Stonemaier Games | Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest | Board Game | Ages 14+ | 1-6 Players | 45-60 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

Firstly, this is a joy to teach. Identifying what each loot does is important, but can be done on a day-by-day basis. There are forty character cards to learn the abilities of. However, as everyone is drawing six of the same cards per turn, there is ample opportunity to talk through the cards before each journey. After that, once you have explained the day, dusk, night and anchor activation you are good to go, even the latter can be reinforced on the first turn, or a dummy run. With the basics mastered, the strategy of optimising when to play cards from your hand and how best to utilise them, really comes to the fore. After three voyages the game ends and the player with the highest value on their score dial wins. If tied, the player with the higher reputation wins the tie.

Libertalia is very easy to learn and the instructions are well written. Players can easily learn by playing, sacrificing very little strategy while doing so.

Game Components

There is one aspect of the game that may not sit well with some (especially family gamers), and has to do with some game effects targeting female characters. One thing Paolo Mori worked on improving for this release was the two-player game, which was somewhat bland in Libertalia. And… it’s fine. Definitely better. I’m glad it was tweaked. The two-player game now adds a mid-ranked character who’s always on the Island for players to compete with. This two-player mode is certainly an improvement but still isn’t terribly robust.

The characters in the graveyard or in the players' dens are removed from the game (they will not be used for the rest of the game). Governor's Daughter (25): Gain 6 doubloons if only you have the Governor's Daughter. Otherwise, lose 3 doubloons (end). Players resolve all “end of campaign” actions (anchor symbol) of crew members still alive in their dens (yes, crew members can be killed). Libertalia allows the internal politics of a pirate crew to play out over three rounds of careful card play. With 30 different crew members, each interacting in different ways, Libertalia looks to find who is best at managing the varying desires and personalities of their cards (errr… crew). The only other component is a board plus some tiles to place on it to vary the effects of the loot tokens. It’s double-sided, printed with player aids and everything is laid out in a neat and effective manner to help facilitate the gameplay. Rules and How it PlaysOn your mention of Skat that is similar to the game 500 (pretty common in New Zealand and Australia and the Northern US and Canada from what I hear - well, at least in the 70s & 80s) where there are... Players all resolve this phase simultaneously. All characters present in their dens use their "night" special actions. The all play mechanic ensures there is very little down time and days and journeys pass like ships in the night. In fact, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest excels at scaling up and down between player counts without adding to the overall game time. In that regard it has cemented itself as one of my go-to games for five and six players. It will still see oodles of plays at three and four too.