“On this planet of Galecrest, sky pirates set sail on the winds seeking journey, treasure, and glory. As an admiral, you command an unlimited and various crew…however so do your rivals crusing different ships within the pirate fleet. Every day the fleet lands on a unique island the place you’ll ship a crew member to gather your share of the loot, hoping they’ll return to spice up your rising group of characters.”
Such is the flavour textual content as you dive into piratey journey in Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest.
The unique Libertalia board sport was revealed 10 years in the past (2012) and now there’s a brand new ship on the seas (or within the sky – as is the case with the brand new theme).
Stonemaier Video games just lately launched this revised and expanded version of Libertalia with new paintings, 40 characters per participant, a popularity system, deluxe loot tokens, and a solo mode.
We owned the unique Libertalia and offered it a number of years in the past in considered one of our sport purges. Now that we’ve performed the brand new Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, will it meet the destiny of the unique and discover one other dwelling? Or will it discover a everlasting spot in our sport closet?
Let’s dive in and see…
The objective in Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is to be the wealthiest sky pirate. Gamers acquire wealth as they loot treasure and items throughout 3 voyages.
The overall stream of the sport is that every day of a voyage gamers concurrently choose a personality card from their hand to play. As soon as revealed, they’re positioned on the island from lowest to highest and their daytime skills are resolved in ascending order. Then in descending order, gamers gather loot and use any character nightfall skills – after which all characters go to their participant’s ship. Then evening skills activate.
On the finish of every voyage, gamers activate any anchor skills and rating loot and doubloons (then discard them). Gamers preserve any non-played characters of their palms for the following voyage however these of their ships are discarded. A brand new voyage begins as gamers add extra characters to their palms to play on.
Now if you need extra particulars…
Arrange
To arrange the sport, gamers first select the facet of the board they wish to play – Calm or Stormy – with the distinction being completely different loot skills.
Every participant will get a set of 40 character playing cards (of their chosen colour), a scoring dial, and a graveyard tile. Loot tokens are randomly drawn from the bag and positioned on the Day areas for the voyage – every day house will get loot tokens equal to the variety of gamers. The coloured popularity disks are randomly positioned on the popularity observe and gamers take the doubloons listed beneath their popularity marker.
One participant then shuffles their character deck and randomly attracts 6 character playing cards. All different gamers retrieve those self same quantity character playing cards from their very own deck. Thus, each participant has the identical 6 characters in hand to start out the sport.
Recreation play
The sport is performed over 3 voyages that every include days. The primary voyage is 4 days and the following voyages every improve by 1 day.
On every day, gamers concurrently choose a personality card from their hand. They reveal them on the similar time after which place them in ascending order on the Island portion of the sport board. If matching characters are performed, the participant with the upper popularity (primarily based on the popularity observe) locations their character to the suitable.
Beginning with the leftmost character and getting into ascending order, every participant prompts their character’s Daytime potential.
Then beginning with the rightmost character, every participant with a personality on the island features a Loot token from that day’s house. Then if that participant’s character or the loot token they take has a Nightfall potential, they carry it out. If that participant’s character remains to be on the island, they take it and place it of their ship (space in entrance of the participant).
After every participant has activated their characters on the island, any loot remaining on that day is put again within the bag.
Then all gamers concurrently activate all evening skills of characters of their ships.
If gamers must discard considered one of their characters, they’re positioned face down on their graveyard tile.
Gamers then repeat this course of for the following day of the voyage.
On the finish of every voyage, gamers activate anchor skills on each their loot tokens and characters of their ships.
Gamers then improve their rating dial by the variety of doubloons they’ve gained that voyage. Then everybody discards all their doubloons. And except particularly acknowledged on a personality or loot, gamers put all loot tokens again within the bag and all characters of their ship onto their graveyard. All character playing cards in a participant’s hand stay of their hand.
On the finish of the primary and second voyage, gamers reset for the following voyage. This consists of setting out loot tokens, gaining doubloons primarily based on their location on the popularity observe, and including extra character playing cards to their palms. One participant randomly attracts 6 new characters from their deck and all different gamers once more retrieve those self same numbered characters to their palms. Thus, the identical 6 characters are added to all gamers’ palms. (However which characters every participant carried over in hand from the prior voyage could differ.)
