Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest First Impressions

Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest sees you play pirate cards to gain loot.

But which pirates will be in your crew this journey?

In the world of Galecrest, sky pirates set sail on the winds in search of adventure, treasure, and glory. As an admiral, you command a vast and varied crew…but so do your rivals sailing other ships in the pirate fleet. Each day the fleet lands on a different island where you’ll send a crew member to collect your share of the loot, hoping they’ll return to boost your growing group of characters.

Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest Game Play

Everyone gets an identical deck of (I think) 40 cards. Loot tokens equal to the number of players are placed in 4 of the 6 day boxes on the board. Each player has a reputation token which is placed randomly on the reputation track.

Before a voyage, one player shuffles their deck and draws 6 cards. The numbers of the cards are read out to the other players so they can find the same cards from their deck.

The game is played over 3 voyages, the first is 4 days long, the second is 5 days and the third is 6 days.

At the start of a voyage, each player secretly chooses a character card face down, these are revealed simultaneously and are placed on the island in ascending order of rank with ties broken by reputation.

Daytime
In this phase, players activate the daytime ability of their characters on the island in ascending order of rank if they have one.

For example, the Bosun gives you 2 coins for each character on your ship (Your play area in front of you) with a lower rank than them.

Dusk
Now in descending order of rank, players gain a loot token if there is one from those available for the current day. Players also activate the dusk ability on the loot token and/or character card they have. The card is then moved to their ship.

For example, the barrel loot token will increase your rank by one.

Night
Players activate all characters on their ship with a night ability.

For example, the freed prisoner gains 1 coin to each character on the ship with a higher reputation than them.

Go to the next day, select a new card from hand and return to the day phase.

End of the Voyage

After all of the days are complete:

Resolve all anchor abilities on any loot or characters on ships. Then players convert doubloons to points on their dial. Loot tokens and characters on ships are discarded.

New Voyage
Players get a few more random cards of the same number into their hands to replace those played this round and a new voyage begins.

End Game
After the third voyage, the game ends. The player with the most points wins with ties broken by reputation.

Theme

Pirates! You’re backstabbing, stealing, killing and doing things that Pirates are known to do. The character cards are themed to their ability.

Setup

The board and everything is easy. Getting the right cards out can be difficult as it takes as long as the slowest player takes to find 6 cards from their deck.

Components & Artwork

This edition of the game is really nice. The loot tokens are cool and the version I played has metal coins which always adds a little something.

The art is OK with its cartoony Pina Pirata-style animal pirates. I do prefer the original more realistic art, and not just because the waitress looks like Elisha Cuthbert.

Ease of Teaching

It is easy, just talk through the cards picked at the start of the round. Once players choose a card and you go up and down the row activating them, things sink in.

Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest Summary

So I played the first edition a few times and liked it… but it had a major flaw which I’ll put here from my initial review.

“It plays 6 players and each set of cards plays rock, paper, scissors against another. So image red beats blue, blue beats green and green beats red… for example. Yellow may also beat blue. Now image playing blue with the other two players using Red and Yellow… sucks right?

So if you’re not playing with 3 or 6 players that game is quite unbalanced.”

They fixed that by adding the reputation track. Not only can you see where you are on it and decide what you want to play based on that, but you can also affect it to get higher up on the track if you like. Some characters and loot tokens will affect your reputation so if you want to up it, you can.

The variety of the cards is good too. Also, you’re playing with less than half of them each game and you don’t know what you’re going to get so games play differently.

There are also tiles in the box that can change the effects of the loot tokens to make them harsher I believe?

The game is harsh enough though! Some character abilities and loot tokens kill off pirates on the island. So if they die before activating or looting, you don’t get to do it! It’s quite harsh when you have the choice of who to kill s won’t do much this turn.

Lucky, you almost always get to do your day action so you’ll do something.

But I do like Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest. it’s not one I’ll buy but I do enjoy playing it.

Jesta ThaRogue