New Rule

I recently acquired this game by pure luck from a local game store. I consider it lucky because, two years ago at GenCon ‘06, I had the opportunity to play the game in its first public appearance. The creators themselves were at GenCon to debut the game (as is the custom among American non-digital game makers) and I signed up because the description was catchy. It was an excellent game, and many of us who played wished we could have bought a copy then and there, but alas — the developer had brought along only enough to demo and hand out as awards to the winners, so I left disappointed. However, the good experience left an impression and I’ve remembered it ever since. So when I came across it the other week, I snapped it up right quick.

Skallywaggs is a simple non-collectible card game in which players gather pirates for their pirate crew. When you get enough, you win the game by “setting sail.” The core mechanic involves “assembling” pirates from component part cards: legs, bodies, and heads. Did you ever see those flipbooks that had different animals split across three columns of pages, and you could turn the columns to different positions and get goofy hybrids like a cow-pig-fish? It’s like that. Any set of legs, body, and head will make a pirate, and you need a certain number of them to set sail. Swapping body parts, stealing them from the commons or from your opponents, arresting or killing opposing pirates, and trying to protect special or valuable parts is the name of the game; numerous Event cards offer a range of one-time abilities and advantages. Then there are a wide array of “pirate parts.” Some parts are negative — Stab Wound (body) or Ball n’ Chain (legs) — and cannot sail. Most are average — the legs from Crewman #3 and so on. Some belong to named characters, and if you gather all the parts of that character into the same pirate, you get a matched active character and gain special abilities — collect the Ship’s Surgeon to gain immunity to Scurvy and Pox, or collect the Inn Keeper to draw two extra cards per round (though he can’t sail — you’d need to Boatswain to win with the Inn Keeper in your crew). The sheer variety of combinations is the source of brilliance, in my opinion. Adaptability is crucial with all the shifts and rearrangements happening every turn. I’ve never sailed with the same crew twice!

Aside from the color, which is excellent — great artwork, snippets of piratey trivia on the cards, etc — the game is consistently engaging and surprisingly tactical. There’s enough chance and luck involved that Skallywaggs appeals to younger players — all the systems are transparent and quickly grasped. Once you look deeper, however, you can see that winning by design is a tricky proposition of timing, prediction, planning, but most of all flexibility. Brenda always says that the key indicator of a good non-digital game is “do you care when other people are taking their turn,” and this game definitely lives up to that standard. With so many pirate parts and configurations changing constantly, you need to be on your toes when other people are making moves. Even so, turns are fairly quick and the game moves at a nice, brisk pace especially among experienced players. From the games I’ve played with my friends, I’ve gotten a high positive response. People recognize that the experience is light, even compared to relatively simple games like Settlers or Risk, but the game is well-crafted, tightly balanced, and consistently fun. I recommend it to all

Tags: Game Criticism //