise, that all-important worker spot may not be there when it comes to your turn.

Solo Play

I was pleased to find Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef included a solo variant. To start off with, I just want to say I thoroughly enjoyed playing this solo. The solo rules are simple enough, but I did do a lot of page flipping through the first half of my solo game. There were some questions I had to search for, so the organization of the rules could have been a bit better. That said, once I caught on (again, during my first solo game, so it wasn’t bad at all), controlling the rival AI was simple enough.

The rival draws from the Challenge deck at the start of its turn and heads to the island shown, and from there moves to a space as determined by the point value on that card. It’s a pretty straightforward system, really. If the space is taken, a few additional rules come into play, but those are a quick glance to remember, which is good.

Apart from your rival, you also have two allies—the other characters not being used. These allies aren’t placed on the board; instead, their score tokens are moved up along the score track. If you are equal to them (or ahead of them), you may use them for a free turn, and you get the benefits instead of them (such good friends!). It can be easy to forget about your allies, so, uh…don’t.

Final Thoughts

Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef is a wonderful game. I enjoy it with a full player count as well as solo. Even at two-players, the rival AI is simple to control. I do prefer my two-player games to not include AI players, but I’m not upset with this one, but that’s because it works smoothly. 

The balance between saving the town and competing in the tournament is a nice touch, and the dice manipulation is very good. While there is a fair amount of rolling dice, I find the mechanics take away from the randomness to a great degree.

If you are a fan of worker placement games, Tidal Blades is definitely up there in my top-worker-placement-games list. It’s that good. 

Final Verdict

Welp, you’ve read the review so you should know my thoughts on Tidal Blades. I won’t go into great detail, but needless to say, I give Tidal Blades a rating of Captivating. Possibly a Captivating Ovation (that’s between the top two rankings, by the way). Really, Tidal Blades is straight fun.

Verdict Scale (Lowest to Highest)

The Final Verdict is based on a scale of 1-7, although this scale is not numbered. Instead, it uses thematically appropriate words to describe the performance of the game.

Tomatoes – This game was emotionally taxing and difficult to finish.

Uninspiring – This game had me daydreaming about other games.

Lackluster – This game had its moments, but it probably won’t see much table time.

Laodicean – This game is decent. It works. There’s a reason people like it.

Two Thumbs Up – This game is very good.

Captivating – This game is outstanding! It’s more than good; it’s practically a staple.

Standing Ovation – This is the best game you will ever play. Period.

Read short fiction inspired by board games at BGI’s stories page!

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