Merchants & Marauders: Broadsides
Expansion of: Merchants and MaraudersXVII century, Caribbean Sea. At the helm of your mighty vessel, revisit the golden age of piracy with Merchants & Marauders: Broadsides, a game in which you and your opponent are engaged in a deadly battle hoping to sink each other’s ship.
45m
2 - 4 Players
Ages 13+
Firebird4Life
The game (even not playing with Dirty Tricks) can be somewhat complex for someone that doesn't game very much. It can be over in literally two turns if you are lucky/unlucky enough for the cards to fall right. I feel like the Evade & Sheer mechanics are too limited since it blocks you from using the same number in the straight more than once per game per maneuver so its really quite easy to win quickly. I also don't like how there are a large number of little wooden pieces but there are no extras given in case of lost/damaged parts. Even just one of each of the little planks or discs would be helpful. If this game was $30, I'd have been a lot happier but MSRP is $45. Maybe we'll play it again soon, but its definitely going to the bottom of the pile for a while.
Soleia
An interesting two player game set in the world of Merchants and Marauders. Has very little in common mechanically with its predecessor. Would be fun- if you had all day to do so- to play this game every time your ships had a battle in M&M, because this one focuses purely on ship battles. I like the use of the poker deck instead of dice.
Legomancer
I'm a big fan of Merchants and Marauders, and was eager to try this out. This is a game of ship-to-ship combat, where you can aim to strike a particular point or just release the whole barrage and take what you get. There's a really cool aiming system, tied into standard playing cards (which is kind of odd to me...I don't really associate standard cards with pirates) that is really cleverly done. There's also an interesting idea where the more a target becomes damaged, the harder it is to hit. There's a lot of fun thematic and narrative stuff here, including the addition that the type of ammo you get is random; your dudes are just grabbing what they can. This is what ultimately brought me down, despite a strong performance; I was trying to hit a small target and couldn't get the ammo or cards I needed, even though my opponent could no longer evade. It's a lot of wild fun, though we didn't play with the special action cards. We looked at them afterwards and saw they were INCREDIBLY swingy.