How To Play: Pirates

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Pirates is Stefan Dorra’s 2021 Queen Games design. Build boarding parties from stacks of pirate discs, raid ships and ports, and pay your crew from the spoils. This edition adds mutiny, the Black Spot and a scoring system that rewards the combination of ship and port symbols.

Setup

Each player has five pirates in their colour. Prepare the board, raid display, money and artefacts using the setup in the 2021 rulebook. Do not use Seeräuber’s older scoring rules for this edition.

Your turn: four choices

Build a crew: place one of your pirates, or a stack you control, on an opponent’s pirate or stack, then bring the combined crew in front of you.
Raid: use a sufficiently large stack to capture a displayed ship or port. Your top pirate is the captain; collect the reward, allocate the artefacts and pay the crew.
Mutiny: hand an opponent the Black Spot, promote one of your pirates in their stack and raid immediately. The crew’s pay is doubled.
Buy back a pirate: if you have none available, recover one from another player’s stack and use it to form a crew. Mutiny is the other option in this situation.

Scoring

Ship wheels earn points at a rate determined by your anchors. Remaining ducats and artefact majorities add points. Holding the Black Spot costs ten points unless you defeated the sea monster. Use the rulebook’s player-count scoring table and final-round instructions.

First-game tips

Before a raid, calculate what remains after the crew is paid. A larger party may reach a better target, but its wages can swallow the reward. Look at your ships and ports together when choosing what to capture: the symbols contribute to the same final calculation.

Rules and further reading

Read our Pirates review for a closer look at the game.