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

Product Information

After a crew claims a booty and resolves their dusk action (red sun symbol) - if any - they are immediately placed in their player's den before the next booty is claimed (which is important if someone is claiming a sabre later.) If you enjoyed the original Libertalia or like games with lots of interaction give Libertalia Winds of Galecrest a try. It plays differently every time you play and if you don’t mind a bit of chaos is fun every time too.

The life of a pirate is free and open, and that’s reflected in Merchants and Marauders, an open world adventure board game where you’re able to choose your own path to victory. While historians probably still baulk at it, it’s easily the most real history-inspired game on our list. Once everyone is ready, the players reveal their chosen crew members and place them on the cargo ship from lowest on the left to the highest on the right. Overall, Sea of Thieves is a tad complex to set up and to teach. But its open world approach allows players to get invested fast. It feels great to play, and from cursed dice rolls to ‘gotcha’ card play, is full of little moments that are sure to make you and up to three friends laugh (in a pirate-y accent, of course, aha harr).

Table Presence

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. Players all resolve this phase simultaneously. All characters present in their dens use their "night" special actions.

I’ve played Libertalia with casual, social, and avid gamers, and all have enjoyed it and wanted to play again. As long as the theme is acceptable, family gamers should enjoy the game, while it may leave power and strategy gamers looking for a bit more.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.

Two more voyages will follow, with six more characters drawn into the hand, new loot placed out and doubloons gained. At the end of the third voyage, count up your money and the highest total wins. Final Thoughts The game takes place over 3 campaigns. During each campaign the players will resolve 6 days of looting (from the sunrise phase through the night phase) and 1 day of rest during which their riches will be totaled. This will also activate if it has a dusk power, such as the sabre. Finally, dusk turns into night and any night-time powers from characters in your ship will trigger. These will trigger every time you enter the night phase on your voyage, so keep these in mind! Once you have completed every day (and night) of your voyage, you have returned to shore.It can also be random as you play crew members with the best of plans that get derailed by other players’ actions. If you are someone that does not like disruption in your board games take note. I’ll start off with what has changed between the first and second editions. The first big thing you’ll notice is the art style. The slightly darker pirate cover has been replaced with a much brighter and heroic style, with the gritty characters replaced with anthropomorphic animals. To me, that’s a great way to change perspectives. At the start of the first campaign, all the Player's Den players will have in hand the same 9 characters. The artwork is striking and inspiring. Pirate genre games come with their own specific set of thematic expectations. But the art and graphic work on this game propels you into the world of piratical debauchery. Each character is expertly rendered, and inspires more thematic game play. The components themselves are sturdy and for the most part, functional.

First, day abilities are resolved in rank of lowest to highest. Secondly dusk abilities are resolved from right to left. Alongside any dusk abilities, players will choose a loot token from the matching day on the board too, activating any associated actions with these. Finally night actions are activated, these may be found on recruited characters on each player’s ship in front of them. This process is repeated for each day of the voyage. After the final day of a journey, each player resolves any anchor abilities. They also stash treasure away for safety in their treasure chest scorer and discards characters, coins and loot tokens from their ship. Players should have in hand only the 3 character cards which they haven't played during the previous campaign (some characters played may modify the number of cards kept). Each player gets 10 doubloons (1 of value 5 and 5 of value 1). The remaining doubloons are set aside and form the bank.

Jamaica

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. Pirate-themed games are notoriously addictive, they say once ye lose yer first hand ye get hooked! Groan-worthy pirate jokes aside, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is the latest game to be released by Stonemaier Games. As a publisher of such massively popular games as Wingspan, Viticulture and Scythe there is always an air of expectation around any of their releases. Libertalia’s strength is in Mori’s design. With each player beginning the game with the exact same cards, emphasis is on timing and card choice as opposed to player resources and random card draws. The 30 different card effects are well thought out and work well in combination with each other. The resulting card interactions, (and consequently, player interactions) provide an entertaining and compelling journey toward Pirate retirement.