Yo-Ho

We had some friends over that we hadn't seen in a while to play games. After the catching up and other chit chat, we play two games of Codenames. Alex and I were teamed and oddly enough we won both games. In each, we started out poor, but we always made up for it in the end. After pizza, Liz was eager to play...

Libertalia 2-6 players
I had heard a lot of hubbub over this game on the internet and looked into how it played. I definitely had nothing like it and it didn't seem stupid, so I added it to my wishlist. I'm pretty sure I got it as an Xmas present.

You are all pirates, or maybe you're the crew of pirates,.. or the head of a crew of pirates. I'm not sure of exactly who you're supposed to be, but there are clearly a lot of pirates. Each player has their own deck of pirates. Every pirate card has a number between 1 and 30. Everyone starts with 10 gold and the same hand of 9 cards chosen randomly by the youngest player. The game takes places over 3 weeks, each week containing 6 days of booty grabbing (apparently pirates rest on Sundays).  Each day, every player secretly plays one of their cards. They are revealed and placed in numerical order on the ship. Each pirate has a special ability which actives at different times. Some activate while on the ship and fighting for booty, others while they have done their duty and are just hanging out in your den (the set of cards you've used). I'd try to explain it here, but just know that things get hairy as things always do with pirates. The highest card gets first choice at the days booty, down to the lowest. A lot of other phases happen and then is starts again for the next day. After the week is over, gold is tallied and the next weeks starts. Everyone reverts to 10 gold and everyone gets the same set of 6 random cards drawn from what wasn't used from the start. So every one will have six of the same cards, but 3 probably different cards that were left over from the previous week. I think I might wrap this up, because it's pretty confusing to understand if it's not in front of you and I feeling like I'm starting to sound like Jack Sparrow. After 3 weeks of this, the player who tallied the most gold wins.

My favorite part of the game is a set of metal coins that Liz got for me to deck out one of my games with. I considered adding them to Jamaica, but I didn't want to ruin the aesthetic it had. There is something about hearing clicking and seeing shiny things that make the game more intense.
The first week started a little slow, but I think that was due to the cards we had. Most only had night actions so there wasn't a lot of the zany rigmarole there usually is for the booty. It was anyone's game the whole way. At the last tally, both Alex (not me) and Liz tied for first. Arrgh!

Tally: 124/174  Bonus: 30/50