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

Product Information

Another note about Automa is that it likes money and will gain a boatload of money throughout the game. A lot of the regular character abilities are translated into gaining coins (which makes sense given that this is the likely outcome when playing against other people), which definitely makes the game more challenging. I was only playing on the regular difficulty (Automa starts on 0 coins) and I’ve only beat it twice (once sunny, once stormy). While I’ll mostly be judging Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest on its own merit, I will spend some time looking at how it sizes up to the original. Also—and this is important—I promise not to make a single pirate joke over the course of this review. Gameplay Overview:

I really appreciate that this is a fantastically entertaining game that I can play with my two elder sons, or non-gaming enthusiasts, and seasoned board gamers, alike. They will all understand it, and genuinely be able to compete. It’s probably not an entry level game, in the same way as Wingspan isn’t for me, mainly due to learning the game in the first instance. However, it certainly is a gateway-plus game that will remain in most board-gamers’ collection for all the right reasons.Pirate games need treasure, and Libertalia gives treasure collection its own phase. Your crew’s abilities will be played from lowest value to highest (typically higher numbers have stronger effects), but you collect booty from highest to lowest (assuming your crew survived the day). 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. Freed Slave (12): Gain 1 doubloon for each character in your den with a rank higher than 12 (night).

The simplicity in the design of Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest belies the depth of strategy inherent in the game. Players can never be totally confident that playing the highest-ranking pirate from their hand will get them the best loot token. Also complicating things is that players know what cards everyone else has access to, so the game becomes a mind game of anticipating the moves of others. “I know that they know that I have the card that they think I know that they’ll play.” That is often where most of the fun in the game is: The intricacies of predicting the plays of others and doing one’s best to undermine it. Through all the phases players are trying to obtain doubloons. The player with the most doubloons will win. Doubloons are scored at the end of each campaign, after which players will start the next campaign with 10 doubloons, just like the start of the game. With the recent reprint of Libertalia, Stonemaier Games has also provided a new Automa for solo play, which is what this review will cover. I’m quite new to the concept of solo board games but I’m really enjoying it. It's great for when I’m desperate to play a game but can’t gather enough people. Before Setting SailI would’ve really liked a further card clarification booklet. It’s not essential, but it would’ve been a “nice to have” especially at two player.

Governor's Daughter (25): Gain 6 doubloons if only you have the Governor's Daughter. Otherwise, lose 3 doubloons (end). The game scales well between 2 and 6 players, really coming alive with three or more, but we play it often just the two of us and it gets rather heated, in a very good way. Mutineer (13): Discard the character with the lowest rank in your den (not mutineer) and gain 2 doubloons (night). I watched a playthrough of the original Libertalia on TableTop a while ago, and I was intrigued. Unfortunately, it was widely unavailable so I waited a long while in the hopes it might come up. Recently I discovered it on Board Game Arena, which is a significant part of the story of how the second edition came to be, and I enjoyed the gameplay but there were a few issues I had. This is a game that has very simple rules, and can be learned in just a few minutes. At the same time, there’s a lot of complexity and strategy in the card interaction, so players experienced with the game have a distinct advantage over new players.The publisher suggests ages 14+, but I think this game can be played by sharper 12 year olds with good result. Each set of 3 treasure maps is worth 12 doubloons. Sets of 1 or 2 treasure maps are worthless as they are incomplete. Night abilities happen at the end of every turn where that character still resides on your ship, which is a fancy way of saying “the table in front of you.” The art in Libertalia is telling you how good the game is, and it's not lying. This is a really smart game. It's tense and surprising and fun. What could be a simple game of blind bidding for the best prizes becomes a cutthroat power play with more depth than you thought you were going to find.