Extraordinary Adventures: Pirates board game review

Ahoy mateys!

It’s time to hit the Caribbean, set sail, and race other pirate crews from port to port toward the Spanish Treasure Galleon at Trinidad in Extraordinary Adventures: Pirates board game by Forbidden Games.

But it’s not necessarily the first to Trinidad that gets the most spoils.

Along the way, you’ll guide your multiple ships to plunder merchant vessels and stop in ports to exchange your cargo for valuable treasures and recruit more crew. The additional crew will help your ships sail faster and pull off additional feats.

Are you ready for the adventure?

 

How to play Extraordinary Adventures: Pirates

Extraordinary Adventures: Pirates is a deck-building, hand-management, race through the Caribbean.

There are 3 routes through the Caribbean waters and players will have one ship traversing each route. The routes include Merchant ship locations with cargo and Port cities where players can exchange claimed cargo for treasure and add more crew cards to their decks.

Players will score points for their treasure and for where they finish on each of the routes. The player with the most points wins.

 

Set Up

Each player begins the game with a personal deck of 10 cards, 3 of their ships on the board — one at each route starting location, and one ship in front of them (so players remember which player controls which color of ships). Players shuffle their deck and draw 5 cards to their hand.

There are also 2 other decks of cards in the game — Merchant Deck and Port Deck. All cards have the same back, so when added to a player’s deck, face down they all look the same. The Merchant Deck cards all show a Gold Doubloon in the upper corner and are shuffled and placed in a face down pile in the corner of the board. The Port Deck cards show a Port symbol in the corner and are shuffled into their own deck next to the board. Three of these cards are set face up.

Each Merchant ship location has a number of red dots next to it. At the start of the game, players randomly draw and place that number of cargo crates at the locations.

The Treasure Tiles are all shuffled and placed face up next to the board (3 times the number of players plus 1). These are all available to be claimed while at a Port city if a player has the right mix of cargo.

 

Game Play

On a player’s turn, they’ll play 3 cards from their hand and move their ships. When their turn is over, they’ll place those 3 cards in their personal discard pile and draw back up to 5 cards in hand. When they’ve run out of cards to draw, they’ll shuffle their discard pile to create a new draw pile and keep going.

When playing a card, the player can choose to use the Movement portion or the special Action portion. Some special Actions are used and discarded normally while others may stay active and still others may be a once per game ability.

If being used as Movement, the player moves one of their ships up to the number of spaces indicated on the bottom of the card. If a pirate ship stops to plunder a Merchant ship or visit a Port, the ship’s movement ends.

When a player plunders a Merchant ship, they take all the cargo crates at the location. They also draw the top card of the Merchant deck and place it in their personal discard pile. Once a ship is plundered, no cargo crates or crew may be drawn from that space.

When a ship arrives at a Port location for the first time, that player may select one of the 3 face up Port cards or the top face down card and add it to their deck by placing it in their discard pile. They may also exchange any cargo crates they have for Treasure Tiles. The player may claim as many Treasure Tiles as they can afford in matching crates.

Play continues from player to player until one player lands one of the ships at Trinidad — which immediately ends the game. That player may claim one Treasure Tile for free from those available.

Players then total up their victory points.

Players gain victory points from the Treasure Tiles they’ve claimed and for where each of their ships finish on each route. In the upper corner of the board is a table that shows the number of victory points players get for each ship’s final position. Players also get 1 victory point for every 2 crates they still have.

The player with the most points wins the game.

 

Advanced Play

There’s also an Advanced way to play the game for those who are particularly adventurous.

Before the Pirates board game begins, players place their 4 colored Pirate Meeples in Ports on the board. During the game, when a ship first reaches a port with a pirate, that player can take the Pirate Meeple. If it’s an opponent’s pirate, the player will earn 1 additional victory point at the end of the game.

If it’s one of their own pirates, and they purchase a Treasure Tile on that turn, they place the meeple on the purchased tile and will earn double the victory points at the end of the game. Otherwise, they just put the meeple in front of them and will gain 1 additional victory point at the end of the game.

 

Can the whole family enjoy playing Extraordinary Adventures: Pirates board game?

Extraordinary Adventures: Pirates is a fun game for a wide range of players at various ages. And it’s pretty easy to understand and play.

