The action in Rum & Pirates revolves around the shady alleyways of a Pirate port, where the players attempt to pick up victory points of various types, and the Pirate ship itself where players compete for the best bunks! I played last night with 4 other scurvy-ridden, land-lubbin' regulars at Lincoln Board Games Group ( http://www.lincolnboardgames.org.uk/).

Game Summary
Played over 5 rounds, the bulk of the game concerns steering the Pirate Captain through the streets, from one intersection to another. At each intersection is an illustrated space which triggers an action, most of which will result in scoring for one or more players. Players steer the Captain by spending Pirates from their supply of plastic figures; for every space the Captain moves, you must leave one of your Pirates in his wake. This makes moving to some intersections more expensive than others, depending on the length of the alleyway. Also, the more Pirates you spend in the streets, the fewer you will have left over to take to the ship to fight for bunk space!

A few examples of the more interesting different scoring spaces include Treasure Maps, Barrels of Rum, and Pubs. Treasure Maps come in two halves and you need to complete a map in order to score for it. Generally these are collected over two turns as it can be difficult to steer the Captain back to the appropriately-coloured map space in the same round. Barrels of Rum have no points value but allow you to re-try dice rolls (of which there are many!) when fighting or drinking with other Pirates. Pubs have differing and quite unpredictable value: one or more scoring tiles may be available at any given Pub and the active player invites others to join him "for a drink". Everyone joining has to pay a coin to the active player for that privilege but gets to roll dice in an attempt to take some of the scoring tiles, and thus score points when it is not their active turn. We found that heading to a valuable Pub was one of the best ways for players to pick up some much needed cash (with the added bonus that it comes from the other players, and you might still win all the scoring tiles in the Pub, with a bit of luck!)

There are several other scoring spaces which allow the players to collect extra Pirates, reclaim already-used Pirates or pick up coins and points in other simple ways.

The first time the Captain moves on your turn costs nothing but you can make additional moves at the cost of one coin for each (and of course you have to pay the cost in Pirates for the path the Captain takes). This can be crucial, particularly in the later rounds, for moves like completing treasure maps or leaving the next player in a position which is not immediately useful to them (and will therefore cost them additional moves to escape).

Eventually, players will be unable or unwilling to make further moves around the port and will retire their remaining supply of Pirates to the ship for the night. At this point, all of the Pirates brawl in a "Wrangle" of dice rolls. The first to the ship has to fight the second to the ship; the winner of that battle has to fight the third and so on. It is therefore tactically advantageous to be last onto the ship but to do that you will generally have fewer Pirates left (due to making more moves in town) or will have had to spend some of your scarce gold to "rest", forcing others to move first.

Rum can be of vital importance in the Wrangle, allowing you to re-roll dice. An order of first, second and third place is determined by the Wrangle, awarding different value scoring tiles accordingly. Then all players reclaim their pirate figures to begin the entire process again in the port, until the bunk tiles run out at the end of the fifth round Wrangle.

Opinions
This is a silly and fun game, as the title suggests. There are a lot of dice to be rolled in the frequent drinking contests, Wrangles and attempts to avoid the nasty scorpions someone keeps planting in the treasure chests! The luck of the die therefore does have an impact. One player in our game had a horrendous series of rolls and ended up in last place at the end, although it was taken in good spirit due to the light-hearted nature of the game. For everyone else, though, the rolls seemed to balance out and didn't noticeably affect game balance.

Despite all the die rolls, there is a good tactical element involved in deciding which path the Captain will take, and when to spend your small supply of coins. You also have to balance the use of Pirates spent exploring the port against those used in the Wrangle on the ship. Although the bunk tiles on the ship are relatively low-scoring compared to the riches available in town, they do add up over five rounds and winning a couple of Wrangles can make the difference between victory and defeat.

The theme is quite well-implemented, with the barrels of rum, drinking contests, brawls in the street, booby-trapped treasure chests and the mandatory rule that you must talk in a Pirate voice throughout, yarrrrrr!

We found that most of the final scores were quite close, with players pursuing different strategies of trying to win drinking contests, trying to collect maps, trying to win Wrangles, and trying to do a little of everything; the different means of scoring therefore seem quite balanced, although nobody ever kept a "Ware" tile from the Pirate Supply spaces: these can immediately be traded in for 2 coins which means two extra moves or extra trips to a Pub, which tend to score more highly overall than the 2-5 points on the Ware tile itself. Apart from this one scoring option, the rest seem well-balanced and the variety adds to the fun, keeping the interest level up in what is, at heart, a simple game.

Our only other criticisms were that, for a relatively simple game, the rulebook is very "wordy" and learning the game takes longer and seems more difficult than it actually is, and that keeping the supply of available (face-up) tiles refreshed can be hard work because there are so many (4 map tiles, 4 Pub tiles, 2 treasure chest tiles) which may be used in any given player's turn. It's quite "fiddly" to keep retrieving these from and replacing them in the supplied tile holder (although it would be even worse without it!) and this was often either an annoying distraction or kept being forgotten from one turn to the next.

Overall, this is a good light game, not to be taken seriously but certainly to be enjoyed. It is not a "filler" game, however, particularly with the maximum 5 players, as our game took over 2 hours so be prepared to put some time in on this one. It's not for those in search of a serious or "heavy" game, but with the right crowd, it's well worth a roll of yer knucklebones, arrrrrr!

My rating: 7.