Black Fleet Board Game First Impressions

Black Fleet is trading and piracy games are mostly always fun.

This one looks pretty too!

Pirates, merchants, and even the occasional captain of a Navy ship all seek glory and fortune on the Caribbean seas!

This is actually a VERY simple game to play…

You have some face-down cards and you need to earn money to ‘buy’ them to turn them face up. The first player to do this for all their cards wins, Machi Koro style.

You have 2 ships under your control. A Merchant ship and a Pirate ship which is each doing their own thing. All the players also have joint control of 2 Navy ships which are Purple and Yellow.

On your turn, you play a card…

Cards

This allows you to move 3 ships in any order on your turn. The cards are all the same except the values for movement change

The top number means you can move the Purple Navy ship one space and obviously if it’s Yellow you move the yellow one. You use the Navy ships to try and capture opponents’ Pirate ships which will get you some money and hopefully stop them from buying treasure.

The middle number is the number of spaces you can move your Pirate ship. You’re trying to attack your opponent’s Merchant ships. When you do you gain a bit of money and steal a cargo cube.

These cubes can be buried on certain island spaces on the board for the money, but more importantly, you’re reducing the income of one of your opponent’s Merchant ships.

The last number is to move those Merchant ships. They start in a port loaded with 3 cubes and need to sail to other ports to sell goods. The further away from the port, the more you get (2 or 3 per cube). Hopefully, you have 3 cubes when you get there but Pirate attacks may have relieved you of some cargo on the way.

Ports

When you reach a port and sell the cubes, you load up on goods from that port and off you go again.

The different coloured cubes represent different types of goods… Thematically it’s good but generally, it doesn’t matter.

This port, for example, has Sugar.

The bottom icon on the card with the sailor shows you how many action cards you draw… or discard.

These can be used at any time and have a wide range of abilities including using a tidal wave to jump over an island 😀

The game continues until someone has flipped over all their cards then players take even turns. If two people do it in the same round whoever has the most gold leftover will win.

Black Fleet Summary

These cards all have the same backs but once revealed they all have different abilities. You can look at them first and flip them over in any order so you can pick which abilities you activate.

This is a very good game and another win by Space Cowboys making it 4 games out of 4 for me. (Including Elysium, Splendor and T.I.M.E Stories)

It’s very easy to take your turn, and the art and components are really nice it’s mean without being frustrating.

Having the different action cards and different ability cards every game is great for re-playability too.

I enjoyed it a lot and although Merchants & Marauders is more my thing, this is a lighter and fun version of essentially that same piratey thing.

I hope to play Black Fleet more in the future.

Jesta ThaRogue