That being said, there’s definitely nice amount of strategy involved in the game because of the various decisions to make throughout. The game box says ages 8+ but this is one case where we can’t imagine a group of 8 year olds figuring out this game and playing it on their own. So that seems low to us.

However, that’s not to say that your kids couldn’t learn how to play and enjoy playing it with you. As long as they can read and understand the text on the cards, they should be good to go.

The trick in playing (like many games) is figuring out how to adjust your play based on what the other players are doing.

And this is where all the fun is!

Just moving down a track on the board with movement cards wouldn’t be very fun. But in Pirates, you’ve got 3 routes to choose from when playing cards. You don’t have to designate 1 card per ship. You could use all 3 cards for one ship if you want and really blast it ahead.

And that may be very advantageous to do because the cargo crates at Merchant ship locations only go to the ship who reaches them first. Once they’re gone, the ships that follow on that route are out of luck.

But that doesn’t mean those who race out to the front are going to get everything. Mainly because stopping at a location ends your movement. So opponent ships will / may leap-frog each other along the routes.

Yet that’s only one thing we love about the game.

We also love that it’s a deck-builder game — where we get more (and better) crew to add to our deck to give us better options ahead. The only cost to add cards to your deck is stopping at a Port. Once there, you can claim one of the 3 face up cards or the top face down card of the Port deck.

And it’s nice that cards you don’t use on a turn will stay in your hand for your next turn. You’ll have 5 cards in your hand and choose 3 to play. But you’ll keep the remaining 2 to be part of your choices for what’s ahead. That helps mitigate the luck of the card draw and makes for good strategizing on when to play which cards.

We also like the mix of special abilities on some of the cards. There’s a large variety in the game and they come in very handy. So sometimes we’ll make a choice to hurry a ship to a Port just so we can claim one of the face up Port cards before another player does.

At the outset of the game, the cargo crates are randomly placed on the Merchant ship locations. So it’s completely random on the mix of crates available and in which order along the routes. Which makes it nice that all Treasure Tiles are available for purchase when you hit a Port rather than a select few at a time. Because if those were limited, you may not have the right mix of cargo to buy those available.

But in Pirates, all Treasure Tiles are available to grab right from the start. Astute players will try to determine which route will offer the best possibilities for gaining the colored cargo crates that will purchase the most valuable Treasure. And those routes may become the most contested that game.

Then there’s the element of scoring victory points for where your 3 ships finish on each of their routes. The large victory points you can gain for being the first to Trinidad and ending the game is very tempting. But if you’ve only got one ship way out ahead on a route, it most likely means your other 2 ships are way behind on their routes. Which in turns means less points for them.

Yep, that’s another element we love about the board game — giving yet another thing to consider when racing through the Caribbean!

And to top it all off, Extraordinary Adventures: Pirates can be played by 6 players — which means our whole family can play together!

The only downside is that with 6 players, the games lasts a bit longer than we like. That’s mainly because even though a player’s turn only consists of playing 3 cards, the state of the board can change so much between your turn with 5 other players (meaning 15 other ships). So you may have a plan on which cards you’ll play when your turn comes around. But depending on which ships the other players move, you’ll most likely have to adjust your plan a bit once your turn does come up.

That being said, that’s also what we enjoy about the game. So the length with 6 players isn’t as much as a downside as it could be because we’re having fun the whole time. (And yes, there’s plenty of table talk throughout the game with all the jockeying for position on each route.)

And we should also mention that we love the components!

The ship models are awesome. The cargo crates are cool. The card art is a fun style. And the game board art is terrifically detailed!

 

How does Extraordinary Adventures: Pirates score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

Extraordinary Adventures: Pirates board game scores high on our “let’s play again” game meter not because it’s a quick game to play but because of the dynamic game play.

There are plenty of choices throughout the game that keeps everyone engaged in the game even when it’s not their turn.

The deck-building aspect with a board for movement and racing reminds us a lot of Clank! But Pirates has it’s own unique feel and ways to gain victory points that means we can enjoy both. Plus, Pirates lets all 6 of us play the game together!

If you’re looking for a fun racing, deck-building game with a fun theme that can play up to 6, then add Extraordinary Adventures: Pirates to your list.

We’d like to thank Forbidden Games for a review copy of Extraordinary Adventures: Pirates.