We sought out beautiful landscapes to paint in Sunset Over Water, the next game in our A-Z game shelf play-through.
Sunset Over Water
Players: 1-4
Time: 20 Minutes
Designers: Eduardo Baraf, Steve Finn
Artists: Beth Sobel, Helen Zhu
Publisher: Pencil First Games
In Sunset Over Water, players are artists planning their days as they trek through the landscape, pick scenes to paint, and later sell their paintings to patrons. Whoever can earn the most renown through their paintings, meeting daily goals, and selling their works will win the game.
Game play
The game is set up by first shuffling and laying out Landscape Cards into a 5×5 grid to form the Wilderness — this is the main play area. The rest of the Landscape Cards are left nearby in a deck. The Commission Cards are also shuffled and a number laid out based on player count. Then another Commission Card is turned face-up on top of the deck, but it is not available to players this round. The Daily Goal cards are also shuffled and one is turned up as the goal for the first day.
Each player chooses a color and gets the associated Artist Token, Planning Cards, and Quick Reference Card. The Artist Tokens all start on the center space of the Wilderness. The Planning Cards are shuffled, and each player places their deck face down in front of them.
The game is played over six rounds, called Days. Each Day has three phases: Planning, Trek, and Clean Up.
During the Planning Phase, players simultaneously draw three cards from their Planning Deck, choose one to play face-down in front of them, and placing the other two on the bottom of their deck face down. Once all players have chosen a card, everyone turns up their card. The card will give a time of day that they start their trek, the number of spaces and direction they can move, and the number of paintings they can complete on their turn.
Then, during the Trek phase, players take turns, starting with whoever had the earliest time on their Planning card, and going in order of time. On their turn, the player first moves, based on the direction and number of spaces indicated on their Planning Card. After they move, the player can claim a number of cards they moved through, including the one they started on, provided those cards are empty of other players.
Finally, the player can sell their paintings, either ones they collected this turn or previously. To sell, they must have the symbols indicated on the Commission Cards, and then they trade in their paintings for the appropriate Commission Card. If the player met the Daily Goal, they claim it — however, it might be taken by a player later in the day, as only the last player to meet the goal gets the points.
After all players have had their Trek phase, there is some Clean Up that happens: the Wilderness is refilled, a new Daily Goal card is revealed, and the Commission Cards are refilled. Then the next day starts with the next Planning Phase
At the end of day six, players tally up their scores. They get points from Commission Cards and earned Daily Goals. They also get one point per two symbols leftover on paintings they haven’t sold. Whoever has the most points wins.
My Thoughts
We’ve enjoyed Herbaceous from the same publisher and designer as a fun, light game, so I picked up Sunset Over Water from a small, independent game store when I was on a trip. This is definitely more complex than Herbaceous, but no less beautiful!
We haven’t gotten this one out very often, so each time we need to re-learn the rules. For some reason they just don’t stick in our minds, even though they’re fairly simple. That’s not a ding on the game, necessarily, but rather a barrier for us getting this to the table.
I like the planning phase where you have to decide if you want to get out early, but might not get to collect as many paintings, or go later when you might not have have the commission you have your eyes on. I’ve only played this solo and at two, so far, and I imagine that the board could get pretty cutthroat with more players. Because the Wilderness and Commissions don’t refill, it seems like there could be some fierce fights. But at solo and two, it’s a much more chill game.
Three Quick Questions
How is it as a 2-player game? Sunset Over Water works fine with two players. I can imagine that at higher player counts it could get a bit cutthroat, since the available cards don’t refill until the end of the round. But at two, it’s a chill, beautiful game.
How about the art and component quality? The art is lovely, as I would hope from a game about painting. The Artist Tokens are neat and quite photogenic. There isn’t much else to the game!
Will this stay in my collection? For now yes. Even though it doesn’t make it to the table very often, it’s a small box game with beautiful art that I’d like to play more often.
