Don’t you just love a good Pirate Game? Aye you say? Then scrub ya decks and set sail for Port Royal! In the busy harbour of Port Royal, you will be pushing your luck with up to 4 other scallywag pirates to raid ships, recruit crew and complete expeditions for shiny gold and precious victory points. Play your cards right and you will become handsomely rich on the glistening Caribbean; however become too greedy and you could end up marooned with empty cargo holds!
The deck of 120 cards is comprised of 50 Ships, 60 People (Crew), 6 Expeditions and 4 Tax
Increase cards. Each card has a multi-use of also being a gold coin. Cards are used for either one or the other purpose: coins when drawn from the deck or features when collected from the harbour.
To set-up, the deck is shuffled and then each player is dealt 3 face down cards (coins) to start. The first player will be the Active player and starts their turn of two phases:
Phase 1. Discover: Turn cards over from the deck, face up into the middle of the table (The
Harbour). The active player will decide how may cards they wish to turn over.
Out of the 4 types of cards, only 2 types are placed in the harbour display: People & Ships.
Expedition cards are put to the side of the harbour for players to claim when they are able to do so and Tax Increase cards are dealt with immediately and then discarded.
The player may stop turning cards at any point or are forced to stop when two ships with the same coloured sails are revealed. If this happens they forfeit the rest of their turn but if they choose to stop voluntarily they may proceed to the next phase.
Phase 2. Trade & Hire: Players are able to choose 1-3 cards from the harbour display, depending on what cards were laid down: 0-3 different coloured ships = 1 card, 4 different coloured ships = 2 cards and 5 differently coloured ships = 3 cards. All other players will get a chance to take 1 card from the harbour outside of their turn but it will cost them 1 gold coin, which is paid to the Active Player.
Taking a Ship card means you raid that ship and get the amount of gold coins (drawn from the deck) printed on the card. Taking a Person card means that you can hire that person to your Crew for the amount of gold coins printed on that card. Each person card will have a different ability that will help build your engine as well as give you a number of victory points.
Abilities can range from giving you extra gold, gaining swords to try and battle 2nd ships from the same colour, hiring crew for less gold, taking more cards from the harbour, claiming expeditions and gaining gold from someone else pushing their luck too far!
Play continues with the next player clockwise becoming the active player and the end game is triggered when a player has acquired 12 victory points. Once that round finishes the player with the most points wins, and in the case of a tie, the player with the most gold left claims the victory in true pirate style!
Portable and addictive, Port Royal is a fantastic filler game that is also great as a 2-player game. Aye!
