Air, Land, & Sea Review – 18 Cards of Tactical Perfection (No Miniatures Required)

Air, Land, & Sea is such a good game it’s been released twice in two years. First in 2019 as Air, Land, & Sea with the original, more realistic art picturing war machines and conflicts. But more recently in 2021, as Air, Land, & Sea: Critters at War. In this iteration, the artwork is cartoony and fun, more fitting of the style of Jon Perry’s other title Scapegoat.

No matter the version you play, your goal remains the same: 12 victory points.

To win these points, you need to beat your opponent in a series of battles. The winner of each is the player who controls two of the three theatres of war: air, land, and sea. Hence the title.

Both you and your opponent start these battles with a hand of six cards. Then take turns playing a card in one of the theatres. Each card has a theatre type attached, so land cards must be played to the land theatre, and so on.

Cards have both a strength value, as well as a power that’s activated when played. The exception is the strongest card of each type, which just has strength… Although that’s a power in itself.

You can also play cards face-down. If you do, then they can go into any theatre, but it loses all of its abilities and its strength adjusted to two. So not ideal, but will help you out in a pinch.

Once both players run out of cards, sum up the strength of each of the three theatres. The player with the most strength in the theatre wins that theatre, and whoever controls two out of three, wins the battle and the victory points.

Top-Notch Card Play

When you first open up Air, Land, & Sea you might be disappointed. With only 18 playable cards there’s not a lot of game in the box. However, like Love Letter it does more with 18 cards than most board games do with their tricked-out miniatures and wooden, screen-printed components.

The immaculate card play in Air, Land, & Sea is proof of that. With only six cards in your hand, you wouldn’t think you have too many options, but each battle gives you three or four different strategies you can pursue. It’s an incredible achievement of game design, and in my humble opinion, it deserves a spot next to the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.

But it’s not just the interplay between cards that stands out – although that is excellent. It’s how the cards change the rules of the game, leaving you to adapt on the fly that makes Air, Land, & Sea such a compelling board game.

For example, the Blockade card only allows three cards to be played in adjacent theatres, which restricts where you can play your remaining cards. Meanwhile, the Escalation card doubles the strength of all of your face-down cards, but then there’s the Containment card stopping players from playing any face-down cards.

This wonderful mixture of thrusts and parries turns Air, Land, & Sea into a fencing match. Where you’re constantly compromising which theatres you fight for and which theatres you give up. Having to win only two of the three gives you some wriggle room, but the battles are always so close that you rarely know where you stand until the last card is played.

Additionally, in a game, you’re only ever using two hands of six cards. Leaving six more cards on the sideline. This means you rarely, if ever, get the same hand of six cards. And given the potency of each card, this makes no two games feel the same.

Have You Had Enough?

There’s one more wrinkle that takes this already excellent game and puts it into fifth gear. That is, on any turn, instead of playing a card, you can withdraw. This immediately loses you the battle, but it may win you the war, or at least the game.

As the quicker you withdraw from the battle, the fewer victory points your opponent gets. So let’s say you play out a battle and lose, then your opponent wins six points. However, if you withdraw as soon as you get your cards then they only get two.

This rule is the difference between yoga and Bikram yoga. One is a great workout that will make you sweat, and the other is the same workout that makes you sweat like cheese pizza in a sauna. All because every time you play a card, there’s a chance you’re giving up points. It adds this Poker-like feel, where the ante continues to rise between turns. Leading to a lot of second-guessing, self-doubt, and sweat.

We’ve seen this type of board game before, in both Schotten Totten and Hanamikoji, where you’re battling over areas in the centre of the board. The introduction of card powers adds an extra dimension. Setting it apart and making Air, Land & Sea a game I’ve come back to over and over again.