The Pirate's Flag: Capture the Flag Amid High Sea Battles

Race for the flag or build up your strength, as you battle it out for command of the pirate fleet!

Published by CardLords, The Pirate’s Flag is a 30-60 minute game designed for 3-6 players.

Gameplay

Each player starts on one side of the board, and at the other end is the flag. During the first phase of the game, a player rolls two dice at the start of his turn and combines the two values to get his movement. He must move that many spaces, but chooses whether to move forward or backward. There are two waterfall shortcuts players can use to move further along on the board (but cannot use them to move backward). There are also a few spaces that, if ending the turn on them, will move a player forward or backward one space.

Every time a player passes a dock on the board, he draws a card into his hand. There is a hand limit of five cards. There are also two trading post spaces. When a player reaches one of these, he may choose to end his movement here, discard one card from his hand, and draw two new ones.

The first player to reach the flag puts it into his boat. This player will also have a permanent hand limit of six cards. The game is now in the second phase. During the second phase, a player only rolls one die each turn to determine his movement value. Whoever makes their way back to the starting point of the board, while carrying the flag, wins the game.

During his turn, whenever a player enters a space with another player who is holding the flag, he may end his movement to battle. Each player rolls one die, and the player with the higher number wins and gets the flag. If a player successfully takes the flag from an opponent, he then gets to roll another die for movement.

Each turn, each player may play one card. Cards can be played at any time on a turn. Card abilities might affect dice rolls, have an effect on a player’s next turn, or move someone’s ship on the board. Each player also has a unique captain’s ability that can be played once per turn.

Review

The Pirate’s Flag has a slow start, as players choose how to make their way around the board, racing for the flag or building up their cards, but the early turns tend to be pretty straightforward and move quickly. Once the flag is claimed, that’s when the game truly comes to life in a constant tug of war as players keep battling it out, swapping who controls the flag, and slowly inching their way towards the board’s exit.

There’s a nice range of abilities on the cards, and it's fun to choose how to use them most effectively to claim the flag and put distance between yourself and the other players. You’re often claiming new cards, so your options for manipulating the board or dice are constantly evolving — and you never know what card an opponent is going to pull out. The fact that cards can be played on any turn by any player once per turn, is also a clever mechanic as you can build up for your next turn, or work against a player you think is about to take the flag.

The game does have a lot of luck involved between the dice rolls and what cards players draw. It’s possible to just have a spurt of bad luck, where there’s nothing much you can do about it, and you end up getting left out of the action. When we played it, one player fell far behind on the board for the final third of the game, and was never able to roll high enough or draw helpful cards to catch up.

At the higher player counts, the game can easily overstay its welcome. There’s a lot of back-and-forth — pulling a player back, losing ground, and so forth in the game. At a player count of six, progress is going to grind to a halt.

Artwork is beautiful, with rich, colorful, detailed pictures for the cards. The ships are great components, as well, and everything about the game is visually appealing.

The Pirate’s Flag is fairly simple to learn, there is a lot of player interaction, and it’s a fun concept. There are a few issues in the execution, but overall makes for fun, light, dice-chucking fun.

Pros: Nice components and artwork, very easy to learn, fun tug-of-war gameplay

Cons: Players can fall behind with no way to catch up, too long at higher player counts

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.