Game: Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace

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rseater — 2007-10-11T17:32:35+00:00

To win, do all of this hard work...or get a cannon and take it by force!

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rseater — 2007-10-11T17:22:33+00:00

The black pirate always goes first...as it should be!

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cambridgegames — 2006-08-02T02:57:04+00:00

Ice Pirates in a Zip

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cambridgegames — 2006-08-02T02:30:27+00:00

Ice Pirates in a Shell

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Legomancer — 2006-06-04T18:33:48+00:00

Learning the rules at Major Game Day

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cambridgegames — 2006-05-29T17:48:12+00:00

Ice Pirates in a Zip (Back View)

Thread: Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace - Session Report

gschloesser — 2006-04-08T13:07:54+00:00

Cambridge Game Factory recently sent me a batch of their games, all of which appeared quite interesting. The games are homemade, consisting primarily of cards and poker chips. Each comes jam-packed in zip-lock bags, which certainly saves space, but isn’t the most attractive manner in which to market games.

To their credit, one of their games – Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace – carries a pirate theme. That alone is usually enough to entice me, as I’m still searching for the ideal pirate game. After one playing of Ice Pirates, I’m still searching.

Set in the frigid waters of the Artic, players represent pirates attempting to discover the treasure of the legendary Pirate Admiral. Seems the Admiral has hidden pieces of his treasure map on various islands, but even the location of the islands have been lost in the mists of time. So, players must sail the uncharted seas in search of the islands. Once they have assembled all pieces of the map, they must discover the location of Kelly’s island, unbury the treasure, and carry it away to safety. Of course, opposing pirates will be attempting to accomplish the same task, and will try to steal map piece or the treasure from you. Dirty pirates.

The board is comprised of 30 face-down cards and a handful of face-up cards depicting seven ports and islands. Players begin on the central Bell Island with a ship and three crew members. They then take turns sailing across the iceberg-laden seas in search of the map pieces. How far a player sails is dependent upon the wind. If a player is sailing with the wind, he may move up to two spaces. “Tacking” across the wind limits movement to one space, while rowing directly into the wind costs the player one of his crew. Must be quite strenuous.

As players traverse face-down cards, they are revealed. Most will depict open water, with some sides possibly blocked by icebergs. This could force a player to move in a direction they did not plan, or worse, end their movement altogether. Some cards will reveal shipwrecks, which allow the player to increase his crew by one. Other cards will cause the player to encounter fierce storms, which can end a player’s movement and cause the direction of the wind to change. If a player could have moved further on his turn, he can do so, but only at the cost of expending a crew member. I sure hope the benefits of being a crew member include life insurance!

Six of the ports provide upgrades for players landing there. These upgrades include cannons (extra die in combat), grappling hooks (raid an opponent in same space), ice breaker (move through small icebergs), jib (tack without ending your turn), main sail (move 3 spaces) and a telescope (reveal adjacent spaces before moving). Some of these upgrades are quite valuable, so it is well worth a player’s effort and time to drop anchor at one or more ports.

When one of the lost islands is discovered, a player can drop anchor and secure a piece of the map. Once three pieces are secured, a player must make his way to Kelly Island, of find it if it is still undiscovered. Beware, however, as the game can turn ugly once map pieces begin to be acquired. Pirates being pirates, they can attempt to raid opponents’ ships, trying to steal those valuable map shards. Whenever a pirate moves through a space occupied by a pirate toting a piece of the map – or the treasure itself – he can attempt to raid that ship. To do so, both parties roll a die, and compare either the greater of the number rolled or the total of their crew members. The maximum obtainable is a ‘6’. If the raider is successful, he steals ALL of a player’s map pieces, keeping the ones he needs and unceremoniously dumping the remainder overboard. Nasty.

However, in true pirate fashion, the losing party has the opportunity to swashbuckle. At the cost of a crew member, the losing party may re-roll his die and do another comparison. If victorious, the result is reversed. This swashbuckling procedure can continue as long as players are willing or able to sacrifice crew members in the process. Lost crew members may be regained by visiting Bell island.

A player wins by acquiring the treasure from Kelly’s island, then bringing it safely to Harbour Grace, or sailing off the northeast section of the board.

No doubt, the theme is enticing, and it does provide some appropriately related flavor. Discovery, treasure maps, raiding … all the stuff of a good pirate yarn. While parts of the game are fun – particularly the discovery aspect – the game itself is rather disappointing. There is a huge amount of luck in the board layout, and one can easily find his path repeatedly blocked by icebergs or an ill-wind. The raiding system is also quite weak. While it is clearly intended to be simple and easy, it is actually TOO easy. It could be improved with other modifiers, or just a completely revamped system. As is, it is too easy to simply go back-and-forth stealing maps. We did misinterpret one rule, but playing it correctly really wouldn’t have changed much.

