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

Product Information

The all play mechanic ensures there is very little down time and days and journeys pass like ships in the night. At the end of a voyage, anchor abilities are also simultaneously activated by loot tokens and characters on your ship. I see you mention PostNord regarding Denmark and we also have PostNord in Norway, but it got delivered with DHL. Since all players will hold the same group of cards, ties will occur regularly, and these are broken by the game’s reputation track. By the time you’ve set up the main board, your player boards, the card markets, that expansion board, the novelty bus made out of pewter, and lord know what else, you need a fricking huge table most of the time.

After the tension of waiting for the other players, you go up the scale and back down again, scrabbling to try and work out what the cascade of powers is going to be and what loot you’re going to secure.The original Libertalia has been on my wish list for some time, and so glad to see a new version is coming out by Stonemaier. Now his tastes lean more toward midweight and above euros, but he often mixes in family-weight games to cleanse his palate. Understandably, a lot of people prefer the gritty graphics of the original but I think the new aesthetic is cohesive and captures the imagination well. From the outside it looks like it would work just fine using the pre-printed loot tiles on either side. Similarly, the Automa gains loot tokens whilst also activating any of their special abilities as dictated by the solo specific loot tiles at the bottom of the board.

The calm side is less aggressive, while the stormy side is more competitive and will appeal to fans of “take that” style games.That’s not to say the YouTube teach wasn’t good, far from it, but it meant I knew how to play before reading the rules. Libertalia’s imperfections are small enough that I have no problem admitting that I’m being nit-picky when I point them out.

What I’m trying to get across here, despite my poor Tube analogy, is the constant indecision and mind-reading attempts you’ll go through. After that’s resolved, you go back along the cards in the opposite direction for the dusk phase, activating any cards with the dusk logo, and choosing tiles from the booty pile.The artwork is completely revised and, as I said earlier, I like the two sides of the board reflecting the gameplay.

The only thing that isn’t obviously better is the art and—given the subjective nature of art—even that’s debatable. All players secretly pick a crew card to play and reveal them, aligning them from left to right from lowest rank to highest. In a game filled to the brim with colourful illustrations and graphical flourishes (even the cardboard money tokens are nice), having plain hexagonal wooden blocks just sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the components. Alongside any dusk abilities, players will choose a loot token from the matching day on the board too, activating any associated actions with these. Prior to learning the solo mode, I played numerous games at 2- and 3-player counts, and to my delight the automa was eerily/amazingly similar to a 3-player game.

Or maybe they should just rely on the abilities of the crewmembers who rank lower to get a guaranteed reward? This caused situations where I was unable to target a player in the lead because they weren’t seated adjacent to me. On the flip side, the lowest reputation gives the most bonus money, but reducing it further costs you money.