Pirates again
After being fully immersed into the pirate world in the last days we decided it was time to get Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest back to the table 🤩. This is the reimplementation of the 2012 Libertalia.
When we first played it a few months ago, I was a little bit suspicious about how it would accommodate 1 to 6 players. To be honest games with such broad range of player counts usually fail to impress at one end of said range. 😛 I can only speak to the 2p experience, everything is fine at this end! 😁
In Libertalia each player has the same random hand of cards and in each turn you play a single card (a crew member). Depending on the initiative value of them, the played cards are lined up on the board. During the day phase each card with a matching ability gets activated from left to right. Then, during dusk, going backwards, every dusk ability is activated and players get to choose a loot from that day’s pool. Surviving crew then go to the players ship and those with night abilities activate in every night phase.
What makes the game interesting is how those cards interact with each other! Some of them can remove others before those would get activated, or kill a crew on your ship, etc. and this is where the fun begins. You know exactly which cards your opponents have (well that is if you can remember, as cards not used stay in your hand for the next round), but can you guess what they will play next? 🙃
I imagine with 6p this could result in a wild funny chaos, but with 2p it is more of a mind game. At 2p, there is also the neutral Midshipman character in play which spices things up. If your card lands next to him, your opponent gets to discard a loot token from that round. If you are out of luck, they are the first one to pick too, leaving you with the least desired loot at the end of turn. You must not forget about the reputation track - that serves as a tie breaker if you both want to place the same cards. This can ruin your plans if you didn’t pay attention 😁
We absolutely adore Libertalia as a 2p game. 🤩
