Flash Review — Unfathomable

Players: 3-6 (semi-coop)
Age: 14+
Playtime: 120-240 min
Complexity: 8.5/10

One brisk night in 1913, The SS Atlantica is slowly steaming its way to Boston, ferrying passengers and… other beings, across the Atlantic. Whether or not it makes landfall depends on the level of cooperation players can muster, even in the face of nautical abominations.

Unfathomable is a cooperative game with (at least!) one Lovecraftian being masquerading as a run-of-the-mill human. The SS Atlantica shall face many challenges before reaching its destination, and while humans will run around fixing the boiler room, raiding the cargo hold to arm themselves, or dropping by the chapel to engage in a banishment ritual (gotta cleanse the ship of those infernal creatures!), the traitor(s) in their midst will try to ensure the ship runs out of resources, is overwhelmed by Deep Ones, or sinks right to the bottom of the ocean.

If this sounds dire, the worst is yet to come: some of the traitors may not realize they’re supposed to work against the humans until the ship is well under way. So that friend you’ve been trusting to get you out of a tight spot for the last hour? Well he might just stick a rusty knife between your shoulder blades next time he gets a chance. That is, if the monsters don’t get you first…

Some uninvinted guests

Unfathomable is a retooling of the Battlestar Galactica boardgame published back in 2008. While the theme is obviously different, every single mechanic has also been reexamined, and I have to say that the new incarnation is a better game all around. Whatever you found clunky or unnecessarily heavy in BSG is gone from Unfathomable. My favorite change? The jump track is now TWO tracks: a travel track that moves the ship forward (and does only that) and a ritual track that wipes enemies off the board. You can’t do both at once anymore, so you’ll need someone manning the engine, and someone else casting spells to keep the horrors at bay. Also, revealed bad guys get to do a lot more here than they ever could in BSG, which is another great improvement.

Lastly, don’t be frightened by the game’s complexity rating: it sure is an intricate design with lots of moving parts, but once things get going, it’s smooth sailing… until it’s not.

Most easily forgotten rule: Each time the ship moves, enemies “left behind” in the water around the ship move one space towards the back. Sounds logical, but for some reason we keep forgetting to do it. :)

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