Today I have something special for you – a pirate game! Hunt for Blackbeard is published by Fort Circle Games and designed by Volko Ruhnke, based on the true events of 1718 when the infamous pirate was finally captured. This is a two player game and it has to be, because the whole design turns on hidden information: one of you sails as Blackbeard, the other commands the hunters sent to find him. Beautifully produced, and I will call out one thing I always appreciate from Fort Circle – they pack in plenty of spares in case something gets lost.
The game runs over four turns. Each turn the hunters draw an informant tile while Blackbeard draws one act of piracy and one pirate’s life tile, laying out the two paths he can pursue – the illegal one and the legal one. He wins by filling in more than half of them and surviving, because if the two sides ever meet and one wins the fight, that fight settles the whole game. The best thing in the box is the bluffing: sighting markers show where Blackbeard has been, so you can sail in, double back and slip out another way, leaving a trail that points your opponent at a stretch of coast you have already left. I should also mention the learn to play book – one of the better ones I have seen, and the right place to start. Closing your eyes for your opponent does get cumbersome over an evening, which is exactly why the digital implementation on Rally the Troops suits this game so well.
Regular readers know how closely I follow Volko Ruhnke’s work – Falling Sky and Fire in the Lake from the COIN series, Almoravid from Levy & Campaign. I also had the pleasure of discussing this very game with him in my interview with Volko Ruhnke. And look closely at the sighting markers here and you will start to see where the ideas behind Coast Watchers came from.
Below I am presenting the game components, giving also a quick overview of the rules and key design features:
Enjoy the material!