A Rum Deal and No Mistake

Tonight Andrew and I dragged a bit of a curio out of the cupboard - Stefan Feld's Rum and Pirates. Feld is known, directly or otherwise, in GNN circles for Year of the Dragon, Castles of Burgundy and Macao, but this was an early effort, as though Mozart had composed "Shaddapa Your Face" before graduating to more serious work.

Jonny Depp played this as research. So did Keith.

In Rum and Pirates players send their salty sea dogs careering around the board, fighting with guards, getting drunk, getting married, practising bigamy, and discovering half a treasure map on the floor - only to pick up the other half of it later, if luck is with them. Each of the five rounds climaxes with a fight over the best bunks on the ship as they bed down for the night. It's kind of a ludicrous game, and not especially pretty, but fun nonetheless, in that it's the closest GNN has to the thrill of Blackjack.

Andrew didn't do anything wrong, but the game is extremely luck-dependent, and I was punching the air like a man possessed as dice roll after dice roll went my way. Fun for me, probably a bit tiresome for anyone else.

Sam 97
Andrew 60

Upright, but sleepy

Because of the chance aspect there are two main things to note about Rum and Pirates - one is that it's definitely not a 2-player. The other is that it's probably a little long - it took us an hour - and the sleeping-bag fight is not the most riveting bit of game design ever. But all that said, I do think it's one to get out now and then, if only to level the playing field. No matter how strategically adept you are, if someone really, really wants a hammock, you're in a dogfight.