Operation: Game Night
Travis Smith, Jared Erickson, and Clay Gable get together to discuss the latest and greatest in board games in this weekly podcast. What's hot, what's hitting the table, featured discussions about board games and the board gaming culture, and the primary mission objective- to play more board games!
Operation: Game Night
Debrief: Plunder - A Pirate's Life...Ship Happens
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Welcome to the Operation Game Night podcast. Back and better than ever. Today we are talking Plunder A Pirate's Life Board game from 2020, designed by KC Schrippel and published by Lost Boy Entertainment. I'm your host, travis Smith, and joining me, as always, is my co-host, clayton Gable. How are you, clay?
Speaker 1:I'm doing good. I am excited to hear your take on Plunder A Pirate's Life. I played this quite a couple of years ago and I had mixed opinions about it, so I'm eager to get refreshed on the rules and, kind of you know, see what your take was. Pirate themed games have a special place in the hearts of OGN. Some of our favorites Dead Reckoning, ahoy I mean they go deep around here Skull King If it's got a pirate theme, it's probably going to get played by Operation Game Night. So let's hear about it, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so before we kick off, I do want to take just a brief moment and thank everybody that has been listening to the show, enjoying the show, watching on YouTube. But if you are listening or watching right now, I encourage you to share the show with others. We want to make sure that we are reaching our widest possible audience. So like and subscribe, give us ratings. We like seeing that stuff come in on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, and it really helps out the show. So thank you for those that have been supporting us and please continue to do so.
Speaker 1:Clayton, even better, leave us a review. Yep, that I I hear. I listen to all these other podcasts and they're always clamoring for reviews. I guess it must be good for the algorithm to have reviews. So, whether it's positive or negative, I would prefer it be positive, but I am open to constructive feedback. Um, leave that review out there wherever, wherever you can, and we will look at it and we might even give you a shout out on the show.
Speaker 2:oh, we should definitely do that. Yeah, we'll. Uh, if you leave us a review or hit us up on Instagram and let us know whether you're liking the show or not, what we can improve, we're going to shout you out either way, because we love feedback. We love to make this show better. So just don't be mean.
Speaker 1:Don't be mean, don't spread hate on the Internet Pretty sensitive, honestly.
Speaker 2:Don't hurt Clay's feelings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm a soft little pirate boy, so I need kitty gloves with my feedback that's okay, all good.
Speaker 2:Uh, let's set sail with plunder a pirate's life. This game was published in 2020. Plays four to six players. Playtime is 40 to 120 minutes. Pretty lightweight.
Speaker 2:It's uh 1.89 on board game geek. And the whole concept behind the game is you are controlling ships with pirates on them to sail around an archipelago of islands to score 10 victory points. You score victory points by adding more ships, controlling more islands and potentially discovering buried treasure which could give or take away your victory points. To me, this game feels like it's kind of riding this weird wave at the tail end of like Catan's American success, where you're trying to score the 10 victory points. You do so by managing a hand of cards. That are your resources pretty simple resources like gold, iron, wood, um and you're trying to trade those resources in to upgrade your ships and to potentially buy victory points at the end.
Speaker 2:So at the beginning of the game, you start on one island in this big grid of islands, and so you start on a very small one. It's got one port on it and on your turn, you're going to roll a die that has one through six and you're going to move your ship that number of spaces to either other islands to try and secure the buried treasure, which are these little red Xs on the map that move around. And really you don't start off with all that much. You get one resource per turn and you're kind of slowly accruing resources as you go along. The more islands you control, the more resources you pull each turn. If you end up on a space with the red X, you can take a plunder card, which are kind of randomized right so they have different effects. You can either get a end game scoring point, one point closer to the 10 that you need, you could steal gold from your opponents, you can trade cards with your opponents, you could upgrade your ship or, worst comes to worst, you could lose a victory point. They're kind of randomized. You never know what you're going to get. Once you discover that buried treasure, you're going to spin these little dials that will move the X's to the other positions on the grid.
Speaker 2:When you are moving your ship, you move it the number of spaces that you rolled or the number of pips on the die that you rolled, and you can upgrade that if you buy a mast for your ship. So if I have one mast and I roll three, I can move four spaces. If I have two masts on my ship because I've accrued enough resources to upgrade my ship that many times, crewed enough resources to upgrade my ship that many times, I can move two extra. The other things you can buy are, you know, cannons for your ship super important, uh. Or you can buy additional lives. So each of your boats you start with one has three pirates on it and as you get attacked or you take damage, you lose one of those little pirates. He comes out of your boat super cute to like push these little pirates into your boat, of your boat. Super cute to like push these little pirates into your boat.
