Tag Archives: Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest

Deutscher Spiele Preis 2022 – Time to Vote

The best known award is probably the Spiel des Jahres: this year’s winners were announced yesterday. The Deutscher Spiele Preis, or German Game Prize, is slightly less well known, but arguably better reflects the slightly more advanced, “Gamers Games”, with the results usually more in line with Kennerspiel des Jahres category rather than the family Spiel des Jahres award, or “Red Pöppel”. Whereas the Spiel des Jahres awards are selected by a jury, the Deutscher Spiele Preis is selected by a general vote which is open to anyone, players, journalists and dealers alike.

– Image from
spiel-messe.com

Voters must include their name and address, so after removing any duplicates, all votes are treated the same with games placed first receiving five points, those placed second receiving four, and so on. The top ten games from the previous year are included in the ranking, so this year that’s games released in German since the end of July 2021. Thus anything new at Essen last year or the Spielwarenmesse (Nürnberg) this year, is eligible. So that includes games like Ark Nova, Cascadia, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition, Red Rising and Creature Comforts.

– Image by boardGOATS

Voting is open until 31^st July; it’s not necessary to submit a full list, so why not take the opportunity to vote for your favourite release of the year?

3rd May 2022

Like the last few games nights, this one started with Pink and Blue playing the deck-shedding game, Abandon All Artichokes. This is a very simple game where players start with a deck of ten artichoke cards from which they draw a hand of five, then, on their turn, they take one card from the face up market, play as many cards as they can, before discarding their hand to their personal discard pile. If, on drawing their new hand of five cards they have no artichokes, the game ends and they win. In the first couple of games a few weeks back, Pink struggled somehow, and Blue won.

– Image by boardGOATS

Then Pink got the hang of it, and won several games on the trot, but this time it was Blue’s turn to finally get back on terms, just before supper arrived. They were just finishing when Black and Purple, and then Teal arrived. Although it was still very early, it was a perfect opportunity to play the “Feature Game” as it was Moneybags, a quick little social deduction, filler game. The premise is similar to that of Ca$h ‘n Guns, where players are thieves dividing up the spoils from a robbery, stealing from each other and generally trying to deceive everyone so that they come out on top.

– Image by boardGOATS

In Moneybags, one player takes the role of the Godfather, divides the loot “evenly” amongst the players’ small hessian sacks. Holding only the top of their sack, each player takes it in turns to Pass, Stick, or Rob another player. Pass and Stick are simple actions (pass and remain in the game, pass and stick with the total in their sack so they can neither Rob nor be Robbed), but Rob is the interesting one. The active player can Rob any other player that is still “in”, taking some or none of the loot from their sack. The thief mustn’t be too greedy, however, as the victim can challenge—the protagonists compare their loot and the one with the largest stack loses, the winner takes all the loot and the loser is eliminated.

– Image by boardGOATS

After two turns round the table, the game ends with the Godfather (or arguably Godmother), taking their second turn. The winner is the player with the most loot. Moneybags can be played over three rounds, though like Saboteur it is probably best when one round is considered “the game” rather than playing in campaign mode. Pink started as the Godfather and divvied up the money. In addition to coins, there is also a Diamond in the loot; this is worth roughly ten coins. When comparing spoils, the coins are stacked with the Diamond placed on top so that the tallest stack loses when Robbed or wins at the end of the game. The Diamond is comparatively light, so it adds a little bit of additional ambiguity to the proceedings.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pink, made a point of taking note of where the Diamond went and then stole it back later in the game giving him the first round, slightly ahead of Teal in second. Lime arrived during towards the end of the game, so the rules were explained to him. Then Ivory joined the party so Blue swapped out and gave him a quick summary as well, while Purple, as Godmother, divided up the spoils. With a slightly better idea of how the game played, the second round went even better with more players Robbing and challenging each other. As a result, the Diamond went round the table several times. There was much hilarity as players tried to guess how much cash people had, and Pink showed his age when he commented that someone’s stash “chinked like a bus conductor’s money bag”.

