I was talking with a friend about spending Christmas money and what games to get. He mentioned that a friend of his had recently acquired a collection of Pirates collectable/construable card/minis game and he was thinking of picking some up. I inwardly groaned and tried to think of a way to talk him out of it but I had a rough time coming up with specifics about why it isn’t worth it. I just cautioned him about spending too much on a game he never played and left it at that. It wasn’t until I was talking to him after he had played a couple of games of it that I realized what the real problem with it is.

Pirates, for those who don’t know, is a relative latecomer to the CCG market. Wizkids, the makers of it, came up with a interesting twist by combining a minis game with the CCG distribution method. Pirates ‘cards’ are ships you punch out of the card and assemble. Some of the bigger ones take 2 or 3 cards to fit all the pieces for one ship. They are extremely cool and one of the biggest selling points of the game.

As far as minis games goes, Pirates is very lightweight. The rules are simple; designed to keep the game easy to learn and fast to play. It is intended to be a fast paced, short game that is as close as you can get to a ‘beer & pretzels’ minis game.Pirates has a small identity problem. Most minis games are based around the conflict, Army vs. Army, Mech vs. Mech, Squad vs. Squad, and such. In Pirates the goal of the game is to avoid conflict, explore islands for treasure, and getting that treasure back to your home. In our games we would often set sail with ships designed for war, intending to wipe out the other players’ fleets and then casually go get the remaining treasure. After all, who wants to build this large pirate fleet and then not fire a shot at anyone? I don’t know why we even bothered to seed the islands with treasure. We were much more interested in blowing each other up.

After talking with my friend about his first experience with the game I was finally able to express what is wrong with the game. Pirates is a great game in theory. Looking at the ships you can build, assembling a fleet of mini ships, imagining them in action, it’s all very cool. Unfortunately the reality is that the chaos factor is high in this game and often after the first turn of an engagement one side comes out so far ahead that the other side is ready to quit. Hardly a satisfying game experience. Even if you build a fleet around the treasure hunting premises and try to avoid battle as much as possible, the game can still be disheartening. Each player brings and equal amount of treasure to the game (6 coins totaling 12 pts) which is then randomly seeded around the islands. Now if everyone brings 2s to the table then it is just a matter of getting to more islands than your opponent. The coins do go as high as 7 and if you are bringing special treasure to the table you will need to use some of them. The random distribution of the treasure means that one island could have 3 coins each worth 1 while the other could have 3 coins worth enough to win the game all by themselves. At the start of the game you can usually pick a quarter of the islands that you just won’t be able to get to that game. They are usually on the far side of the enemy’s home island, which means that there is very little chance of you getting to them before he does.

I like the idea of coming up with house rules to make the game more enjoyable, The foremost on my list is breaking the move and fire phases so after movement there could be a simultaneous fire phase. The problem with most house rules is that Pirates is supposed to be a simple game. Adding too many rules would turn it from a cute little pseudo-minis game to a proper minis game at which point we should be playing Renegade Legion: Centurion or something.

Out of the dozen or so games I played I lost only a few. I was lucky enough to get a great killer combo in my packs and although I didn’t use it every game, I used it enough that my friends started getting discouraged. I even stopped playing it, unless they actually told me to use it. Every now and then someone would think they could defeat it and I would pull it out and whup them again. Even if they managed to kill my scary warship I would already have explored several islands and would be close to victory thru treasure acquisition.  

(Just in case any of you that are familiar with the game are curious, here is my killer fleet:

The Harbinger (17pts) crewed with Gaspar Zuan (2pts, all the crew on ship are 1 cheaper) linked with Fidel Zuan (1pt, linked to Gaspar so no space), Genny Gallows (2pts), Genny’s Red Rampage (2pts, linked to Genny Gallows so no space), Helmsman (1pt), Oarsman (0pts, no space), Captain Blackheart (4pts). The total is only 29 points and you have 5 crewmen to sacrifice to Blackheart for extra move & shoot actions without loosing your helmsman. When we played with more points (I let my friends call the point totals) I would stock up on spare crew on cheap ships that would drop off the crew at home for the Harbinger to pick up when running low of ‘fuel’ while the other ships would go treasure hunting.)