The random board layout can also cause problems. In our game, Kelly Island was revealed to be immediately adjacent to harbor grace. This allowed one player to successfully raid an opponent who was carrying the treasure, and end his turn on Harbour Grace, thereby winning the game. No one else had a chance to steal it. Quite unsatisfying.

Still, my main issue was that the game just lacked that special spark that makes a game truly exciting and fun to play. That being said, the game seems much more appropriate for family or casual play as opposed to serious gamers. Perhaps in that setting, it would prove more popular.
I was beset by problems from the beginning, with icebergs blocking my planned path, and a fickle wind impeding my progress. Robert and Chris found the shipwrecks, increasing their crew and substantially improving their raiding abilities. They also were able to secure several upgrades, including cannons, making them even more formidable. Ray was suffering a similar fate as me, and he was trapped by a proliferation of icebergs in the south.

Eventually, I managed to obtain two pieces of the map. Unfortunately, the dread pirate Miller the Menace was nearby, and proceeded to thrash my crew and steal my maps. I was too weak to give pursuit, and was blocked by those pesky icebergs and wind from reaching Bell Island to replenish my crew. Robert did manage to secure the last piece of the map, and sailed to Kelly Island to retrieve the treasure. On his way to Harbour Grace, he was assaulted by Chris, and the back-and-forth swashbuckling ultimately ended with Chris obtaining the map and ending on Harbour Grace for the victory.

Ratings: Ray 5.5, Robert 3, Greg 3, Chris 2

Thread: Game set up : leave a 1/4 inch gap between the bay cards

cambridgegames — 2006-01-29T17:17:25+00:00

The cards are actually configured so that the arrows match up best with a slight space between them--this makes it much easier to flip cards over while exploring without disturbing the rest of the board.

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We've been doing this for so long that we forgot to make it clear in the rules .

Will update for the next set that we print.

Thread: Is this a game from Newfoundland?

cambridgegames — 2006-01-29T16:57:13+00:00

Not from, but certainly about!

Carl and I met at the MIT Strategic Games Society in the Summer of 2004:

http://web.mit.edu/sgs/www/home.html

At that point Carl had spent the previous four years designing over 20 games covering an incredible range of different styles and media--from kids games like Sneeze to an epic Twilight Imperium style space combat game that makes Glory To Rome look simple.

I, on the other hand, had long since packed my games away in a box marked "File & Forget" and had been working for Staples for ten years--in the past five I'd helped to launch four new business models:

www.staples.de / www.staples.co.uk / www.staples.ca / www.corporateadvantage.ca

I'd been itching to launch a real business since my first complete failure with Kersplatt! in 1992 and when I started to see the quality of Carl's proto-types it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

One of those proto-types was Ice Pirates--although it only made it onto the first print run when Carl came up with the mechanism to convert a Hex game into a Card game while looking at a couple of Kaboodl cards:

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So now we had a solid game about Ice and Pirates that we could fit into our first print run but something was still missing--the early version of the game just didn't make me feel like a pirate. My background is roleplaying and so I went looking for background--a story that would explain why we were sailing around in this field of icebergs looking for treasure.

It turned out my choices were a couple of expeditions that had run into trouble looking for North East / North West passages, or this intriguing story about a 'Pirate Admiral' who had hung out in Atlantic Canada--which I've only actually been to once, but frequently admired from above on trips back to the UK & Europe--it gets cold down there!

www.hrgrace.ca/history.html

A little more research and I found a story about a man walking out across the bay from Harbour Grace and other evidence that this area really does get icebergs:

www.mqp.k12.nf.ca/icebergs/iceberg_photos_2004.htm

Conception Bay itself is a squashed hexagon--so it fitted perfectly onto the shape of our board--although with so much history in the area, it was really tough choosing some of the towns.

The one thing I couldn't work out from Google is exactly where Kelly's Island actually is. In the end we added that into the game too (Kelly's Island is positioned randomly) but in the search I found this piece of story-line hidden away in a site I'd looked at before:

Legend holds that Kellys Island was the rendezvous spot of a swashbuckling pirate, Captain Kelly, and his cohorts who terrorized the Atlantic trade routes during the 17th century. Conception Bay was the headquarters for such notorious privateers as Peter Easton, who raided harbours and seized vessels. An intriguing story of treasure on Kellys Island tells of a British naval officer who arrived in 1901 and hired a fisherman to row him out there. When they landed, he set out alone across the small island. Some time later he returned with a large pot which he bore with extreme difficulty. He pulled a gun on the fisherman and demanded to be landed on an uninhabited part of the mainland. Once ashore he tossed a gold coin to the fisherman and disappeared.