On the finish of the third voyage, gamers evaluate their rating dials to find out the richest sky pirate and winner of the sport!
Can the entire household take pleasure in Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest?
Whereas the final sport play of Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest could be very easy to know, there are numerous nuances within the sport that makes it a sport greatest fitted to youngsters and above.
And for this older crew, it’s these very nuances that makes the sport so enjoyable to play!
Everybody begins out with the exact same 6 characters they will select from. However relying on what loot tokens are out on every day, and what you suppose the opposite gamers are going to play, all the things will change after that first day of the primary voyage.
Timing may be vital and second guessing is par for the course. Plus, your greatest laid plans can go awry in a short time as quickly as one other participant will get simply forward of you in play order, grabs a saber, and eliminates your character from the island.
And each sport will play out utterly otherwise due to the intensive selection within the sport!
That selection is tremendous evident within the shear variety of character playing cards – every with its distinctive skills. And that’s actually what the sport is all about – utilizing the character skills as greatest you possibly can to maneuver into the lead with probably the most doubloons.
There are 40 character playing cards and over the course of 1 sport, gamers will solely play with 18 of these characters (6 new characters added to gamers’ palms for every voyage). Think about the variety of potential combos of blending all these skills!
We additionally love how every participant carries over to the following voyage any characters remaining of their hand. So though everybody will add in the identical new 6 characters to their hand, every participant’s choices will nonetheless be distinctive to them for the following voyage.
The 40 character skills differ a lot – granting doubloons primarily based on sure circumstances, getting further loot, eliminating different characters from the island (or their proprietor’s ship), gaining again characters out of your graveyard, shifting round on the popularity observe, copying different skills, and way more.
Plus, when these actions set off performs into all of your decisions. Do they activate at Daytime, Nightfall, or Evening? Or have they got an Anchor potential that prompts on the finish of a voyage? And a few have mixture of every of these timings!
One other little bit of selection comes within the type of the loot tokens set out every day.
The random mixture of loot obtainable will issue into which characters you select to play on which days. For the reason that assortment of the loot goes from the best numbered card to the bottom, if there’s one thing you actually need, you’ll wish to play a better card. However will that mess together with your different plans of what you possibly can acquire from taking part in a unique card first?
Additionally, don’t neglect to issue by which playing cards you suppose the opposite gamers are going to play. As a result of perhaps you possibly can mess with their plans on the similar time. Oh, the alternatives!
If that weren’t sufficient selection, throw within the choice to play with the Stormy facet of the sport board – the place the loot token powers are ratcheted up a notch. Plus, the sport additionally consists of loot tiles that gamers can use to cowl over the loot potential areas on both facet of the board. This implies you possibly can combine and match whichever loot powers you wish to play with every sport!
One other great point the sport has going for it’s that as much as 6 individuals can play. And because it’s a simultaneous-selection sport, including extra gamers doesn’t add way more to the size of play. Plus, issues get actually fascinating when there are 6 pirates vying for loot.
We additionally actually like the brand new paintings. The unique sport was typical, pirate paintings with darkish colours and sinister-looking characters. Nevertheless, the paintings on this revised model offers off a enjoyable and lighthearted vibe. And we actually like that method.
As with most Stonemaier Video games board video games, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest additionally has a solo mode. Solo mode in board video games isn’t of curiosity to us, so we are able to’t give our opinion of how effectively it performs. However when you like solo mode in your video games, that’s one other facet to look into with Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest.
How does Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest rating on our “Let’s Play Once more” sport meter?
We actually like this new, revised model of Libertalia. And because it’s scoring so excessive on our “let’s play once more” sport meter, it’s going to be a keeper in our sport assortment!
It’s a enjoyable sport with a lot selection within the combos of the characters and loot, that each sport performs out otherwise. And the character of the sport additionally performs out otherwise relying on the individuals we’re taking part in with. Which we’d utterly count on as a result of with the simultaneous choice throughout every day of each voyage.
When you like video games with numerous participant interplay and nice selection, then we extremely advocate getting a duplicate of Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest!
The Board Recreation Household wish to thank Stonemaier Video games for a evaluation copy of Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest.