Speaker 1:They kind of reminds me of the game of life clayton I just you know, before we move past it, when you're talking about upgrading this ship, can you bring up a picture of the actual components? I'm sure you were going to get to it, but this was what I remember being the coolest part of the game for me when, when you upgrade your ship, you're actually slotting in little cannons and masks into your ship and it's very satisfying and very cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so most you can have is two cannons per ship. Most you can have is three lives per ship, these three little cute red pirates that go on the back of your boats, and then there's two slots on the main keel for the two masts, if you can afford them. And so you start, docked at your island that you own, you put a little flag on it and you start there. You're sailing around, uh, and you're trying to upgrade your ship so that you have more firepower. Uh, you are. You have the opportunity to take control of not only opponent's islands but these neutral islands that are out there as well. But the neutral islands come with additional firepower. So if I'm rolling combat die dice. Uh, if I, let's say, I'm attacking a island with two, uh, two skulls on it neutral island, everybody starts with a. On an island with one skull if I'm attacking a two skull island, I will roll a combat die. Somebody else will roll for the island and whatever, uh, the island rolls, it will get two additional damage. If I have any cannons, I get one additional pip per cannon that I have. So you're kind of trying to either tie or beat whatever the island is rolling, to take control of that island, potentially get more resources down the line and get yourself closer to the 10 victory points.
Speaker 2:The movement is pretty interesting on this one because the board is it's always different right, you can lay it out in any arrangement that you want. The archipelago is kind of aligned differently depending on how you lay out these big tiles. The game board itself is scalable depending on how many players you're playing with. So it can be smaller for two players. It's probably six by six of these big, uh square grids. Uh, for six players. Uh, we played at five. It was a pretty big map and then you have this kind of grid reference system along the outsides.
Speaker 2:Um, and the cool thing about the way that the islands are laid out is that the ports are not easily accessible. Like I can't just stop at any place on the island and claim that I'm in the port. You actually have to navigate around the island to a little spot that has an anchor on it for me to interact with that island, whether it's attacking or trading. Some of the islands have little, I don't know, barrels on them and those are your trading ports where you can trade resources two for one with the bank. And so you're sailing around. You are fighting islands, you're fighting each other. You can run up on other ships and combat them if you're one space away, but you might see on this picture there's this big scary white block around a three by three section of the board.
Speaker 2:This is the storm, and the storm inhibits movement in and out. So if I am trying to get to this port down here with the two skull Island and I need to move into this section that has the storm, I have to pay two resources just straight to the bank. I discard those. I can move into the storm. If I want to leave the storm, I have to pay two resources.
Speaker 2:And the way that the storm works is if I am sailing around and I roll, my movement die and I roll one, the one has a little white border on it that looks exactly like the storm. And when you roll that one, you move one plus whatever amount of mass that you have, and then you spin these little spinners. You flick the spinners at whatever grid section that that spinner lands on. The storm will move to that section.
Speaker 2:So you got storms moving around, you got X's moving around, you got boats moving around and the game gets chaotic really fast once people start levying their firepower, like people are upgrading their cannons, and those ships become really scary really fast, especially if you start running low on health because you attack the lower level islands or whatever it is. So, yeah, this game is really fun, it's really interactive. It feels a little bit like Combative Catan, because you're kind of doing this resource management type game as you're upgrading your boats and uh yeah, plunder is a phenomenal game. It's I don't want to say phenomenal I I did have my complaints with it yeah, I had a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you reeled that back a little bit yeah, I, I think it's.
Speaker 2:I think it's fun. I I haven't played a game like this in a while. If I had just come off a bunch of games from the late 2010 to 2020 era, I probably would be less enthused by it, but I haven't played a game like this in a while and it's, I think it's a refreshing take on that type of like hand resource management. Plus, those little boats are so fun to build and sail around.
Speaker 1:So what were your takes on this game. Yeah, I distinctly remember at first I had never heard of this game and it was brought over by two people in my game group and I was like, how have I not heard of this game? And they said they got it like Target or something. So I'm like this is like a mass market game. And then I was just impressed, initially by the production, like I said with the boats. I was like, well, this is super cool. And then I remember being impressed by the simplicity of the gameplay. I was like, okay, you know, this is pretty streamlined, interesting actions. You know, I like, I like what's going on here. And then I very, not quickly, but after about two hours of being halfway through the game, I was like I'm over it.
Speaker 1:I don't, I don't know that this warrants a greater than two hour play time ever, that this warrants, uh, greater than two hour play time ever. Uh, so, what's great? And I love games with simple actions and quick turns and, you know, um, not too weighty decisions, but I do not like being stuck in that world for an extended period of time and it it just felt like, you know, the turns came around sparingly and then it never felt like I was doing that much on my turn and then I would wait another you know 10 minutes to take another turn, which I made very incremental progress, yeah. So, yeah, I guess the turns just weren't snappy enough to feel like you were getting to your actions as quickly as you wanted to. So I don't know, I was, like I said, initially impressed and I think it does a lot of things well and it is a cool take on, you know, maybe a katan step up where you have more interaction and combat, but it suffers from a lot of the same complaints I have with katan.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and I I do want to walk that statement back. It's not a phenomenal game, but it was enjoyable. It's fun to upgrade your ships, it's fun to sail. Even if you're not getting into like conflict all the time. You kind of feel like you're sailing through this little archipelago and navigating these these waters and the board layout can create these weird pinch points where, like, everybody's going for that X in the middle of the board and have to navigate around these different points to get there.
