Stonemaier Games | Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest | Board Game | Ages 14+ | 1-6 Players | 45-60 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

Few other games play five and six players with as little downtime as Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest outside of the party genre. The general flow of the game is that each day of a voyage players simultaneously select a character card from their hand to play.

It’s a very different feel and style to its forebear, and while I think it’s an improvement, your mileage may vary. As for the Pilferer, his role in the Dusk phase is simply to snag a loot token based on his rank amongst the cards on the island row. But that doesn’t stop it from being an entertaining light game that strikes a good balance between strategy and second-guessing. The reputation tokens are less fancy but equally colorful, and the score dials are shaped like treasure chests, which is an excellent touch.

Alongside any dusk abilities, players will choose a loot token from the matching day on the board too, activating any associated actions with these. If a character ends up being directly to the left of it, the other player gets to discard a loot token before they get to choose. At two, I found that I needed more clarification around what happens to certain cards with the fixed pseudo-third-player overlay and they weren’t necessarily in the rule book. I’m so pleased that there’s a successful publisher out there now actively working to bring out-of-print licences back to life, and not just copying the original verbatim.

But will that mess with your other plans of what you could gain from playing a different card first? Functionally, I think it could work since the way the (dual) Automa takes its turns is very straightforward, although there would need to be some tweaking of the language in the Automa deck to determine which player was being targeted. For example, an arrow pointing left with the numerical value of three stipulates that she will play the third card from the left of her tableau.

They also stash treasure away for safety in their treasure chest scorer and discards characters, coins and loot tokens from their ship. Prior to learning the solo mode, I played numerous games at 2- and 3-player counts, and to my delight the automa was eerily/amazingly similar to a 3-player game. I learned from Azul that pulling chunking, colorful bakelite tokens out of the bag is a delightful experience, so that’s exactly the material and size we used for loot tokens in Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest. Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is different to other games hitherto published by Jamey Stegmaier’s company though. Once the board is decided, a random selection of tokens is added to days of the voyages, as dictated by player count.

There are a few references to adjacent players, which sit directly beside you on your right or left for certain effects. But your opponents will also try to predict what you’re doing, do you think they realize you still have your Collector, if they do, will they hold back the Gunner the entire game just in case? Starting from left to right, the characters chosen will activate a daytime power, should they have them. However, as everyone is drawing six of the same cards per turn, there is ample opportunity to talk through the cards before each journey.If you already bought sleeves for the smaller size, please let me know and I’ll personally send you a reimbursement. It’s also important to note that after the first journey, players will be left with cards in their hand that will then probably differ from everyone else’s. In addition, the icons in the right column of the flowchart indicate which crew card the Automa will play from her hand which is represented as a row of faceup crew cards. A lot of information is open to you and your opponents, which means you have the ability to make plans for the game.