Naturelich Games

Port tile from Pirates and Plunder (here, Harbormasters can collect rum). (c) by Brian L. Bird and Richard Thames Rowan.

Design
The game is completely fan-produced.The authors invented their own tile style. In this case, the design can best be described as homemade. The game has an original selfmade-feeling to it. For me, who really likes well-designed games, this is a small drawback. Of course, I do not expect a professional design in a fan-produced game. In this case, however, I believe one could invest some time to improve the design and thereby increasing the fun-factor a lot.

Gameplay
The aim of the game is to place your ships on the islands, trading routes, ports and sea territories created when the tiles are connected to each other. In addition players may collect resources. Points can be scored either way and of course the player with the highest score is called our winner. The start of the game along with the mechanism of drawing and playing tiles and ships (=followers) is identical to Carcassonne. Once a ship is played it may serve one of the following purposes:

• Merchant = ship on a trade route (trade route = road)


• Explorer = ship on island (island = city)


• Harbormaster = ship on a port (see below)


• Pirates = ships on the open sea (open sea = fields)

Merchants and Explorers score points regularly, i.e. the player immediately scores points after the island or trading route gets completed.

The Harbormasters are placed on a port and count as occupying the island. Whenever another tile is placed adjacent to the port tile, the Harbormaster collects one harbor-specific resource (i.e. Cloth, Rum, Spice, Dye). After the harbor is entirely surrounded, the Harbormaster ship has fulfilled it's task and returns to the players supply. This mechanism is similar to the Carcassonne cloisters. WHile cloisters scored points directly, the resources will help you rather indirectly. Players may use resources for to plunder other players.

But before explaining this, let's first look at a second novelty, introduced upon completion of trading routes. Any such action obviously attracts pirates. Therefore, the player completing a trading route gets to move one of their pirates. The more attractive (=the longer) the trade route the faster (=the further) the pirates' move. When the player maneuvers his pirate into a foreign body of water (=occupied by another player's pirate), the two ships battle.

These battles constitute another interesting novelty which works nicely with the plundering theme. Let's oversimplify the mechanism a little bit: both players may use the resouces earned by Harbormasters to fight each other. The player who wages more resources wins the fight and moves into the position of the loser.

At the end of the game, players score additional points. This includes rewards for having collected the biggest quantity of rum (or cloth, or any other resources for that matter, but of course the largest fights will arise around the rum). In addition, pirates score points for each treasure galleon in their region but lose points for each sea serpent present in the same area. This second mechanism is rather similar to Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers.

Tile from Pirates and Plunder used under the advanced rules. (c) by Brian L. Bird and Richard Thames Rowan.

In addition to the basic rules and game mechanisms described above, the game also includes some advanced rules for exploration tiles. The player who completes an island gets to explore the landmass and may find a unique treasure such as an Archipelago, a buried treasure, a pirate's cove, a royal port or royal cartographer and many more. I believe the concept of rewarding the player who completes an island (even for someone else) is borrowed from Hunters and Gatherers as well. But borrowing is not a problem: the special tiles are atmospheric enough to make up for this.

Naturelich my opinion
Brian and RIchard have combined several Carcassonne games into their game. The similarities are obvious -- but this makes the game all the easier to learn and some interesting new mechanisms are available. By using the pirates theme, the game is very atmospheric (and in accordance with the trend brought to us by the Pirates of the Carribean movie). Personally, I find the pirates and plunder theme more realistic than the dragon introduced in Carcassonne: The Princess and The Dragon. By the way, I actually assume the dragon concept might have been added to the official extension after someone investigated Pirates and Plunder. But we should treat this merely as a rumor...

The plundering mechanism generates a different flavor of game. Players might tend to plunder more often and concentrate less on building their structures. While this creates a more turbulent game, the consequences are rather difficult to calculate: How many resources will you wage in a battle? Will this be enough to win? Will this cost you the final points for your rum or dye supply? Several other difficult decisions have to be made. New players (is anyone out there who doesn't know Carcassonne??) should start playing the original Carcassonne games cited in this review. After you are familiar with all the rules and strategies, it's probably safe to start playing Pirates and Plunder. The game is not a must-have but it is certainly a fan-produced game which I consider worth tinkering. If only the design were more appealing to me...

Download
The game has it's own listing on BoardGameGeek here. A download-link is provided on that same page.