Along cracks in the ocean floor, plumes of black and white superheated water pump relentlessly into the depths. They provide precious heat to the near freezing abyssal waters of the deep as well as a bounty of minerals. Microscopic archaea and other extremophiles live off the heat and minerals to form the base of a unique food chain that hosts a variety of exotic deep sea creatures.
In Deep Vents, players each control their own hydrothermal ecosystem to which they add new life and geological features each turn, competing to survive in the unforgiving depths by being efficient and preying on nearby systems with a host of strange and deadly predators.
Start each turn by drafting a tile from the five on display — placing one archaeon, the currency of the game — on each tile you skip. Place this tile adjacent to each other tile in your ecosystem, then either grow or trigger each tile in your ecosystem, moving through them from top to bottom, left to right, and growing or triggering them individually as you like. When you grow a tile, you place archaea on it, whether a set amount or a varying number depending on other tiles in your ecosystem; when you trigger a tile, you remove archaea from it to carry out its unique effect: attacking opponents, gaining shells to defend against attacks, moving archaea to your personal supply, and decimating tiles, which leaves them as nothing but a heat source for the remainder of the game.
If you ever need to discard archaea due to an attack and cannot do so, you must take a shortfall token and ten archaea, then discard archaea as needed. On your turn, you can pay ten archaea to remove a shortfall token — which you want to do because as long as you have one, you can draft only the first tile on display. If you end your turn with two shortfall tokens, you're out of the game.
The game ends if only one player remains in play (with that player winning) or after eight rounds, with players scoring points for archaea and shells in reserve and archaea on tiles. In this case, whoever has the highest score wins.
2-4 PLAYERS | 40-60 MINS | AGES 13+
REVIEWS
Shipping
All online orders are picked from our separate warehouse. We always ensure that your games are well packed before leaving. Wherever possible we'll re-use a cardboard box that we received games in from one of our suppliers. We figure it's better that way for our planet. But we do also use new boxes and wraps. If you have a strong preference either way please let us know in your Order Comments.
UK Orders
We aim for orders placed before 1:30pm Monday to Friday to be dispatched on the same working day. If this is not possible, your order will be dispatched on the next working day. Orders placed outside our Monday to Friday office hours will be dispatched on the next working day.
Delivery is free on all orders of £65 or more. Orders with a value of less than £65 will incur a delivery charge as follows:
£4.50 - Royal Mail Tracked 48 (2-3 business days delivery time)
£6.00 - Royal Mail Tracked 24 (1-2 business days delivery time)
£5.00 - DHL (mainland UK only)
International Delivery
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Collect in Store
At check-out you will to have the option to collect your order from our cafés in either Oxford or Bath and avoid the shipping charge. We will notify you by email as soon as your order is ready to collect. Allow up to 3 days for Oxford collection orders and 7 days for Bath collection orders. Orders will be held for a maximum of 21 days before being returned to our warehouse.
Additional Information
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