If you there are any Pirate games you'd like me to cover, let me know. Heck, let the publisher know I'm doing this. I have a small stack of piratey games that I'd like to get reviewed, but I'd be willing to preempt the ones I have for some newer games or even just some pirate game chatter.

Also, let me know what you think about the mini episode. Did I ramble on too long? Did you need more details?

What did you think about the music?

-Donald

Great job Don, Yes, I am biased, but I think you did a great job and enjoyed the review and the music! My only suggestion would be to remove the loud 'beeep' at the end as I nearly dropped the plate I was washing (which could have been a potentially fatal experience - I dropped a plate last week and my wife nearly killed me, if I do it again I may never see dawn again )

The review was excellent and the music was fun to listen to, in fact I might head over to CD Baby and see what the Poxy Boggards have to offer!

Thanks!

Cheers,

Giles.

Do you think a trick taking mechanic is a good mechanic for a pirate theme?

Excellent idea and excellent execution.

And I can never get enough of that Ren Fair music!

I'll be watching out for more pirates, on the air waves...

Oh, I heard the Print and Play podcast mentioned on the Wandering Geek review show! It seems like everyone is talking about how cool you are.

And to think, I was exchanging emails with you "way back when".

Oh, I've already contacted Marc, and he's submitted music for the next one. Marc runs several excellent podcasts over there!

Hmmm... Marc Gunn... An exercise in making sure no one ever spells your name right.

I actually do think the trick taking mechanic suits a pirate game, although it is an abstraction it can 'represent' some 'force' (the cards/tokens/whatever), being used to achieve a goal of some sort (the trick).

You can have various forces: Treachery, Brute Force, Booze etc, which are all 'suits'...and the goal being booty, or ships, or whatever.

So while it is certainly abstract - I do think it ties in reasonably well.

While you could easily have a trick taking game about Elephants managing equity accounts, a pirate theme does make more 'sense' when considering the nature of the mechanic.

Taking a trick in a game can be an aggressive process, it can be sneaky, it can be well planned and it can fluked, all thematic of a pirate-ish theme (many others as well of course).

Done well a trick taking pirate game would be great, I don;t think I have played any though

Hehehehe

Good discussion and review though Don! Thought provoking and interesting.

Cheers,

Giles.

I really loved the episode Don. The review interested me (although I will probably avoid the game myself.) And man was that music infectious. I was still humming that tune for hours afterwards.

Arrrh! You want some more piratey games, matey? I say you should review Loot. With some light role-playing, I think it's definitely Arrrh-rated.

Thanks Ben!

I have Loot, and I've started to review it a few times, it just didn't come out right so for some reason I set it aside. I'll have to pick it back up and talk about it. Good idea.

Thanks for the Pirate Episode! I love pirate-games, even if the theme is just pasted on.

I like to hear what you think of Pirate's Cove.

Also, I posted a question in the Walk the Plank forums, because after reading the rules I am unsure what happens if you don't win any battles. You mentioned you just skip the next round, but reading the rules I think it might mean you are out of the game.

I meant what I said, but apparently I was incorrect.

In one place the game says "until next time" which is pretty vague and I took it to mean skip one battle. But in the Rounds After the First Round section it is pretty clear that players who don't get any tricks on one battle of a round are out for the rest of that round and come back in to play only for the next whole round, and do not rejoin for future battles in the same round.

I like the skip a battle idea better than miss the rest of the round, but I need to play it again to make sure the play is actually better. In many cases, with our small group, it wouldn't have made any difference. However with a larger play group it would have.

I will be doing a Pirates Cove episode in the future, but I think I'll do Loot first.

You were incorrect?! Unpossible!

But, just to be clear: a Battle is a trick (everybody playing a single card) and a Round is everybody playing a hand.
So, if during a round you don't win any battles, you are out of the game and do not rejoin for future rounds.

Right?

Yes, that's right. ".. dealing cards to each player who won at least one battle in the previous round". My bad for replying without having my morning cuppa in hand. Apparently I had the whole scale of when players are kicked to the curb out of whack.

They get dropped between rounds, not between battles. I don't know why the shift occurred in my brain.