Joined in 2023 
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63 About this deal
The components for this game are good; the artwork is beautiful, the game board is sturdy and has a very clean design, and the loot tokens are sturdy and easily differentiated from one another. The only ding I can give the game here is that the cards are less robust than I’d like; they seem like they’d be susceptible to both general wear and to corner bending. I recommend sleeves to prolong card life. It’s my opinion that you could play this game indefinitely without it feeling repetitive. With 30 characters, the number of possible combinations coming in sets of 9/6/6 are plentiful, and there are so many options that I don’t see it getting stale. That strange idiosyncrasy aside, the game is one of the best designed on the market. Gameplay is elegant. And once more it bears mentioning that the art design is second to none. Artists Ben Carre and Stéphane Gantiez have created a feast for the eyes, each character perfectly rendered to a degree that they could come to life right off the cards. The art alone inspires and supports the theme, and makes the game that much more enjoyable. Libertalia allows the internal politics of a pirate crew to play out over three rounds of careful card play. With 30 different crew members, each interacting in different ways, Libertalia looks to find who is best at managing the varying desires and personalities of their cards (errr… crew).
Night abilities happen at the end of every turn where that character still resides on your ship, which is a fancy way of saying “the table in front of you.” Each player gets 10 doubloons (1 of value 5 and 5 of value 1). The remaining doubloons are set aside and form the bank. Merchant (21): Discard 2 identical booty tiles to gain 3 doubloons or 3 identical booty tiles to gain 5 doubloons (day).
Product Details: The SKU is STM550. It will be published in a number of languages from the following partners: Grok, Feuerland, Matagot, Phalanx, Ghenos, DeltaVision, Maldito, ALBI, 999 Games, and Surfin’ Meeple. With the recent reprint of Libertalia, Stonemaier Games has also provided a new Automa for solo play, which is what this review will cover. I’m quite new to the concept of solo board games but I’m really enjoying it. It’s great for when I’m desperate to play a game but can’t gather enough people. Before Setting Sail We also have now ten more characters to head out on the voyage, as well as a double-sided board. The significance of that board is to give a different challenge by changing up the abilities of the loot tokens. Even better is the option to mix and match the different sets of abilities to create unique combinations each time. There will be one booty tile per player, which you’ll see in advance. Many are good (positive points), while some are cursed (negative points), and others allow you to discard crew, either yours or your neighbors’. There are also maps that are worthless alone, but worth a lot (12 points) if you get three. This treasure collection adds to the strategy of card play. Do you use your high card to try and grab treasure now, or wait until later when it may be more lucrative?
Freed Slave (12): Gain 1 doubloon for each character in your den with a rank higher than 12 (night). I watched a playthrough of the original Libertalia on TableTop a while ago, and I was intrigued. Unfortunately, it was widely unavailable so I waited a long while in the hopes it might come up. Recently I discovered it on Board Game Arena, which is a significant part of the story of how the second edition came to be, and I enjoyed the gameplay but there were a few issues I had. The end goal is to become a legendary figure of the Caribbean and accrue 10 glory points, but these can be gained in all sorts of ways, such as completing missions, performing daring combat feats, claiming booty, and pulling off the deal of the century.
I’ve played Libertalia with casual, social, and avid gamers, and all have enjoyed it and wanted to play again. As long as the theme is acceptable, family gamers should enjoy the game, while it may leave power and strategy gamers looking for a bit more. The players take on the role of crew members of a pirate ship nearing retirement. During the 3 campaigns which compose the game, they will try to amass riches by looting ships. One last set of powers to activate, the anchor powers. Then count up the doubloons you have and add them to your treasure chest by setting the dials. Return every tile to the bag and discard all characters played to the graveyard (unless you have an ability that says otherwise, of course!) Firstly, this is a joy to teach. Identifying what each loot does is important, but can be done on a day-by-day basis. There are forty character cards to learn the abilities of. However, as everyone is drawing six of the same cards per turn, there is ample opportunity to talk through the cards before each journey. After that, once you have explained the day, dusk, night and anchor activation you are good to go, even the latter can be reinforced on the first turn, or a dummy run. With the basics mastered, the strategy of optimising when to play cards from your hand and how best to utilise them, really comes to the fore.
Starting from left to right, the characters chosen will activate a daytime power, should they have them. This may be gaining doubloons, taking loot tokens or making matters difficult for your opponents. Once the day has happened, the dusk phase happens, starting with the rightmost player. I’m a big fan of Wingspan and Viticulture and as a result am a bit of a fanboy of Stonemaier Games. I admire their production values and what they do as a smaller publisher in the board game industry. This can set expectations higher than they should be for each release. Finally, the “Night” phase occurs, where all characters in a player’s den having Night powers my execute them. These powers execute each day, so some of these Night powers can be pretty beneficial. Libertalia was originally released in 2012. Ten years later, we’re celebrating the foundations of the original design with a heavily revised and expanded edition that includes all-new art, 40 characters per player, a reputation system to resolve tiebreakers, premium loot tokens, a robust solo mode, and much more.
Merchants and Marauders
Pirate-themed games are notoriously addictive, they say once ye lose yer first hand ye get hooked! Groan-worthy pirate jokes aside, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is the latest game to be released by Stonemaier Games. As a publisher of such massively popular games as Wingspan, Viticulture and Scythe there is always an air of expectation around any of their releases.
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