– Image by boardGOATS

Once again, the Godparent finished with the Diamond, but Purple had very little cash to go with it and therefore only made third place. This time the winner was Ivory, in a very, very tight finish, just ahead of Black. It had been a lot of fun and although we could easily have played another round or two, we also wanted to play some longer games. Moneybags fills a similar role to 6 Nimmt! though, so it will get another outing soon. In the meantime, Viticulture (Essential Edition), Roll for the Galaxy, and Brass: Birmingham were all suggested for the next game, but Pink always loves playing Viticulture and Teal has been keen for a while, so Ivory took them off to play that while the others decided what to play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Viticulture is a worker placement game where players plant and harvest grapes, make them into wine and fulfill contracts to get points. The first player to reach twenty points triggers the end of the game, and at the winner is the player with the most points at the end of that round. Although Viticulture is not particularly novel or innovative, it is widely respected as one of the best worker placement games around, succeeding in being both smooth to play and relatively easy to learn, though it takes real skill to be good at it. This time, everyone sold land to fund worker training; although we haven’t done this when we played previously, it would seem to be an accepted tactic in most games now.

– Image by boardGOATS

At the start of the game, players get choice of a couple of “Mama” and “Papa” cards (taking one of each)—these give people starting resources, workers, money, Visitor cards or a starting building. Pink took a Trellis from his Mama card which meant he could just plant grapes that needed a Trellis and not worry about building any cultivation infrastructure. The others prioritised money. Playing two worker cards at the same time (using the on-board bonus) was a popular. Though it required care not to overrate the feature and wind up playing some slightly naff workers, when perhaps it might have been better to wait until the next round.

– Image by boardGOATS

The grey, extra-worker meeple was also popular, with players seemingly happy to be last in the turn order if that meant they got an extra “turn”. Although everyone had played the game before (though Teal only online), there were some rules that needed “ironing out” as years of playing with the Tuscany expansion meant that Pink had forgotten many of the differences between that and the base game (Tuscany will get an outing as the “Feature Game” in a few weeks). The game was brought to an unexpected (and obviously skillful) conclusion by Teal, who finished the game just before Ivory and Pink had the chance to deploy their big scores.

– Image by boardGOATS

On the next table, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest got a second outing, largely as Black and Lime had missed out last time, but also as Purple and Blue had enjoyed it. This is also a fairly simple game to play, with a lot of depth. Players start with the same hand of Character cards chosen from a larger deck. This provides a lot of variability, while also ensuring that nobody has an advantage caused by random card draw. The cards are numbered from one to forty, each with different actions—some daytime, some dusk, and some nighttime. The idea is that everyone simultaneously chooses a card to play, then the cards are activated in ascending order during the day, descending order at dusk and simultaneously at night.

– Image by boardGOATS

Some of the cards can have a huge impact on other players’ games. For example, the Brute causes the highest value card in play to be discarded, which means the player that played that card doesn’t get actions on that round. In addition to night time actions, any players whose characters survive the day, also get to take some loot, if there is enough available of course. Some of the loot is extremely valuable, some of it can be used to assassinate other Characters and and some can be more of a curse than an advantage. As a result, rounds can go well or badly.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played over three voyages, lasting four, five and six days respectively. At the end of each voyage, players bank their takings and are paid a small amount based on their reputation at the start of the next round, which then acts as their kitty. This time, Blue had an appalling first round. This meant she was some twenty to thirty doubloons behind the others from the start, but also meant that when when others threatened, she was able to point to her lack of funds and how she was “not the threat”. In contrast, Lime took an early lead and therefore attracted a lot of hostility, missing a lot of turns as a result.

– Image by boardGOATS

By the start of the final voyage, Blue was still some way behind, but hadn’t given up, Purple was fighting to get to the front, Lime was getting a bit fed up of being picked on and Black knew he was likely to be next in line. It was all to play for, especially as the final voyage is the longest so players have time to plan and work card combinations. Blue managed an amazing final round and nearly made it in what was a very tight finish—she ended just two doubloons behind Lime and Black who tied with eighty-six. Lime could have won outright if he had played his Captain in the final round, but as it was, Black’s Aristocrat left him third on the Reputation track, one place ahead of Lime, giving him victory on the tie-breaker.

– Image by boardGOATS

Remarkably, Viticulture had finished first, so after discussing and admiring Roll for the Galaxy and comparing it with Race for the Galaxy (which Teal was more familiar with), the trio squeezed in a quick game of Love Letter. This is a super-quick micro card game played with just sixteen cards that celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. When it was first released it was very innovative, but since has inspired a lot of similar games, it is still great in its own right, as a simple, quick filler though. The idea is players are trying to finish with the highest ranking card, so on their turn, they take a card from the deck adding it to their hand, then play one of their two cards.

