Review of Pirates Of The Spanish Main
Comments (0) I was actually surprised to find out this game came out in 2004. It means I was in my mid-20s when it came out. But it still looked like one of those games that looked too good to be true, like a lot of board games. I guess even before I got into board games via boardgamegeek, I had always been a fan of them. I just had continually been disappointed in them after spending money on them. But now I was an adult, and I wasn’t going to fall for some flashy commercial.
It’s also funny that the Golden Age of Piracy isn’t one of my favorite periods of history. It’s actually rather far down on my list, and I’m eternally annoyed by the popularity of Pirates meaning that they bleed into Medieval Re-encatments. It’s a stretch to even combine pirates and Renaissance Faires. But you really can’t blame them for selling something that’s popular. I guess in the end the reason I have the pirate games I do is because they can be fun with the right group of people. And in the end, historical misgivings aside, who doesn’t want to play a game on the wrong side of the law.
Now I wouldn’t expect anything like Blackbeard or Merchants And Marauders from a constructable card game. During it’s run Pirates ended up with over 12 different releases, which is amazing when you consider it ran from 04 to 09. Although it’s reported that a new Pirates game might appear in 2012, not many specifics have gotten out. It should be noted that my cards seem to be mainly from the original release and from Pirates of the Revolution, a release that added American Ships to the mix (Spanish, French, English and Pirate).
First off, thank god that most of the ships I got were already put together. There’s no way my fat fingers could work putting together these ships without ruining them. I’m never a fan of small parts, but there’s not much that Pirates can do about that considering that even the biggest ships are made from 3 cards. A quick look at Amazon.com shows that the cards aren’t that expensive at the moment, and are probably even cheaper on Ebay. To get together enough ships to play the game at this point is probably cheaper then what most board games cost you.
The game is easy to setup, throw out a bunch of Islands on any flat surface, split up the available ships according to the point level for the game (ships have point levels marked on their cards, you can do two or three big ships, or a bunch of small ships as your fleet) and finally spread out the treasure over the islands. So for example, you can each decide to put in gold worth up to 12 pieces. But each piece can range anywhere from 1 to 5 in value. The winner is the first person to get half of the value of all on map treasure back to his home Island, as limited by his cargo.
Movement is controlled by cards, as ships either move the short side or long side (or both) of a card. Each mast counts as a cannon, and it’s range is limited to either the long or the short side of a card. Roll higher then the number on your mast/cannon and its a hit. For each hit the defender has to remove one mast/cannon. When a ship has no more masts left, it is sunk. It’s relatively simple, and the games come with two of the smallest six sided die you’ll find.
One of the problems comes from using multiple packs of different releases of cards, as each release seemed to add something new to the table. Obviously it’s up to you to decide what to add from each, but it can be annoying having to skim through three different sets of rules for one particular rule. Thankfully you can go to BGG and get one big reference sheet along with illustrated instructions which give a better idea of what ship positions look like for which rules. The illustrations are something the printed rules tended to skimp on.
There are also rules for those looking for a much deeper game. Personally I like the game with some of the additional rules from the Pirates of the Revolution that I had. It seems like a game that could get easily buried with too many rules, or lose some of the fun if you added too much to it. It also seems to go at a pretty good flow currently, I can’t see how adding more to it will help.
In the end it’s a fun quick game that can be played anywhere pretty easily. Other then that though I’d rate M&M and Blackbeard far above it. It will be interesting to see what happens if the new game or the reboot gets released in the next year. There’s a lot to work with here, and it sort of reminds me a bit of Wings Of War. But it’s definitely a kids game, and might be better if you have a family with some young ones around to play it with.
