Board Game Friday: At the Helm - GAME REVIEW

Today, I present a tiny game published by Button Shy.  Button Shy is a small game publisher specializing in creating and selling "wallet games."  The main gimmick of the wallet games is that each game comes with only 18 cards plus a small rules sheet.  Using those bare materials (no tokens, dice, etc.), Button Shy has published many, many games over the years (their website claims they publish a new game every single month).

Personally, I am not familiar with most of Button Shy's catalog of games but I did back their recent crowdfunding project which netted me several games to try including the subject of today's review:  At the Helm.

At the Helm is a solo game and was designed by Ted Heidersdorf.  This is my first game designed Heidersdorf but according to his BoardGameGeek page, he has also designed another Button Shy game called Super Slopes.   

Game Summary:

At the Helm is a solo deck builder in which you begin with a small starting deck of cards and use those cards to buy other cards all to complete three different goals before time runs out.  

Game Setup:

Setting up the game is straightforward as you'd expect for a small game like this.  First, you need to select the three challenges that you wish to try to complete.  The game comes with four (double-sided) challenge cards so you have a total of 32 possible challenge combinations.  Each challenge has a difficulty rating between 1 and 5 so you have a lot of flexibility in terms of how easy or hard of a game you'd like to attempt to play.  

Once you've chosen your challenges, shuffle the 8 market cards and place them in a grid of two 4-card rows to form the market.  Then take the Captain card and place it in front of you with the 7 at the top.  The Captain card is how you track your remaining health which is done by simply rotating the card so that the appropriate number is showing at the top of the card.

Finally, shuffle the five starting cards and form a face-down draw deck.  Draw the top 3 cards and you are ready to play!

How to Play:

On your turn, you choose 1 or 2 cards from your hand*.  For each card, either resolve the card's effect and place it in the discard or discard the card while ignoring the card's ability.  Then, resolve the effects of any incomplete challenges (completed challenges do not trigger their effects).  Finally, draw cards from your deck until you are back up to 3 cards in hand (losing 1 health for each broken heart symbol on any cards that you draw).  If your health falls to zero, you lose the game, otherwise, you continue with the next turn.

Individual turns are quite quick until you run out of cards in your draw pile.  When that happens, if the market is empty you immediately lose the game.  If the market is not yet empty, then you choose any card in the bottom row of the market and add it to your discard pile.  If there was a card above that card in the market row, slide that card down to replace the chosen card.  Then shuffle your discard pile to form a new draw pile and continue as above.

*I should note that I played the game incorrectly for every play up through the time of my posting this review.  I initially read the rules as saying you "must" play 2 of your 3 cards in your hand each turn.  Instead, as I discovered while rereading the rules for this review, it's you "may" play 1 or 2 cards from your hand each turn.  That simple error on my part meant that the 1-star difficulty-rated challenge "Smuggling Job" was much, much harder than it should have been (Smuggling Job requires that you have three specific cards in your hand at the same time to complete the challenge).  My misread of the rules meant I had to always play two cards from my hand which basically forced me to get a lucky draw to finish Smuggling Job every single game!  

Winning the Game:

You win the game immediately if you complete all three of your challenges.  On the other hand, you lose immediately if your health drops below 1 or if both the market and your deck run out of cards.

My Thoughts:

Initially, I was skeptical of the idea of a deck builder with only 18 cards.  I was even more skeptical when I realized that the number of cards for your deck is actually only 13 cards at most (5 starting cards plus 8 market cards)!  That being said, At the Helm works quite well as a quick deck builder!

There are many different considerations to take into account on your turn.  Obviously, there are the three challenges you must overcome but many of those challenges add their own penalties or other ways of affecting your decision making.  For example, "Rescue Survivors" is a challenge that must be completed first or second while "Giant Squid" makes you lose a heart any time you play more than 1 star (attack) or sail symbol.  Giant Squid also requires a total of nine star symbols to be defeated so there's a built-in tension right away!  

Starter cards have compass symbols next to their name for easy identification.

I also have to make mention of the overall appearance of the game.  Despite having so few components, the game looks great on the table.  Each card has a simple image done in the style of an old captain's log and there's a consistent look across all the cards.  It's also super easy to pick out the starter cards from the deck when your game is over which makes resetting the game a breeze.  

The Bottom Line:

Pros:

• Easy-to-learn
• Quick to set-up and quick to play
• Great looking cards
• Variable difficulty levels

Cons:

• Should have had a goal sheet of the different challenge combinations to keep track of what you've completed (luckily, someone BGG created such a thing which I've downloaded and used to track my plays).
• Certain cards are virtually useless given specific challenge combinations

Overall Score:

8.  At the Helm is a great little deck builder that I've had a lot of fun playing.  Games are short, but there's enough thinking involved to still make it feel like you are playing a "proper" game.  I imagine I'll probably have enough of this game once I complete all 32 challenge combinations, but that's a long way off for now!  I'm not a huge solo gamer but I am trying to get more into playing solo games.  For me, the short set-up and short play times are both huge positives that make it much more likely I'll pop this game off the shelf and give it a whirl if I have the hankering to play a game on my own.  I also find the theme and look of the game appealing which adds a bit to my total score.  

Finally, I'll add that I do own two small expansions for At the Helm (Port Amalga and Lazarette).  I haven't yet tried either expansion but since they each only add a few additional cards I don't expect either to move the (compass?) needle much.

Note:  I am using Board Game Geek's rating scale to come up with my score. 

Board Game Geek's Rating Scale:

10:  Outstanding - will always enjoy playing

9:  Excellent - very much enjoy playing

8:  Very good - enjoy playing and would suggest it

7:  Good - usually willing to play

6:  Ok - will play if in the mood

5:  Mediocre - take it or leave it

4:  Not so good - but could play again

3:  Bad - likely won't play this again

2:  Very bad - won't play ever again

1:  Awful - defies game description