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www.frontporchclassics.com

By and large – and this isn’t necessarily a criticism – pirate tabletop games strive to emulate ship-to-ship combat, allowing players to travel between islands and blast cannons at each other. League of Pirates, however, takes a different approach.

Front Porch Classics has brought us some wonderful pirate games, with League of Pirates being from their new – more affordable – Discovery Edition line. In this game, two players face off to build their crews. Each has a board with openings representing crew vacancies, which they can fill with cardboard coins of quartermasters, mates, captains and the like. [read more »]

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www.frontporchclassics.com

Front Porch Classics has a reputation for tabletop games that are a) expensive as all hell and b) worth every penny. They bring an old world craftsmanship to their games that makes them virtual works of art, and playing them therefore seems to feel just a bit more authentic and worthwhile than it does when breaking out the more bourgeois Parker Bros variety. But alas, sometimes economy must outweigh art, and it’s in this vein that Front Porch Classics has introduced its Discovery Edition games. The quality of these sets remains high, but the metal and wood has largely been replaced with the more ordinary (and affordable) plastic and cardboard.

Dread Pirate: Buccaneer’s Revenge is the Discovery Edition’s direct answer to Old Century Dread Pirate (truly one of the most glorious pirate games on the market.) The play area and pieces are virtually identical in shape, if not material, with the only significant difference being the cards. In the Old Century version, the goal was to plunder towns and each other, and to end the game with the most booty – fairly straightforward. But Buccaneer’s Revenge has modified gameplay, sending players forth on a number of missions dictated by drawn cards. The ultimate goal is still to gather booty, and players can still bombard each other in combat, but the additional missions serve to add a bit more variety along the way. And what’s more, upon completing missions, players earn booty and skills that they can use in the future. [read more »]

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www.playlogicgames.com/aopct

I hate to be so blunt, especially with a game that I had hoped to love:

Age of Pirates: Caribbean Tales is an uncut diamond buried deep within a bottomless dung heap. It could have been great, it should have been great, but for whatever reason it was sent to market incomplete in most every respect, and is therefore not worth your hard-earned doubloons.

I’m an enormous fan of the original Seadogs. For all it’s quirks and bugs, it was still wonderfully fun, and easily set the standard for 3rd person pirate adventure games. Pirates of the Caribbean (Seadogs 2 before jumping on board with Disney) was also flawed – the last minute Disney changes seemed half-baked and disrupted the original intentions of the developers. But just the same, it was quite the improvement over Seadogs, and with the various mods created by fans it soon evolved into an ever-growing pirate world of near infinite options. [read more »]

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www.frontporchclassics.com

As anyone that’s played Front Porch Classic’s Dread Pirate knows, this is a company capable of making some gorgeous, heirloom quality games. But where Dread Pirate was full of gold and silver doubloons, lovely multi-colored jewels, and gorgeous metal ships, Shut-the-Box is surprisingly plain – a box with 9 numbered tiles mounted in it, and two wooden dice. It might cause one to say, “it’s very nice looking, but is it fun? And more importantly, what in the world does it have to do with pirates?”

Answering the second question first, while other board games are based on recreating the pirate fantasy, Shut-the-Box recreates the reality – this, in fact, is the very game many a pirate and sailor actually played during those long voyages. Whether drunk on the decks, or drunk in a tavern, some version of Shut-the-Box was likely close at hand.

So on to the second question – is it fun? [read more »]

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www.ascaron.com/gb/portroyale2

I never played Port Royale 1, so I can’t compare. But popular opinion has it that the first was actually the better of the two.

Port Royale 2 is primarily a game of economy – managing your businesses, expanding your influence, and instructing your captains on trade routes. You can also do a fair share of privateering on behalf of the governors, possibly even winning one of their daughters’ hand in marriage. Sound familiar? It should – a little bit Sid Meiers’ Pirates! and a little bit Tropico 2, the game doesn’t really live up to the standards of either. The graphics are decent, but I felt substandard. This I can easily forgive.

