Gamehelppiratesunderfire

Each player is a pirate in charge of a fleet (numbered from 1 to 9, each of them having a special ability). The goal of the game is to deploy your ships to form combinations while performing their effects.

At the end of the game, players score Victory Points for:

• the combinations made (3 or more ship tiles laid side by side with identical numbers or forming a sequence of increasing or decreasing numbers),
• the ships laid in the opponent player’s sea boards,
• some mercenary ships, and
• the Victory Points tokens collected during the game.

The game ends after 16 rounds. The player with the most Victory Points wins the game.

HOW TO PLAY

Player perform their turn one after another by laying a ship on a sea side. This is the main action. They can also perform an optional action: buy a mercenary ship by paying its cost. The game ends when each player has played 16 turns.

PLAYER’S TURN

1. Main action Play a ship from your hand on an accessible sea space. A. Apply the effect of the sea space. B. Apply the effect of the ship tile. Effects A and B are applied in any order.
2. Optional action Buy 1 mercenary ship, by paying the cost indicated on the tile (the gold is returned to the supply). Lay it immediately on an accessible sea space, and carry out its special action (except the 3 mercenary ships with victory points scored at the end of the game). Do not apply the effect of the sea space. The optional action is carried out before or after the main action.
3. Final Action Draw a ship tile from the main deck and add it to your hand.

PLACEMENT RULES

A ship tile must be laid on an accessible sea space. It is forbidden to play a ship tile on a sea space occupied by an other active ship (except the mercenary ship with this effect).

Accessible sea space

1. Any sea space of the first row of your sea boards (the row closer to you).
2. A sea space orthogonally adjacent to one of your already played active ships.
3. A sea space with a ship on fire (of any player) on it may be chosen as an accessible sea space, if the rule of adjacency is respected (rule 2). The ship on fire is permanently destroyed.

Note: you may choose a sea space on your opponent’s board if it is accessible. And apply the effect of the sea space.

Note 2: you may choose a sea space with an on fire ship on it, if so do not apply the effect of the sea space.

END OF THE GAME

Ending game conditions:

1. The game ends when the second player can no longer draw Ships from her main deck. So, when a player draws the last ship tile from her main deck, she has only one turn left to play.
2. When a player cannot play any ship of her hand, she loses immediately the game (no final scoring).

FINAL SCORING

Players sum up the victory points from:

1. The combinations of ship tiles laid side by side horizontally or vertically: A. 3 or 4 ship tiles side by side with the same number. B. At least 3 ship tiles side by side with consecutive numbers in ascending or descending order (2-3-4 or 4-3-2, but not 2-4-3). Combinations made of ship tiles with consecutive numbers are worth victory points based on the length of the sequence (quantity of tiles composing the sequence). The longer the sequence is, the more points it is worth.
2. Some mercenary ships give victory points at the end of the game.
3. 1 victory point for each ship on their active side laid in the opponent’s sea boards.
4. Victory points tokens.

The player with the most victory points wins. In case of a tie, the player with the most gold is the winner.