Pirates

Come aboard and sail to Pirate's Cove... the legendary hideaway of thieving pirates and cutthroat buccaneers. The tales of those legendary pirates of old who've fought and survived these mysterious waters still haunt all those who yearn for a life at sea. Armed with a secret map and starting with a modestly outfitted sloop salvaged from last winter's storm, you set sail to Pirate's Cove - your eyes filled with visions of treasure and fame, your lungs filled with the salty air of the High Seas.

Your objective: to battle for the rights to plunder and become the most famed and feared Pirate the world has ever seen. To do so, you will need to navigate shrewdly, fight recklessly and pillage mercilessly. You will gain fame by winning battles; burying gold and treasure; and bragging about your exploits at the Tavern. At the end of twelve months, the pirate with the most fame will be declared the most fearsome Pirate of the High Seas!

The game has 12 turns and at the start of every turn, each pirate must decide (secretly) which of the 6 islands they will visit. All players reveal their navigation directions simultaneously and then the turn is resolved. If any two or more pirates end up at the same island, Combat ensues.

Combat resolution is determined by the strengths of your ship and the results of cannon fire (dice). The goal of combat is to scare away rival pirates so that you are the only pirate left at the island. If you stay in combat too long, your ship will suffer and make subsequent turns more difficult, so there is a fine balance of when to stay and fight and when to let the bigger ship have its booty. If you flee from combat, you end up at Pirate's Cove where you receive a small compensation for the turn. Once all conflicts are resolved, then the bounty for each island is given out.

Each island (except Pirate's Cove and Treasure Island) offer various amounts of Fame, Gold, Treasure or Tavern cards. The bounty is skewed so that some Islands are clearly better choices than others, so it can force you to decide (or bluff) if you think you can take the island should other pirates go after the same bounty. Once you have your bounty, you can purchase upgrades for your ship. Each Island offers a different ship component. The four parts of your ship are: Sails (determines speed and initiative in combat), Hull (how much treasure you can carry), Crew (needed to man the cannons), and Cannons. (The lower number of Crew and Cannons determines how many dice you roll in combat).

There is also an island with a Pub that offers useful strategy cards to help you in all aspects of the game. The last island is treasure island which offers no real bounty other than the chance to bury treasures that you have in the hull of your ship. Buried treasure is converted to Fame (which is the ultimate goal of the game).

Other random elements of the game include the dreaded Legendary Pirates who are highly dangerous ships that patrol the islands in order. One of 5 different Legendary Pirates (which include famous names like Blackbeard and The Flying Dutchman) is drawn at the beginning of every game, and stays until defeated. If you end up at the same island as one of them, you had better have a strong ship and helpful allies or they will blast you with their powerful cannons. However, if you can manage to sink their ships, you can score a good amount of fame! But beware, once you defeat him/her a new Legendary Pirate will appear to wreck havoc in the islands.

At the very end of the game, there is a chance for everyone to tell "tall tales" about themselves to increase their final fame standings. These tall tale cards are gained at the pub and offer yet another fun "pirate" mechanic. In all, Pirate's Cove offers you the chance to truly play like a pirate where you can fight and plunder your way to victory.

Who will lift the most valuable treasure chests?

Generations of seafarers have spent their time searching for the fabled treasure, but none have managed to find it. But now Flint's old chart has turned up, on which the hiding places are marked. Multiple pirate ships simultaneously reach the island group in which the treasure chests are hidden. But the restless ghost of Flint is guarding the treasure. Who will be successful and recover the most valuable treasure chest?

Space pirates are battling for honor, glory and wealth! Join them in their exploration of the universe and their quest for victory. Players will explore, challenge each others, and engage in short-term or long-term alliances, but there will be battles and mighty spaceships involved. In Metal Adventures, you'll use cards to explore, enhance your ship and your crew, and live up to bold challenges. There will be negotiations, battle tactics, and the uncertainty and risk that really make a pirate's life.

During the game, each player uses a fancy four-wheeled astrolabe to track their power (which can be improved via equipment), damage (which reduces power), glory (which is how players win), and the "judgement of pirates" (which affects glory).

