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Rum & Pirates#10 ALBS, English language edition of Um Ru(h)m und EhreList Price: $39.95
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The players take on the roles of pirates. They move the captain along the alleys of the pirates nest, looking for treasure maps and treasure chests. Or they meet the city guard and deal with them if they can. Naturally, they will visit the few pubs to gather and drink some rum together. They will also have opportunities to acquire the special wares needed by pirates like wooden legs and eye patches. At the end of the day, they head back to the ship and wrangle for the few sleeping places available there. All these activities earn the players tiles, which are worth honor points -- most positive, but some are negative. These honor points are tallied at game end. The player who ends the game with the most honor points is the winner!
Difficulty: 2/10
We bought this game based on its belonging to the "Alea" series of Rio Grande (same series as our two favourite games "The Princes of Florence" and "Puerto Rico").
The game is fun, the theme, Pirates & Rum, is very well integrated into the game mechanics. For a change, the game rules are simple and unequivocal. It took us 15-20 minutes of reading to learn the rules before we all started, and after the first round (out of 5 per game) we were all playing "normally".
This is the perfect game to play with guests who are not hard- core gamers, because it's both fun and easy to explain. The game could also be played with younger children (age 8 and above).
The game has at least two original mechanics: (i) we enjoyed the fact that to move from point to point on the board you must use your pirates. Since you start with 10 pirates, it means that there are on average 3-4 moves allowed per round. But you gain gain additional pirates which you should do early on in the game, if possible. (ii) the pirates getting on-board the ship is another innovative mechanism, for there is a disadvantage of being first on the boat, yet it can be compensated by having more pirates joining the boat, or having the special rhum barrels which allow you to re-roll the dice in an attempt to score higher. Overall it's a very clever game.
The game involves some degree of luck (dice rolling + random card selection) but overall it does not play too much of a factor.
In conclusion, we liked this game a lot; although it's not as much a strategic exercise as for example the Princes of Florence, Amun-Re or Puerto Rico, which remain our all-time favourites.