Speaker 2:If, if you play with a bunch of pacifists, people that do not want to get into combat, this game could take forever. And if you get knocked out like, let's say, you lose your last boat on the ship, you're just like rolling and waiting until you can come back so you can buy boats with your resources, but it is the most expensive thing to buy that and victory points are the most expensive things to buy. That and victory points are the most expensive things to buy. And if you are just sitting there collecting one card every turn waiting to come back and you're drawing a random resource every single time, this game could take a long time. I'm sure that there's. Oh my God.
Speaker 1:Now that you said that that is exactly what happened. Yeah, I lost my ship and it was just that perpetual hell of just taking a turn, doing nothing and waiting for my next turn, just hoping I could get enough resources to build a new boat, and I was like this is the frigging pits. So, yeah, that I I. I remembered the feelings, but I couldn't remember exactly what was happening. And as soon as you mentioned that about losing your ship, that's totally what happened to me and it did sour the experience. Yeah, it's pretty rough.
Speaker 2:I did not lose a ship. We had people at the table that did. If you have additional islands let's say you have three islands out there, four islands that's the time to be super hyper aggressive and go after people, because every single turn you're drawing three or four resources, depending on how many islands you have. So, like, once you have that engine going, where you're collecting so many cards that you can then turn into ships, like time to go after people, time to get violent, and that's that stuff takes a time to get violent, and that's that stuff takes a while to get going. But once it, once you have that engine going, it is pretty fun.
Speaker 2:Uh, the game is pretty swingy. Swingy because it's very luck based. Um, you're rolling die for combat, you are drawing random cards. If you pick up a uh, a plunder token where you go to the buried treasure, um, and those are pretty swinging because you either get resources, you lose resources, you lose victory points, you get victory points.
Speaker 2:It's all very random, um, and the placement of those x's is completely determined by a spin of a wheel and so, like during my play, I was kind of sailing around my half of the board and all of the X's the plunder.
Speaker 2:The buried treasure is on the opposite side of the board where I can't get to it because there's so many boats sailing around there.
Speaker 2:So, like I just kind of bided my time, I kind of just sailed around my little islands and did what I could until I could get the additional islands, to get the more resources to turn them in, and so I eventually ended upade a bunch of people that were coming in to take my island because they were sailing directly for my ports where my little flag was, and I was able to buy the boat and place it right there in the port to block them. And then I had additional ships come in and and wipe them out. So yeah, I don't know it, it's probably of a time, but I think if you pick this up today it would. It it's probably of a time, but I think if you pick this up today it would, you'd still get enjoyment out of it. If you like this type of game. It is like kind of it feels like an adventure to play, uh, but yeah, the swinginess and the length of the play time would probably sour some people on this one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I, like I said before with regard to the simplicity of it. It's not a heavy game and that's great, and I certainly don't mind games with a lot of luck and randomness, but I do mind both of those things when they are excessively long. So you know, just be mindful of that. It might be better. I know you played at a higher player count, I played at four. It might be better. I know you played at a higher player count, I played at four. So maybe there's a sweet spot at three that could reign in that play time and feel a little nicer to play.
Speaker 2:Yeah, board Game Geek suggests four players as the best at. And we went over to somebody's house and we're kind of hemming and hawing about what game to play and we're like, oh, maybe cartographers like something lighter, and he's like, no, I want to play plunder. And so he pulls it out. I've never played it before, don't really know anything about the game, and he sets it up and I did. I had no idea that this was going to play as long as it did. We had like kids running around and babies being held and people stepping away between their turns and man, it dragged a little bit, it dragged long and and then we finish and he goes, he goes. Man, that's the first time I've ever finished one of these games in one sitting. Like why?
Speaker 1:did you pull this out?
Speaker 2:yeah, we made it happen, it worked, we got there eventually. It did take a long time, but uh, I I think it's, I think it's a good game, I think it's of an age, it's a very specific type of game. Um, but man, putting putting those ships together feels really good when you buy the cannons and the masts and you're like slotting them in and they're like these. I mean, they're like pretty big, they're maybe half dollar size, they're like an inch long. They're like they're pretty meaty boats. They're probably longer, they're probably two inches long.
Speaker 1:Um, but yeah, it feels good to sail those around and and navigate the, the islands and search for buried treasure in plunder a pirate's life yep, I think for the casual gamer and you introduce this to somebody that doesn't play a ton of board games, they would probably find this to be a world of fascination here, because you do get to sail around and be a pirate and you have cool pieces to play with. So I mean, I don't think it doesn't have a place, but yeah.
Speaker 2:Nice, did we do it? I think we did it. All right. This has been plunder, a pirate's life. We have been OGN, I have been Travis, he has been clay. Give us a review. Give us a review, oh no, give us a review.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I'm stuck no, don't review this part. Shut it down, thank you.
