Black Fleet

Today's game review is for the 2014 release, Black Fleet.  For 3-4 players, it plays in 60 minutes.

Overview

You command a fleet of ships in the Caribbean.  Your goal: pay the ransom for the governor's daughter (symbolized by paying for a "victory card").  Before you do that, though, you must develop your fleet (pay for four "development cards") using doubloons you earn from selling goods (which have specific colors), sinking pirates, stealing goods, and burying treasure.

You control three types of ships as you navigate the seas, each of which has attributes or can perform an action as indicated:

merchant ship:
- move from port to port to sell and pick up goods (move to a space adjacent to a port to do so; earn doubloons for selling as indicated based on color/quantity of goods)
   - delivery port matters; each port has a doubloon value which will differ for specific colors of goods
- can hold 3 goods at most, but watch out for pirates!
   - each pirate encounter removes 1 good from your hold; if you go to 0, your ship is sunk!

pirate ship:
- attack an opponent's merchant (move adjacent to a merchant and transfer 1 good to you; earn doubloons), or
- bury your loot (move to an appropriate island location and 'bury' the good you obtained; earn doubloons)

navy ship:
- there are two of these (yellow and purple), shared by all players
- you will move only one of them on each turn (as indicated on your movement card)
- attack an opponent's pirate (move adjacent to a pirate to sink it; earn doubloons), or
- block access to your merchant through strategic placement

game in play; image from here

The seas are treacherous . . . but if your pirate or merchant ship sinks, it will come back next turn.  So take heart and press on- fair winds may be in your future.

Simplified Gameplay

There are five types of cards in this game: player, development, victory, movement, and fortune.

To start the game, each player gets (drawing from separate, shuffled piles):
- one player card
- four development cards (costing 5, 8, 11, and 14 doubloons, respectively)
- one victory card (costing 10 doubloons)

Turn over the player card (this assigns color of ships and first player), and keep the others face-down in the following order:

Each player obtains a merchant ship and pirate ship matching the color of their player card, the navy ships are placed on their starting spots (shown on the board), and the players take turns placing & loading their merchant ships as specified by the rules.

From separate, shuffled piles, each player draws two movement cards and one fortune card for their opening hand.  The game is ready to begin!

Starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, a player does the following on his turn:

- play a movement card
- move ships, perform actions, and (if able and desired) play fortune cards
- draw one movement card, and draw (or discard) fortune cards (as indicated on your turn's movement card)
- if you choose, pay for and flip a development or victory card

The movement cards drive your turn.  Three examples are shown below.

movement cards; image from here

Movement cards tell you:
- which color navy ship you can move (purple or yellow), and how many spaces you can move them
- how many spaces you can move your pirate ship
- how many spaces you can move your merchant ship
- whether you discard, do nothing, or draw fortune card(s) at the end of your turn

Once you play your movement card, you move each ship (in an order of your choosing) up to their move limit.  (If a ship starts the turn off the board, it comes into play at one of a prescribed set of locations indicated in the rules).  If at any time during a ship's movement it can perform an action, you can choose to do so- but each ship gets only one action per turn.  The actions available to each ship are underlined in the preceding section.

Once all movements are complete, draw one movement card and potentially fortune cards (as indicated on your turn's movement card).

After drawing, if you have enough doubloons, you can cash them in to pay for a development card (indicated by flipping it over).  You can flip only one development card per turn.  Once they're all flipped, you can pay 10 doubloons to flip your victory card; the turn proceeds until the last player has gone that round.  The winner is the person with the most doubloons AND a flipped victory card.

See the full rules for more details on movement rules and other details.

Review

I like this game.  It plays quickly and gives each player a sense of accomplishment (there are lots of sinking ships . . . but they come back into play, so it has a nice back-and-forth feel).  There are enough ways to earn doubloons that each player makes nice progress, and enough decisions/options to make multiple games fun.  The pieces are nice (the doubloons are real metal!) and the overall experience is worthwhile.  Check this one out!

Rating: A