Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Friday Night Shots – Some Assembly Required! (Shipyard)
Happy Friday!
Apologies for the long lull in posting on here. It’s been a month…and in addition I’ve had a healthy dose of Imposter Syndrome which has kept me from writing much.
If you have any suggestions on how to beat that, I’d love to hear them.
It’s been 11 days since the last post, which is not fitting with my posting goal!
But I’m trying to be gracious with myself when I need the downtime, and I really needed the downtime.
It’s been a rough month.
I wasn’t even sure I’d write tonight, but something made me do it.
Before we get into that, though, hop on the bar stool, let me get you a drink (whatever you like, maybe tea?)
The sun’s still out and it’s 8:00 pm. Summer is coming!
I took today off as a vacation day and ended up doing a couple of things.
Bought a new iPad! (The new one is very good so far, though I only have a couple hours use of it).
I also have a bunch of new game acquisitions that I may talk about later, one of which was Shipyard (2nd Edition) from Rio Grande Games.
I was lured to this game by Heavy Cardboard (the cad!) when watching a playthrough.
Edward has cost me so much money recently.
This game, designed by Vladimír Suchý, was recently reissued in a gorgeous edition (the original was published in 2009) by Delicious Games.
I thought to myself “self, why do you keep wearing socks with your sandals in the Summer?”
I also thought to myself, “why don’t I unbox Shipyard today? It shouldn’t take too long.”
I think Edward did mention that there was some assembly required when they did the playthrough, but I didn’t really register that at the time.
Then I opened the box.
Wow, there is a lot of assembly required in this game, and it’s not all intuitive.
There is a token container as well as a ship part container (the crane).
The instructions are actually not that bad, but only because the pieces are clearly labelled on the counter sheets (though it took me a little time to figure out what those numbers were).
The token container is actually really cool because it holds a bunch of them in storage in the box, and it has a lock on the top so it can be stored in the box upside down!
This didn’t take too long to do, though I did mess up the end pieces (putting them in the wrong spots so the lid wouldn’t go on), so I had to unassemble and reassemble.
But it works really well!
The crane was kind of a bear, just because of the vertical pieces that don’t stay secure when you’re trying to put the top pieces on.
But I managed.
It holds together really tightly without any glue, which is a plus!
This one holds all of the ship pieces when you’re playing the game, as well as in storing the box.
This was unexpected, but it went ok.
Then I hit the player boards.
When a game advertises “dual-layer player boards”, it’s not usual that you have to assemble them yourself!
But you do this time.
I saw a bag with these stickers in it, and I had no idea what to do with them. (the pic is after I’ve used a bunch, there are plenty in there)
There’s nothing in the rulebook about them, there’s no instructions like the crane and token storage.
I had to go online and find a Delicious Games Youtube video about how to apply the stickers and what they were for.
In the video, the guy says that it’s pretty easy but they’re doing the video anyway.
Yeah, it’s pretty easy when you know how to do it. But it’s not easy to figure out with no instructions!
The player boards look really cool, but they don’t have anything on them.
There are two pieces that you have to use these double-sided stickers for.
There are these pieces on the counter sheets that aren’t intuitive for what they are, but they have spots on them that indicate where you put the stickers.
Then, once you’ve placed the stickers, you peel the paper part off and make sure the things are aligned correctly on the board.
Once they are, you press them down so that the sticky part holds the pieces firmly.
I didn’t exactly get how the stickers worked at first, and sometimes when I pulled the paper part off, it pulled the sticky part off too.
Thankfully there are a bunch of spares included.
However, when I got to the last board, I only had enough for the board.
No more spares!
I had to make sure I did them all correctly.
Thankfully, I was able to.
They look really cool, but man was that tedious and annoying, and not to mention scary!
I’m sorry, but if you’re going to offer dual-layer boards to help keep the pieces in place when you’re playing, I don’t want to have to assemble them myself.
The other thing about the crane and the token container, is that boxing the game up takes some real Tetris skills.
You leave the tokens in the container, of course, but I found that I also had to put the ship parts in the crane, or I wouldn’t be able to close the top.
The picture above is before I realized I needed to put the ship pieces in the Crane.
Even with all of that, with the other pieces in baggies, there is a bit of lid lift.
It’s not too bad, but it is noticeable.
And you do have to store the token container upside down (good thing there’s a lock on it) in order to make it all fit.
This game looks amazing. I haven’t gotten it to the table yet (just arrived this week, actually), but watching the Heavy Cardboard playthrough, it does look wonderful.
But man, I wasn’t expecting this much work just to unbox it.
I can’t wait to play it, because it seems like a wonderful game.
But I need a drink after putting it all together.
Good thing it’s Friday!
If you own this game, any storage tips?
Let me know in the comments.
Tonight’s post brought to you Canadian Club whiskey, the number 4637, and the letter S
Dude! Take Your Turn! 
The trick to put back all content in the box without lid lift, is to put player boards on top of the crane and storage box and the main game boards underneath all the components. That would work perfectly and you will have no lid lift
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