Designer: Paolo Mori

Libertalia is really a big surprise to me, it’s a game from a designer who’s games have not really hit with me in the past. I found Paolo Mori’s previous games to always come up short in the fun department even though games like Rise of Augustus and Vasco Da Gama featured interesting topics and mechanics, they were a bit of a drag. Libertalia is clearly Paolo Mori’s best game to date and has gained a fair amount of popularity and praise from some respected reviewers. I got an opportunity to finally try this little card game and while I went into it with limited expectations and a “sure let’s try it” attitude, after a single turn of the game it immediately got my attention.

In Libertalia you are a pirate captain who along with other captains (other players) has just captured and plundered a ship. Now it’s time to split up the loot and the game-play is a sort of card driven negotiation of that activity where you try to get the most amount of treasure from the plunder for yourself by playing pirate theme character cards with a wide variety of special powers.

The game-play is broken down into three days, presumably three separate ships that you capture as a group. During each day players will negotiate for treasure on that ship, broken down further into 6 turns, effectively 6 plays of cards. Each player will receive 9 identical cards from a deck of 30 cards numbered from 1 to 30. For each turn random bounty tokens are drawn for that turn of play, these bounty tokens are treasure from the plunder each with its own value, but also includes cursed treasure, treasure maps and a few specialty tokens. This is what your negotiating for. The goal of the game is to claim as many doubloons (victory points) at the end of the day as possible, the player with the most victory points at the end of 3 rounds (3 days of play) wins the game.

Claiming bounty tokens is very simple. Each player selects a card represented by a pirate themed character from his hand of 9 cards and plays it face down. When everyone has chosen a card, the cards are revealed and put in ascending order. Than starting from the player with the highest number, you take 1 treasure of your choice. Simple right!

The catch is that each of these cards are actually characters, each with unique special powers. These powers vary is strength, but in those powers lays the bulk of the strategy. The trick to the game is that powers are executed in reverse order (from lowest numbered card to highest), so while playing the highest numbered card will yield you first pick at the treasure, the lowest card numbers have their abilities triggered first. These abilities can impact characters, victory point earnings and have all manner of special effects so by the time all the powers are executed some of the characters may have been removed, players may have already scored points or taken a variety of special actions that shift things in their favor.

The game is really about trying to guess what cards other players will play and playing your cards in a manner that will benefit you and screw everyone else the most. It’s also knowing which cards to save for later, a lot of this game is about timing. You know what the nine cards everyone has (at least in the first round) so it’s really about just trying to guestimate how your opponents will approach each of the turns in a 1 day round. You can only play any card one time and that card will either be added to your Den (your play area) which coincidently can result in added effects as some cards have effects that take place from the Den or they will be removed. In either case you will only play them once (in most cases) so you must choose wisely.

Now you will only play 6 of the 9 cards in your hand and in the next round (the next day) players will get a new set of 6 identical cards. Hence by the second round of the 9 cards only 6 of those cards in the players hands are identical. This happens again in the 3rd round so things become a bit more chaotic as players not only consider what cards to play in any given turn, but what cards to save for future rounds.

There are many effects that transpire during the course of a round, characters will be eliminated, resurrected, create lasting effects, help players score points, put curses on other players (minus victory points). All of these effects are based on the cards so certainly anyone familiar with the game has a clear advantage but it doesn’t take more than one or two plays of the game to get a grip around what is possible so the game goes from “learning how to play” and “playing with strategy” for any given player after a game or two.

Libertalia is a game that is very simple to learn to play but nearly impossible to master. The complexity of the moving parts and trying to make predictions is very rewarding when you succeed and heartbreaking when you fail, but it’s not a game of guessing, it really is a mind game of prediction and reaction to what has already been played and what can be played in the future. There are a lot of surprises and “oh shit” moments in the game, it has that spark a lot of great strategy games I love have like Dirk Henn’s shogun where there is a period of quiet contemplation with a sudden burst of energy and chaos after a revelation. The more players the more chaotic and difficult it is to make predictions, but to me this really makes the game more fun. The game plays 2 to 6 players, but I think the sweet spot is 4 to 6 players.

It’s a fast, relatively short game, the box says 45 minutes and that is quite accurate and once everyone knows how to play I think it can be even faster than that. (the first game might take a little longer).

Libertalia is a game that scratches that hard core gamer in me, it’s got the depth of a very solid and thinky strategy game, but is so simple and social enough with a familiar theme (pirates) to be welcomed as a after dinner party game you can pull out with none gamers. It has energy and excitement built into that moment of revelation of the cards and I think this does wonders for the atmosphere it creates. It really has those longevity legs as well, it’s a game that gets better with repeated plays and is just short enough that in can almost be used as a filler. I was really surprised on how quickly I became enamored with it, in particular given that this designer’s games have landed so flat with me in the past. Now some might say this game is a kind of watered down Caylus, which I suppose one could make that argument but I personally never cared for Caylus so the fact that I really like this one says to me that the games are distinctively different enough.

I’m not sure one could say the game is thematic, it has a solid theme which really comes through in the art work which is nothing short of amazing, but you’re not really doing much piracy stuff. It really is just a kind of estimation, logic card game which could easily be layered with any sort of theme you like. I think choosing a pirate theme for this game was a smart idea though because pirates are kind of that universal theme that gamer or not you can get behind. Fantasy themes and science fiction themes typically don’t land well with none gamers, but pirate themes in my personal experience don’t have that “we are nerds playing a board game” social stigma.

I highly recommend Libertalia in particular for any gamers out there trying to get non-gamers into the fold. It’s a really clever yet simple game that can function really well as a gateway game, but it has the muscle and depth of a solid game for hardcore gamers. I honestly believe this to be one of the best games to be released in 2012, a solid contender for my top 10 entry level games, I’m certain if I did the list today it would find placement there. It might even breach my top 10 best games in the future, I really like it that much.