Of Pirates and Gods but no turtles

Last night C and E introduced D A P and me to Libertalia a card game of pirates and plunder. Each pirate has a deck of 30 characters some of which will be available during the game to help you claim plunder and mess with the other pirates.
The game is played over 3 weeks (turns). At the start of the first week 9 characters are drawn at random and each player can use those characters from their deck. During the first 6 days of the week plunder is available (which includes some negative stuff such as curses) and each player secretly assigns one of their characters to each day to compete for the good stuff. These characters also have special abilities which can trigger during the day or night phase or at the end of the week if they are still alive (as some of the treasures are sabers which allows the person who took it to kill a character belonging to the pirate on either side of them).On the 7th day of the week plunder is added up and cashed in less the negative stuff and all pirates advance their vp track by the amount of doubloons they have accumulated.
This is repeated in the following two weeks with 6 additional characters becoming available each week. As each pirate chooses 6 from 9 each week the hands begin do diverge after the first week.

In our game E got off to a flying start with over 40 doubloons at the end of the week. In contrast D had a disastrous round failing to score at all. In the following two weeks E ran into a no of problems including having some of her valuable characters killed plus having a rake of curses dumped on her. This enabled C to race into a large lead and he was never caught even though P made a valiant attempt. D also came good in the two weeks and would have been close only for what happened in week one. Everyone really enjoyed the game and as with most games would feel they would become better Pirates the more they got the chance to loot and plunder. I expect we will see this game on the table on a regular basis


The second game up was Kemet a game by the designer of Cyclades and with a not too dissimilar theme. Basically everyone is a God and is trying to outdo the other Gods primarily by having their loyal human believers kill each other in battle build pyramids and control temples. As your pyramids are built you get access to powerful cards including mythical creatures which improve your battle and movement capabilities.

You gain victory points primarily by winning battles as an attacker. There are other ways of gaining the necessary vps including controlling temples sacrificing humans in a certain location completing your pyramids plus through some of the power cards.
This where the turtles come into it you just can’t be one! From the start there is a mad rush to gain the power cards and to create armies in order to gain vps. Each turn you have 5 actions taken one at a time by each God. The situation is very fluid as for example you can move your troops from one of your pyramids to any obelisk by teleporting them and as each temple has an obelisk the opportunity for surprise attacks is epic.

In the game itself that was played there was a rush in the early stages to get the power cards. There are 4 levels of these over 3 general categories and they correspond to the 3 pyramids which can be built by each God. In order to gain the power card you must have built the pyramid to the appropriate level plus pay the required no of prayer points which are the games currency. Very quickly contests for temples and battle vps erupted all over the place. E spent time early on sacrificing her poor followers at the Sanctuary of all the Gods to claim a vp until some of the other Gods came to the conclusion that this was a good idea too and more battles took place there. There is an interesting twist in that when you win or lose a battle you may sacrifice your remaining troops to gain prayer points. Why might a victor do this you might ask well D cottoned on to the fact that when you win the battle as an attacker and gain your vp you are better off sacrificing your remaining troops on occasion to avoid them being attacked by a stronger God who might gain an easy vp by defeating them. D played a very impressive game and won well in the end. Again I think all the Gods enjoyed the game even if their followers did not!


Ed note :The names of the Gods and Pirates have been omitted to protect the guilty.

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