– Image by boardGOATS

Each card has a rank, but also an action that takes effect when played. For example, these allow players to look at others’ cards, force others to discard their card, or make them compare cards with the lowest being eliminated. The last player standing wins the round, the first to three is the winner of the game. This time, Pink and Ivory got their revenge on Teal for ending Viticulture too soon. Between them, they shared the five rounds, with Pink just taking the balance and with it, victory as Libertalia and the evening as a whole, came to an end.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: There’s no such thing as honour amongst thieving gamers.

20th April 2022

Meeting for the first time on a Wednesday, Pink and then Blue were the first to arrive, and like last time, played a game of Abandon all Artichokes (with the Rhubarb mini-expansion) while they waited for food to arrive. This is a very quick and simple “deck shredding” game: on their turn the active player takes a card from the face up market, adds it to their hand and then plays as many cards as they can before they discard the rest and draw five new cards. If this new hand contains no Artichoke cards, the player wins. Although it is very simple, it seems the function sequence is somehow challenging. Pink struggled last time, but seemed to have got the better of it as he won.

– Image by boardGOATS

As they were finishing, Pine turned up and, while Pink went to the bar, Blue explained the rules to him and then they played again. Pine also struggled a bit with which pile was the discard pile and which the draw pile, and where to take cards from and where they were going to. There is hope though as, despite the arrival of food in the middle, Pink won the second game too. Pink and Blue were just finishing their supper when Purple and Black arrived, soon followed by Green, Lime and Ivory.

– Image by boardGOATS

This week, the “Feature Game” was the new edition of Libertalia, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, a card driven game where players are admirals commanding a crew of sky pirates in search of adventure, treasure, and glory. Pine had watched the advertised play-through video and professed it “looked” fun, so was keen to give it a go. Ivory and Pink joined the party, while Green shouted across from the other end of the table that he would be happy either way as he knew nothing about it. In the end, after considerable debate, Ivory, Pink and Pine were joined by Blue and Purple, leaving Green, Black and Lime to find something else to play.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although Blue had read the rules, she had very deliberately not looked at the character cards, so Pine arguably knew most about Winds of Galecrest. It is a rejuvenated version of the older game, Libertalia, but with new, lighter artwork, additional characters and streamlining of some of the mechanisms. Very simply, each player starts with a deck of forty cards, of which six are drawn into their hand. The idea is that players have the same character cards to play, but can play them in different orders. Thus, one player (in our case Pink) shuffles their forty numbered cards and then draws six, which the the others find in their numbered and sorted decks.

– Image by boardGOATS

The game is played over three voyages, the first of which takes four days, the second, five days, and the final voyage takes six days. Each day, players simultaneously choose a card to play, which when revealed are laid out in numerical order on the island. The are then played three times: first in ascending order (daytime), next in descending order (dusk) and finally simultaneous (night). Some cards only have actions that activate in one or two of the time-frames, but any characters still on the island, move back to that player’s ship and stay there till the end of the voyage. At the end of the voyage, players activate any loot and characters they have with end of voyage actions. Despite that being pretty much all there is to the game (and it being written clearly on the board), the group still managed to make a bit of a meal of it.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first hand consisted of six relatively uninteresting cards (or so it seemed at the time), which all had daytime actions. The first voyage, and to some extent the second too, players were feeling their way. Because the group failed to remove the Character cards from their ships at the end of the first voyage, that skewed things somewhat, especially as some players had the First Mate in their ship which in some cases scored twice giving points for the number of characters in their ship which was also artificially inflated. Ivory knew which cards he’d played and when, but others were unsure and some had built a strategy that relied on having certain Characters in their boat at the end of the second voyage. So rather than trying to back-track, ships were emptied for the first time at the end of the second round.

– Image by boardGOATS

It took the group a bit of time to understand when the actions for the loot happened—most occur at the end of the voyage, but some occur on the day they are collected, during the dusk phase. As a result, several players missed some of those dusk actions, the additional reputation gained from picking up a Barrel in particular. At the beginning of the second round, Blue, Pine, Ivory and Pink agreed they were all playing the “obvious card”. On revealing their cards they discovered they had differing ideas of what the obvious play was, which gave the first inkling that there was much more to the actions than had first appeared, but the players really got to grips with the planning aspects of the game in the final round.