On a turn, a player either rests (gaining money and repairing their ship) or else travels (paying to do so), battles (either starships, planets or opponents), and optionally takes the "tour of pirates", visiting one of the ten planets in the game and taken the action available there. Each player holds two trophy cards, and when they meet the conditions on one of them, they can reveal it to earn credits, glory or both. They can gain support (single-use cards) and equipment (providing power adjustments and possibly other special abilities), keeping at most four of these improvement cards at a time.

Players can negotiate alliances and trade anything but glory, and while they must keep their word for immediate exchanges and actions, they can break promises or alliances in later turns, although doing so requires them to suffer the "judgement of pirates", thereby affecting their glory count. Collect four such points, and they can no longer ally with other players or give or receive assistance.

When a player has nine or more glory points or the space deck contains two or fewer cards, the game ends and whoever has the most glory wins.

Setting: In 1675, after a long career in piracy, Captain Henry Morgan skillfully gets appointed to be Governor of Jamaica, with the explicit order to cleanse the Caribbean of pirates and buccaneers! Instead, he invites all of his former "colleagues" to join him in his retirement, to enjoy the fruits of their looting with impunity. Each year, in remembrance of the "good old days," Morgan organizes the Great Challenge, a race around the island, and at its end, the Captain with the most gold is declared Grand Winner.

Goal: The game ends on the turn when at least one player's ship reaches the finish line, completing one circuit around the island of Jamaica. At that point, players are awarded different amounts of gold in accordance with how far away from the finish line they were when the race concluded. This gold is added to any gold a player gathered along the way by detouring from the race to search for valuable treasure, by stealing gold or treasure from other players, or just by loading gold as directed by the cards the player played during the race. The player with the most total gold acquired through all these means is then declared the winner.

Gameplay: The game is played in rounds. Each player always has a hand of three cards, and a personal board depicting the five "holds" of their ship, into which goods can be loaded during the game. Each round, one player is designated as "captain," with the next clockwise player being captain in the following round, and so on. The captain rolls two standard D6 dice, examines her cards, then announces which die will correspond to the "day" and which to the "night." Each player then simultaneously selects a card from their hand and places it face down in front of them. Each card has two symbols on it, one on the left - corresponding to "day" - and one on the right ("night"). The symbols indicate either ship movement (forward or backward) or the loading of a type of good. After every player has selected a card, all cards are revealed simultaneously and then resolved clockwise one by one, starting with the captain's. When it is a player's turn to resolve her card, for first the left symbol on her card and then for the right symbol, the player will load a number of goods or move a number of spaces equal to the number of pips showing on the corresponding day or night die for that round. Thus the main decision each player makes during the game is which of their current three cards would best serve them on a particular turn, given the values of the day and night dice. Finally, during the race, when a player lands on a spot already occupied by another player, there is a battle. Battles are mainly resolved by rolling a "combat" die, but players may improve their chances by using "gunpowder" tokens from their holds, if they loaded any on previous turns. The winner of a battle may steal some goods or treasure from the loser.

In Sum: This is a pirate-themed tactical race game with player interaction and side goals (e.g. detouring for treasure), so that the winner is the player who best balances their position in the race with their success at the side goals.

Merchants & Marauders lets you live the life of an influential merchant or a dreaded pirate in the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy. Seek your fortune through trade, rumor hunting, missions, and of course, plundering. Modify your ship, buy impressive vessels, load deadly special ammunition, and hire specialist crew members. Will your captain gain eternal glory and immense wealth - or find his wet grave under the stormy surface of the Caribbean Sea?

In Merchants and Marauders, players take on the role of a captain of a small vessel in the Caribbean. The goal is to be the first to achieve 10 "glory" points through performing daring deeds (through the completion of missions or rumors), crushing your enemies (through defeating opponents and NPCs in combat), amassing gold, performing an epic plunder or pulling off the trade of a lifetime, and buying a grand ship. While some points earned from performing various tasks are permanent, players earn points for amassing gold, which can be stolen or lost (or at least diminished) if their captain is killed. Points due to gold are hidden so there's some uncertainty about when the game will end.

A big component of the game is whether (or when) to turn "pirate" or remain as a trader or neutral party. Both careers are fraught with danger: pirates are hunted by NPCs (and other players) for their bounty and blocked to certain ports while traders are hunted by non-player pirates as well as their opponents and generally have to sacrifice combat capability for cargo capacity. Although players can kill each other, there is no player elimination as players may draw a new captain (with a penalty) so it's possible to come back from defeat.