They are brightly colored and hefty plastic square tokens that have a great tactile feel, but also draw your eyes to them when they are on the board. The 40 character abilities vary so much – granting doubloons based on certain conditions, getting extra loot, eliminating other characters from the island (or their owner’s ship), gaining back characters from your graveyard, moving around on the reputation track, copying other abilities, and much more. Since the collection of the loot goes from the highest numbered card to the lowest, if there’s something you really want, you’ll want to play a higher card.

But if you like solo mode in your games, that’s another aspect to look into with Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest. Honestly, it is quite remarkable how well the solitaire experience of Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest manages to mimic playing the game against human opponents (more on that in just a bit) which is a testament to the quality of the design work that Lines J. But the core gameplay (which works so well) is there and this mode is great for learning the characters and finding synergy between shipmates.That is often where most of the fun in the game is: The intricacies of predicting the plays of others and doing one’s best to undermine it. If a character ends up being directly to the left of it, the other player gets to discard a loot token before they get to choose. However, there is a second automa thrown in that doesn’t do anything except play a card purely for its rank to keep you from gaming the real automa. But depending on what loot tokens are out on each day, and what you think the other players are going to play, everything will change after that first day of the first voyage.

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. In fact, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest excels at scaling up and down between player counts without adding to the overall game time. The general flow of the game is that each day of a voyage players simultaneously select a character card from their hand to play. e., a number between 1 and 40) and some type of special ability, which are broken into four types: Daytime, Dusk, Night, and Anchor.Even without an original game to compare it to, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is an exceptional production. Players send crew members to an island of riches every round, and that simple choice is at the heart of the game. Even better is the option to mix and match the different sets of abilities to create unique combinations each time.

And yet, despite all players in Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest playing each round with the exact same cards, the games are wildly thought-provoking, simply intelligent, and downright fun. You might activate a card that lets you move up the reputation track, remove certain items from the booty space for this turn, or maybe even swap your card out for another. Like the Automa abilities, the loot tokens will generally give Automa a lot of money (not as much on the stormy side) as it will always choose the money option (rather than saving a character with a hook or discarding a character with a saber). The original Libertalia has long been my favorite action selection game so I was eager to get the new version to the table and I can happily say that nearly every aspect of Winds of Galecrest is superior to the original.You would think that squaring off against someone who plays with open cards would be a degenerate experience in terms of difficulty but because the Pilferer is the first one to draw from the solo deck of cards you will never know exactly which one of the target priority rows the Automa will activate. 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. Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is a new game that uses the core concepts of its predecessor as a launching point for new mechanisms, new balancing, and even some new species for the pirates. Libertalia takes a step back from this trend and packs a game which you can easily fit on your kitchen table.

The simplicity in the design of Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest belies the depth of strategy inherent in the game. Some loot tokens are detrimental, the Hook, for example, could make you discard the character you used, meaning they wouldn’t go to your ship. It’s probably not an entry level game, in the same way as Wingspan isn’t for me, mainly due to learning the game in the first instance. Higher ranking crew members get the first pick of the treasure, while lower ranking ones get to activate their abilities first. The calm side is less aggressive, while the stormy side is more competitive and will appeal to fans of “take that” style games.If that player’s character is still on the island, they take it and place it in their ship (area in front of the player). It’s a streamlined, smooth experience, which means that you can be all done inside an hour, even with five or six players.