What I can’t easily forgive is the overall atmosphere of the game – in short, it has none. Many games have some sense of emersion – even if you’re looking down on a pixilated pirate ship from third person view while punching a keyboard, somehow the combination of music, imagery, strategy, and overall feel gives you the impression you actually ARE commanding a mighty sea battle. Not so with Port Royale 2. I found initial sea battles to be very tricky, but after some practice it became tedious and mechanical – send in ship, beat enemy down with chain shot, send in second ship with grapes, board. Wash, rinse, repeat. [read more »]

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www.piratescovegame.com

Pirate boardgames, much like pirate children’s books, have the distinct advantage of freedom. They’re free to ignore the limits and dictates of history, and are at their best when they shamelessly embrace the colorful fun and mythology of the pirate life.

Pirate’s Cove does a splendid job of doing exactly that. Players each adopt a pirate ship, and then take it in turns to sail across a colorful map, plundering towns and each other along the way. The entire game takes place in twelve “months”, with each month being a full round of turns. Players secretly elect where they intend to sail by using a ship’s wheel dial, and then all display their dials at once – any player going to an island alone gets free reign to conduct their business there, while if two or more make the same landfall, combat naturally ensues. [read more »]

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www.firststarsoftware.com/bdtp.htm

Now here was a fun little discovery – “Boulder Dash: Treasure Pleasure” allows you to choose your hero, either a boy or girl. You guide that hero through a number of levels of puzzles as they collect enough jewels to go to the next level. The puzzles start simply enough, but quickly become more difficult as new opponents are introduced in the forms of spiders, pirates, and weird glowing things.

There’s not really much to go into for a review, as this game is a 2-D console format, like Donkey Kong or Pac Man. The graphics are cute, the puzzles can be challenging, and you can develop your problem-solving and motor skills. I’d definitely recommend this for cabin younkers, so check out their free trial.

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www.gamewright.com

There’s something to be said for games that can be played in only a few minutes. Loot is one of the easiest to learn, and easiest to play, pirate games I’ve come across in a long time. It’s played entirely with cards, primarily representing merchant and pirate ships of varying wealth and strength, respectively. Merchant ships are put into play, and players take turns pitting pirate ships against them, with the strongest attacker adding the merchant to his booty pile. When the cards run out, the booty is tallied, and winner determined. And that’s it!

While not as involved as many pirate board and card games, Booty benefits from a rapid gameplay that takes on a uniquely fun rhythm – almost like a good game of checkers or jacks. Intended for agest ten and up, the artwork is of course silly, fun, and piratey – and the card material of a high quality. And best of all, it can be played in only a few minutes time, so even pirates with short attention spans can take part.

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www.frontporchclassics.com

There are several pirate table-top games out there, and many of them are quite good. But few conjure a feeling of old-world piracy so effectively as Dread Pirate from Front Porch Classics. Packaged in a real wooden chest, from the moment you remove its contents of metal doubloons, glass jewels, and even a cloth playing “board”, every aspect of this game seems as though it were stolen straight from the captain’s cabin. It’s as if it were specifically designed to be played over rum by candlelight – preferably while a storm wages outside. [read more »]

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www.skallywaggs.com

What, no ships? No pillaging? And you never even leave port until the very end? Bloody ‘eck, what kind of pirate game is this? Short answer: A drop-dead-in-your-linens-and-flog-a-seagull-for-grins fantastic one.

Skallywaggs is a top-notch mix-n-match card game where you struggle to build a crew so you can set sail while doing your devil-best to keep your opponents from doing the same. Crew members are assembled from a multitude of three-card combinations (head, torso, legs) to make a near endless variety of cut-throats. But mind you, not all pirates are created equal, and some combinations can create characters that will win you a distinct advantage, while still others might bring your crew to a screaching halt. [read more »]