Jaws the game

There are a few punch boards included that have things like swimmers, target tokens, various pieces of equipment, barrels, shark special ability tokens, ship parts and more. All of these are of decent quality and double-sided.

The box also has a basic cardboard insert, which divides the box into three sections of various sizes. One area looks to be sized to hold cards, included sleeved ones, whereas the other spots could be used for whatever you want. The game also includes a Shark Tracker. This is a small booklet that has a map of Amity Island on the inside cover and is filled with a pad of shark movement sheets. There are three custom red D6 dice that are used for shark attacks in part two.

There are four clips, used to track health during the game as well as the number of swimmers the shark eats. These clip onto one of the four character cards.

The cards are thick cardboard and there is one for the shark and one for each of the three characters you can play from the movie: Hooper, Brody and Quint. Each of these cards is two-sided and includes a rule summary and the possible actions that each character can do. There is a bag of wooden components. These include a meeple for each of the characters, two boats and a fantastic looking shark meeple. Finally, there are a few decks of cards, including Crew Gear cards a set of generic ones and a set of specific ones for each of the three characters , Shark Ability cards, Resurface cards and Amity Event cards.

In Jaws one player takes on the role of the shark while the other players play Hooper, Brody and Quint. When playing with four players, each character is controlled by a different player. When playing with two players one player is the shark and the other player controls all three of the humans. When playing with three players, one of the human characters is shared between the two non-shark players.

A game of Jaws is broken into two acts and the results of the first act impact the second act. Act 1: Amity Island. The shark attempts to eat as many swimmers as possible while the characters try to attach two barrels to the shark and protect the swimmers.

Each round starts off by flipping over the top card of the Amity Event deck. This will instruct players to place a certain number of swimmers onto various beaches on the map and may include some additional rules that will impact that round of the game.

The shark gets up to three actions each round, which can be to either eat a swimmer at the location they are at or move one zone on the map to a new location. In addition, the shark starts the game with four special abilities. They can use one of these each round. The abilities include Feeding Frenzy eating all of the swimmers at a location with only one action , Evasive Moves not triggering motion sensors , Out of Sight avoiding the binoculars and the fish finder , and Speed Burst moving up to three zones with one action.

The shark also tracks the number of swimmers they have eaten using their player board. If the shark ever gets to nine swimmers Act 1 ends. All of these actions are taken in secret using the Shark Tracker pad. After the shark acts the movie characters get to go.

Each character gets four actions in a round and each has their own set of choices. Quint pilots his boat, the Orca, in the water around Amity and can do the following: move to an adjacent zone, rescue one swimmer, pick up any number of barrels from his current location, or launch a barrel in the water.

If a launched barrel hits the shark, the shark meeple is placed on the board and the shark player takes that barrel and places it onto their player board. Once the shark has two barrels on it this act ends.

Brody helps from the shore. If Brody uses the binoculars, the shark player has to let the other player s know if they are located at the beach that they were used at. If they are at that beach, the shark meeple gets placed there. Closing a beach means that no new swimmers are placed on that beach during the event phase.

Marvin was an avid fisherman and turned down the role in hopes of making his own film about deep sea-fishing based on the book Tournament but could not raise the money for it.

After the film came out and became a monster success, he stuck to his guns stating he felt the film was a small and simple tale of three men in a boat. He may have a point there. We were lucky enough to speak to Ian about the project a couple of years ago, at that time we asked him how the play, which is based on part on his dad's diaries, came about. He was the commanding officer of the Enola Gay, so he was the one who received the atomic bomb from the USS Indianapolis. So I sketched out some ideas - there were some subjects that interested me, particularly alcoholism, art vs commercialism, ego vs teamwork, boredom, neurosis.

It came back when I discussed it with a writer friend, Jospeh Nixon, who thought it was a story that should be told. So we wrote it together in the end. Jaws the board game is asymmetrical, of the players play as the heroes of the story, and the other player plays as the shark. The game runs over two phases, Amity island and The Orca. Our heroic human heroes Hooper, Quint and Brody must take down the beast to win.

The perfect eating machine wins if it kills all three heroes, or destroys the Orca. The game is asymmetrical from the get-go. Phase One is effectively a game of cat and mouse Working together, Hooper, Quint and Brody must attach two barrels to the shark. In Jaws, each hero gets a different set of abilities and limitations but with a shared objective, and the shark plays in a completely different way. The heroes need to work as a unit to communicate their plans and abilities.

Only one can collect barrels, only one can carry them easily, only one can fire them at the shark. They also have a selection of abilities to coincide with these, but communication is key! The last thing you want is for each beach to become a bikini buffet for the shark!

Speaking of, the shark has an equally tough job. The shark needs to stay hidden from the heroes as best it can, not allowing them to find him, whilst also devouring the poor people of Amity Island. If a swimmer vanishes from the board, you can have a solid guess at where the shark is. The barrels, iconic of Jaws, aren't wasted by the humans when spent.

They act as beacons to identify when the shark has been in that area and can help identify where the shark is. However, loading them up and collecting them is a hassle, and by the time you've loaded every area up the shark may have a belly full of Speedos! On the flip side of this, the shark isn't just on a hiding and eating routine. That would eventually be caught up with!

To spice things up, and set it aside from the other Great Whites of the ocean, it has a few tricks up its sleeve. From extreme speed to avoiding triggers, the shark can escape the heroes in a pinch! But these abilities only last one turn, so they need to be used sparingly.

The shark must eat as many swimmers as possible to gain strength. When the shark has two barrels, or has eaten so many swimmers, the game moves on to Phase Two. This is the beginning of Jaws' best scenes.

The Orca. The vessel that could either become the greatest creation in terms of shark hunting or simply shark chow. The boat is split into eight sections on a 2x8 grid, shown through cards. The cards are double-sided to show gradual wear and tear and can be removed to show full destruction. The heroes now need to kill the shark, like in the Jaws movie. Dependent on how well they did at preventing locals from becoming lunch, they'll receive item cards to help them.

They do a range of things, centred around hindering and slowing the shark. Their goal is to get the shark to zero health. Each hero gets their own starting items, reflective in some ways of the film. There is no guarantee you'll get that explosive finale However, bashing a shark to death with a hammer is acceptable in this scenario.

This is the least asymmetrical part of the game for the hero team. You all choose where to stand, how to attack and with what. For the shark, however, this is another display of how the balance occurs. The shark will gain abilities to use dependent on how much it ate, the opposite of the heroes really.

They also get a choice of three breaching points around the boat to appear at. If they appear at a specific point, they can attack adjacent parts of the boat and any heroes in the water.

The boat can only take so much, as can the heroes. Victory is sealed when the heroes perish or the boat sinks!