In both Art Robbery and Cover Your Assets, players each have a hand of cards that dictates what they’ll be able to claim or steal. If I have a coveted 5 card (or gold card) in my hand, I can play that card to steal the 5 (or gold) sitting on display in your possession. With Cover Your Assets, this mechanism feels like a brainless gotcha game of slap-happy take-that. With Art Robbery, this mechanism reveals itself to be far more calculated, clever, and engaging. This is repeated with each voyage and coins are earned and stashed in the treasure chest. Each voyage lasts a day longer than the previous and six more character cards are added (and combine with characters not played in the previous voyage) until the end of the final voyage. Anchors Away Libertalia is full of little mind games like that. While the bluffing might not be in your face, it’s still there in satisfyingly subtle ways. This progressive asymmetry becomes more and more pronounced with each round as you never play all your cards during a round. Each player will have leftovers when they add six fresh cards, and they likely aren’t the same leftovers you have. Reputation

I don’t normally enjoy the “Take That” mechanism. Also, I find it confrontational when people have decided to spend their time playing with me, but in this game, it works incredibly well with the theme, so everyone knows what to expect. The tactical decisions you make are based on almost complete information. You know what characters your opponent has, how much money they have and what loot items are available. It’s a simple elegant system that not only solves potential hiccups but serves as a solid way to reinforce the game’s strategic potential. Player Count Since every other player has the same cards you do, you can use this perfect information to try and weasel your way into the most effective move. With 40 character cards, any combination is going to have a variety of possibilities that are also affected by which loot tokens are present. Loot tokens are randomized every voyage.

Solo mode

In other words, literally everything that has been changed about the gameplay itself feels like a huge step-up for me. That variety is super evident in the shear number of character cards – each with its unique abilities. And that’s really what the game is all about – using the character abilities as best you can to maneuver into the lead with the most doubloons.

While the game can play well at low player counts, we think Libertalia shines best at player counts of 5-6. We owned the original Libertalia and sold it a few years ago in one of our game purges. Now that we’ve played the new Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, will it meet the fate of the original and find another home? Or will it find a permanent spot in our game closet?At the end of each voyage, players activate anchor abilities on both their loot tokens and characters in their ships. At the end of each voyage, the characters in a player’s ship activate their Anchor abilities. I’m always keen to discover hidden gems in the hobby that have been forgotten or overlooked. And if you’re wondering where the best place is to start digging for gold, you’d be hard pressed to find a better mine than Reiner Knizia’s ludography. Let’s illustrate this with an example. Loot tiles aren’t all equal in value: indeed one, the Relic, costs you points if you collect it. So if there’s a day with a couple of Relic tiles among the loot and you have the rank 5 card Cabin Boy, you might be tempted to play it. The Cabin Boy’s “day” power nets you gold if he’s the leftmost card, which is likely given that he’s rank 5. At “dusk” he stops you from taking any loot which, if it’s a Relic, is quite helpful. So he looks like an easy choice: except all the other players will have a Cabin Boy and they’ll all be thinking the same thing. All of a sudden he’s not likely to be the leftmost card anymore, and you might want to reconsider. Unless all the other players are also thinking that same thing, in which case ... 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.

Libertalia Winds of Galecrest includes new elements that make the game incredibly replayable. Far more so than the original. There are only three loot tokens per day in a two-player game. The Midshipman sets the stage to not only battle for what loot you want, but what loot you can potentially force the other player to take, such as the nasty money-consuming cursed relics. The game feels much more combative at two, but that was a plus for me, and I really enjoy it.First and foremost, the loot tokens have varied abilities that you can choose to alter before each game. The game includes different tiles that change the powers of each token. Simply place a tile over that space and you’ve changed that token’s powers!