Come Sail Away!

Some luck, some skill. Sequencing skills valued. A nice length of play (<1 hr)

We really like this game, smooth, fast, relaxing , yet thinky! Tried with 3 and 4 players. Too bad we are missing the 12 bonus tokens, otherwise 5 stars. The art is nice too, Saashi & Saashi style as usual.

I love Come Sail Away. It is a little puzzley, a lot of fun, easy to learn and fairly quick to teach.

The gameplay is primarily built around the mancala mechanic, where you pick up different passengers based off closed card drafting, and drop them off sequentially in different rooms of your ship. You want to get the right passengers in the right rooms, or they'll be disgruntled, and cost you points at the end of the game.

As the game progresses and rooms fill up, the paths you can take through the ship start to be limited, leading to more disgruntled passengers. However, alternate routes can be taken through the grand stairway, and as you unlock them, through the side cabins.

There isn't a lot of direct player interaction, but you're competing to fill the specialty rooms first for bonus points, and passing a card at the end of each turn, that can influence which passengers will be next to board the other players' ships. This encourages and rewards you for paying attention to what everyone else is doing, and provides some light engagement between the players that doesn't feel mean.

Everyone takes their turn simultaneously, so downtime is minimal. There are a variety of specialty rooms you can chose during setup, so there is some variability from game to game.

In typical Saashi & Saashi fashion, the artwork designed by Takako Takarai, is exceptionally charming. The components are excellent quality; the differently coloured meeples are all different shapes that match the illustrations on the cards, and the tiles are thick and sturdy. The box, tiles, and cards all have a nice linen finish. The box was bigger than I expected, but there is very little wasted space. I was surprised at how nice the components were for the price ($44 CAD), and I found it to be a terrific value.

I'm so glad I picked up Come Sail Away, and I think it will remain one of my favourites for a long time to come.

Really easy to learn and fun game

Wonderful art and components, simple but puzzly game play. A game I can play with my whole family or my game group.