Find your way back home - Sleeping Gods

The most memorable board games are evocative, capable of transporting a kitchen table full of players into a depth-defying submarine, a sound-sensitive dungeon or a World War battlefield and, more importantly, making the return visit essential. One designer who consistently creates worlds players want to inhabit and explore is Ryan Laukat. Rich in scope and detail, Laukat manufactures every aspect of his games from the art to the narrative and the gameplay itself.

His crowning achievement to this point is undoubtedly the Arzium trilogy, Above and Below, Near and Far, and Now or Never, each set in a world rich in detail and constantly expanding. With such an illustrious back catalogue, it was no surprise when Sleeping Gods raised well over $1 million during its initial crowdfunding run in 2019.

Sleeping Gods puts one to four players in charge of Captain Sofi Odessa and her eight crew members on the steamship Manticore in 1929. The crew of the Manticore has been transported to a strange, unfamiliar but similar world by the titular Sleeping Gods and must attempt to find their way back home. In order to do so, players will take part in an epic campaign, hunting down treasures, solving mysteries and fighting off dangerous foes.

Components

Sleeping Gods feels like a culmination of Laukat’s work with Red Raven Games to date. This is a lavish production, packed to the rafters with content. From the detailed binder atlas used to simulate the world to the colossal 172 page story book, like a Steve Jackson Fighting Fantasy turned up to 12, the thick cardboard ship and crew cards to the magnetised chest used to keep a hold of all the quest, market and adventure cards (oh so many cards), Sleeping Gods feels like Ryan Laukat with the brakes off, given the chance to fully implement all he has learnt from the previous games he has designed. 

Tokens are a mix of chunky wood, tactile and satisfying to move around the different play areas, and thick cardboard with clear iconography representing food, supplies, negative status effects and fatigue. The setup guide is clear and relatively concise given the number  of components involved but there was a slight feeling of being overwhelmed when placing everything out on the table for the first time but this dissipated on repeat plays. 

There is a lot to ingest when reading the rule book initially but it is generally well-written and easy to follow. That said, I would highly recommend watching Rodney Smith’s excellent rules video before a first play with the rule book itself containing a QR code to direct you to it. 

And as such, it is fair to say Sleeping Gods isn’t cheap. As a board game, it represents a significant financial investment. That said, as a value proposition, it is incredible value for money. The sheer amount of content crammed into this box is remarkable and that’s without any of the usual plastic miniatures (aside a small model of the Manticore itself) found in so many blockbuster games these days. 

Gameplay

Sleeping Gods is designed to be played in a series of campaigns each expected to last somewhere in the region of 10 - 20 hours. Other than Captain Odessa who is always accessible to all players, the other eight crew members are divided as equally as possible amongst the number of people taking part in that session. The game includes a system to make it easy for players to drop out or in for a session and there is also a save system to allow you to easily stop the game at the end of any player’s turn. 

All this said, this game is the poster child for anyone with a dedicated gaming room or a recessed gaming table. The tear down and setup time is not inconsiderable and Sleeping Gods feels like the perfect game to leave set up continuously, perhaps for a couple of rounds of play before bed without the administration of setting everything back out and recording the minutiae of exactly where you are at the end of play.

To successfully complete a campaign of Sleeping Gods, the players must locate 14 totems out of 100 scattered around this mysterious environment but even if that tally isn’t reached, one of 13 possible endings will bookend that particular playthrough, potentially opening up new experiences for next time. It is fair to say that in one campaign of Sleeping Gods, players will see only a tiny fraction of what Laukat has created for this world. And that isn’t to say that the bread is buttered too thin - in our first campaign, we were constantly trying to decide what particular stories we should explore knowing full well that in doing so, we would not have the time to complete other arcs. 

On top of this, there are vast swathes of ocean we didn’t explore, places we didn’t have the time to visit, people we had to ignore. Sleeping Gods provides players with a rich tapestry, an interlinked playground of thoughts and ideas, constantly feeding you with more than enough to motivate you to journey to the next location while always keeping something fresh in reserve for the next turn, the next session, the next campaign.

If there is one gameplay element that slightly underwhelms, it is combat. Combat itself is unique and unlike anything else seen before. When an encounter occurs, enemy cards are placed out in sequence and the crew’s weapons must carve damage through health grids detailed on the bottom of those cards. This system allows a nuance and subtlety in how each combat is approached which is welcome but it is hard and punishing. Time is never on your side in Sleeping Gods and each time we faced combat, win or lose, we found ourselves limping to the nearest port to patch up the crew and the Manticore herself, draining precious resources. In the end, particularly in our first playthrough, we found ourselves going out of our way to avoid combat all together, playing pacifist in an attempt to optimise the time available to us. That said, the following campaign, we were more brave and the combat system became easier with repeated attempts. 

Conclusion

Modern board gaming is evolving on an almost-daily basis and the likes of Gloomhaven have a lot to answer for. Gloomhaven proved that board gamers were willing to invest in long-form experiences more akin to a hybrid of the traditional DnD-esque TTRPG and the previous normal single-game experience provided by a Catan or Pandemic. Gamers appreciate the chance to bring friends around the table on a regular basis and these long-form campaign games provide the necessary hook.

Sleeping Gods is the newest evolution here. Not only does it provide a campaign experience that could be tackled by a particular playgroup once a week over the course of a month, it then sets up the next campaign with new experiences, new stories, new adventures. There are few games that should be considered absolute essentials in the modern board game oeuvre but Sleeping Gods definitely meets this criteria. Ryan Laukat has created a masterpiece that deserves to be on the shelf in every board game collection.