– Image by boardGOATS

Ivory played his Carpenter, which reduced his funds by half, and immediately followed it with the Officer which increased his kitty to twelve doubloons. Then, because he is always a threat, he was targeted by Pine and then Blue, losing first his Carpenter and then his Gambler from his ship (both give money at the end of the round). Blue then assassinated Pink’s Carpenter and he took out her Gambler in revenge. Pink discovered that the Saber type loot was much more dangerous than he gave it credit for as yet another of his Characters on the island bit the dust. Meanwhile, Purple was building the contents of her treasure chest largely unmolested, mostly only suffering as collateral damage. Pine also made killing by playing his Bodyguard with perfect timing, simultaneously taking lots of gold for discarding all the Sabers and Hooks from the loot pile, and starving everyone else of treasure.

– Image by boardGOATS

In the final accounting Blue was the most successful pirate, though she was one of the beneficiaries of the “rules malfunction” at the end of the second voyage. Purple made an excellent second place though, picking up loads of gold from her loot while largely managing to avoid being caught in the cross-fire as the others attacked each other. Libertalia is a much more vicious game than those we usually play, even though it was a “Calm” game and supposedly “easy and friendly”—Heaven only knows what Stormy will be like! It was a lot of fun though, especially when the group started to get to grips with it properly during the final round. It’s clear the game could cause a lot of relationship trouble, but that won’t stop it getting another outing soon.

– Image by boardGOATS

Meanwhile, on the next table things were much more peaceful with Green, Black and Lime laying carpets. No-one felt up to anything too taxing or long tonight, so after reviewing the selection of games available Black suggested they play Marrakech, which certainly fitted the bill. Marrakech, is an unusual little game, with fantastic little rugs made of fabric and coins made out of wood, where players take the role of a rug salesman who tries to outwit the competition. Each player starts with ten Dirhams and an equal number of carpets. On their turn, players may rotate Assam ninety degrees, then roll the die and move him forward as many spaces as shown (up to four).

– Image by boardGOATS

If Assam lands on another player’s carpet, the active player must pay one Dirham per contiguous carpet square of that colour. Finally, the active player then places one of their carpets orthogonally adjacent to Assam. The winner is the player with the most money after the last carpet has been laid. After a quick explanation to Lime (who hadn’t played it before), the group had to decide the Role of the Merchant. On Board Game Arena, there are two options: one where the player turns him himself before rolling the dice, and another where the player who just played gets to turn him at the end of their turn and before the next player.

– Image by boardGOATS

After a brief check of the rules, the group discovered that the first option was the original rule (move the merchant before rolling the dice) and so they went with that. As a result it took several turns before anyone landed on anyone else’s carpet, then Black landed on a single square of Lime’s. A couple more turns and landing on carpet became a regular activity. When Green landed on a five square of Black’s, it became apparent that Lime had been labouring under a false understanding about what counted as a paying patch of carpet. He had thought that players have to pay for all the carpet squares connected, by any means including other people’s carpets, but of course only the patch that the Merchant is stood on counts.

– Image by boardGOATS

At various points in the game everyone had a large patch of carpet posing a hazard to the other players: Green had a large area in one corner, Black a large squarish patch in the middle, and Lime managed to get a zig-zag line from one corner all the way to the opposite one. Mostly everyone managed to avoid landing on these until they were broken up, but that duck was broken when Green landed on a large Black area, shifting the coin balance heavily in Black’s favour. At the end of the game carpet value was added to coins, and although Green had the most carpet showing, Black had significantly more coins than the others and finished as the winner by five points.

– Image by boardGOATS

Libertalia was still ongoing, and Marrakech had served as an excellent aperitif, but it was now it was time to move on to something more substantial, and the game of choice was Niagara. This is fantastic family game, that won the Spiel des Jahres Award in 2005, but is still a lot of fun seventeen years later. The idea is that players have two canoes that they are using to navigate up and down the river while trying to collect gems and land them safely on shore. Players simultaneously choose a paddle card from their hand, which dictates the distance their canoes travel. Once everyone’s boat has travelled, the river moves and any canoes that are too close to the falls take the long drop and are turned to matchwood.