I haven't actually visited Harbour Grace yet, but the whole area looks beautiful and--I certainly expect to visit at some point in the not too distant future!

Thread: Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace

matthew.marquand — 2006-01-29T03:59:45+00:00

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The second game in my review package from Cambridge Games Factory was Ice Pirates of Harbor Grace. The game comes packaged with the same "Board Games in Bag" concept as does Sneeze and Glory to Rome. Unlike Sneeze, the Ice Pirates bag makes you feel like your really getting something here. The bag is filled with cards, dice, plastic poker-style chips, and little colored clips. I was a little curious how they were going to make the "ice" and "pirate" themes work together but I'm happy to say they pulled it off fairly well.

Ice Pirates is a deeper game than Sneeze but still on the light family-fare end of the gaming spectrum. The game setup begins by laying out the face-down cards that represent Conception Bay with Bell Island in the middle. Six ports surround Conception Bay and each of the ports holds special upgrade cards that grant the player additional abilities (jib, telescope, grappling hook, main sail, ice-breaker, and cannon). All ships (a card depicting your ship tucked into the color coded clip) start in the center of Conception Bay on Bell island. Like Sneeze, there is a wind card that indicates the direction of the wind. A little confusing at first but understandably so to make the game mechanics work, the wind can only come from six directions and a roll of the six-sided die determines from which port the wind is blowing.

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You goal is to 'explore' Conception Bay by deciding in which direction you are going to sail and once chosen you turn over the bay card (if not already face up) and move your ship onto the card. You can choose to sail in any of the 6 directions of the wind but sailing with the wind (3 of the directions) gives you the ability to sail one more additional card in the bay. Tacking, sailing in one of the other two directions not directly into the wind affords you a single move but you lost the ability to move an additional card. Sailing directly into the wind will cost you a crew member chip.

As you ply the bay you can stop at one of the ports and if you're the first, you can obtain the port's respective upgrade card for free. If you're not the first, the upgrade cards cost you more and more crew members to purchase. When you lose crew members they always go to Bell Island, and when you visit Bell Island you can get your crew back.

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The exposed bay cards depict icebergs (that block card traversals), lost islands, additional crew cards, storms, and if you're lucky a treasure. Visiting lost islands allow you to obtain map cards that will help you find the treasure. When you find an additional crew card, you can raise the level of your crew above the normal level to protect yourself in battle. The dreaded storms can cause a change in the wind direction which may thwart you and your opponents ability to carry out your plans to sail in another direction.

Conception Bay, also holds a treasure card and if you are the lucky pirate to hold all three map cards from the lost islands and the treasure, you can make a run for open water between ports one & two or the port of Harbour Grace. If you make it, you win. Repeated plays tell me though, that you're going to have to fight your way out. Ice Pirates, comes with battle dice that allows your opponents to raid your ship in an attempt to take your maps and treasure. Raided pirates can fight back in a 'Swashbuckling' maneuver but every attempt to fight back costs you a crew member. The battle mechanic seems to keep the dice rolling to a minimum which I greatly appreciate and setting a maximum level of attack (even for 'rich' pirates) affords even relatively weak pirates a fighting chance.

I've enjoyed playing Ice Pirates and my kids seem to like the game play as well. Although more interesting in theme and game play than Sneeze I'm not sure it will see the table as often. Flipping cards in Conception Bay has a somewhat fiddely feel to it and setup is definitely longer. The components are of the same quality as Sneeze but I have the same, albeit picky, complaint of the square cornered cards and the 'bagged' rather than 'boxed' production. Overall the components are well made for the price-level, and the rules are cleanly written.

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With Sneeze, our house rule was that when you sneezed, you had to make up what a sneeze might sound like for the allergies in your hand. In Ice Pirates, we continued the tradition by requiring everyone to talk piratey and pronouncing Swashbuckle as "Shwashbuckle". I can't explain why that made it more fun, but when your kids come up with their own ideas that make them laugh, it gets a little infectious.

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matthew.marquand — 2006-01-29T02:07:05+00:00

6 Ships, their crew, map copies, battle dice, treasure, and rules

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matthew.marquand — 2006-01-28T21:03:05+00:00

"Game in a Bag" Packaging

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matthew.marquand — 2006-01-23T04:19:18+00:00

Poised to get my crew member back after a failed Swashbuckling attempt

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matthew.marquand — 2006-01-23T04:02:05+00:00

Game End - Purple wins after an earlier skirmish with Red