– Image by boardGOATS

Players are trying to land five gems of the same type (or seven different colours) and the first to do so is the winner. We last played this about nine months ago, online, through the medium of Board Game Arena. On that occasion, Pink had betrayed everyone’s trust and stole several people’s precious loot. The victims (in particular Burgundy), were vociferous in their grievance, and as a result, despite Pink being enthusiastic about playing again, nobody was keen to join him. With Pink tied up in a quite different loot battle, this was a good opportunity to play again as it was still quite early and it was also an opportunity to introduce Lime to an old classic.

– Image by boardGOATS

The first round played relatively gently and much the way it normally does with everyone holding their cloud paddle tile (which allows them to change the speed of the river) back for the last round. Going into the second round however, Black and Green conspired to shake things up a notch. After putting a canoe onto the river, Black then moved the cloud from the plus one space it had been left on at the end of first round, to the plus two space. However, Green had also thought this was a bold move and had planned to do the same, but unfortunately, he had to move the cloud and as plus two is the maximum, the only direction to go from plus two was back to plus one. The result was that everyone spent the rest of that round moving five steps forward and four back.

– Image by boardGOATS

The highest cards were not enough to get players’ boats off the river and each time they just got dragged back again, with the landing stage forever out of reach. Green tried to “go against the flow” using some lower cards earlier in the round and holding a bigger card for later, but apart from moving around on different river discs, the end result was still the same. Everyone ended up on the same disc a couple of times too, and Lime was unfortunate when he lost one of his boats over the rapids. At the beginning of the third round players got their boats off the river. By this point, Black had managed to collect four different coloured gems and only needed that elusive pink. Green also had four gems, but that included two purple ones. Lime had just two gems as he decided to trade one to get his second canoe back.

– Image by boardGOATS

Black tried to inch down the river, sometimes choosing not to move a canoe in order to arrive at that last spot to collect his game winning pink gem. However Lime slowed the river down to minus one, and this left Black’s canoes in the wrong place. In the meantime, Lime also collected another couple of gems and Green managed to pick up another two as well, one purple and one blue. This left Green needing just one gem to win with seven (the fact that a pink would give him one of each did not matter—there is no double win in this game). As the new round began, Green got on the river, collected the final purple gem and there was nothing the others could do to stop him landing it on his next turn. And with that, the paddling was over with Green the victor.

– Image by boardGOATS

Although it was not that late, Lime and Green left for their respective homes, leaving Black to watch the final few turns of Libertalia. When that wound up, Ivory headed home and there was still time left for something short. While everyone else discussed the options, Pink went to the bar for a “tot” of Dead Man’s Fingers Rum. In his absence, Bohnanza was eschewed as “not short” and 6 Nimmt! and Coloretto had both been played recently. Saboteur doesn’t play so well with smaller numbers so in the end, the game chosen was Sushi Go!. The first thing to do was to remove the promotional expansions for its big brother Sushi Go Party! (Sukeroku, Inari, Sake and Pickled Ginger; these can be played with the original version but other cards need to be removed), however the Soy Sauce promo cards included as usual.

– Image by Pine

The game is really simple: from their hand of cards, players simultaneously choose one to keep and pass the rest on before repeating until everyone has no cards. At the end of the round the different cards are scored according to their individual characteristics. After three rounds, puddings are evaluated and the winner is the player with the largest total number of points. This time there was a serious shortage of puddings in the first round and Blue seemed to have more than her fair share. It wasn’t clear whether it was because she was overly focused on deserts or whether it was just because she’s rubbish at the game, but her score was lower than everyone else except Pine.

– Image by boardGOATS

Pine made up for it in the second and third rounds. In general, consistency is usually the winning factor in Sushi Go!, so Pink should have been in a good position, but both Black and Purple had a couple of really strong rounds, as indeed did Pine. As a result, it was a really close game. Pine was undone by the combination of his poor first round and the fact he was the only one with no puddings and lost six points as a result. In contrast, Blue’s score was boosted by six points as she had a clear majority. It was Purple and Black who were the ones to beat though, as they tied for the lead on thirty points and tied on the pudding tie break as well, so shared victory.

– Image by boardGOATS

Learning Outcome: If you are looking for job security, don’t become a pirate.