Expansion Review - Summoner Wars Reinforcements

One of the very few downsides to being a game reviewer is that I don't get to play the games that I really like as much as I want. If I have a spare night to play a game (and I'm not playing 500), I usually have to play something so I can write about it. This means that as much as I would love to break out some old favorites, I have to devote myself to playing crappy Reiner reprints far more than is pleasurable (of course, when it comes to a crappy Reiner reprint, one play is too many).

While there are many games I would play a lot more if I had time, one of the most painful casualties of my mandated short attention span is Summoner Wars. I just plain love this game. It's quick to set up, quick to play, and quick to put away again. It's brilliantly balanced and deep in strategy and tactical plays. There's a lot of careful gambling and risky play. Sometimes everything comes together and you pull off an amazing coup at the last minute, and sometimes you're just plan screwed. However it goes, it's always fun.

But after a while, it can get a little repetitive. You might be playing the phoenix elves against the goblins and wishing you could swarm a little better, or wishing you could smash walls with a bit more reliability, or otherwise just want to change things up from time to time. And that's where the reinforcements come in.

There are two packs of reinforcements, one for each of the base sets you can get. One pack has replacements for the burny elves and the freezy orcs, and the other is for the dwarves and goblins. Both packs also include mercenaries, which can be added to your deck for even more variety. The reason for all these extra cards is so that you can customize your deck - your opponent can't really counter-draft against your orcs any more because you may not even have ranged units in there, and he can't count on you spawning a horde of weak-ass goblins that he can tear up like wet toilet paper. You can try different strategies than you've used in the past, because the new units give you all new ways to get your head chopped off and stuffed up your ass.

The additional elf and orc cards are very interesting. My favorite new tundra orc is a champion who makes your freeze cards more expensive to thaw, which can give you a huge advantage if you time it right. The elves have some new commons called fire beasts, and they're incredibly awesome, but frighteningly expensive. If the cost is scaring you off, though, you can also find the elf chick who brings them in cheaper, and who can still hold her own in a brawl.

On the other hand, maybe you just want to pull out a little flame-based horde to rush the field. In this case, you can add a bunch of fencers to your elf deck, and summon them for free. And bad news for the enemy who attacks and misses, because he gets to try out his own weapon as a suppository.

The dwarves were already pretty decent at crushing walls, thanks to some wicked event cards and some irritating engineers, but with the addition of the ballista, now they're flat-out frightening at it. Play your cards right, and you might be able to clear out all the walls before your opponent is halfway through his deck, and then mop up whatever he has left like the mess your dog made in the kitchen.

The dwarf champions are also impressive. You can send the protector dwarf to the front lines to cover for your engineers, giving you a better chance to tear down walls like Jericho, or you can send the scrappy little ass-kicker screaming across the board to wail on targets who thought they were far enough away to be safe. There are lots of new ways to break things and hurt people, and I like them all.

After all this new brilliance, I was surprised at how thoroughly I was disappointed in the new goblins. Both of their new commons have a summon cost of one, which would be fine except that so many of the goblin event cards only affect free goblins. It's actually possible to build a goblin deck in which more than half of your event cards are completely useless. Not advisable, I wouldn't think, but still possible. I was really hoping for some new zero-cost goblins, and while I like the beast riders and the wall crawlers, I'm a little disappointed at how much their absence limits my options with my favorite crazed horde.

I haven't mentioned the mercenaries yet, because I'm saving the best for last. There are two new champions and some cool new commons. The spear grounders are ten pounds of kick-ass in a five-pound bag, and the vermin have an incredibly cool plague attack - as long as you don't stand around your own guys too long. The champions are also pretty cool - one lets you hold a bigger hand, and the other can cut through the enemy ranks like poop through a goose.

I really like all the new ways that Summoner Wars is expanding. The reinforcements add so much to the starting sets that you'll have lots of new ways to build your armies. And since every pack includes all the commons and champions you'll need, you don't have to buy crates of them just to make them worthwhile. Plaid Hat Games may be a one-trick pony so far, but that one trick just keeps getting better.

Now if I could figure out some way to store this game when it's languishing on the shelf for weeks at a time, it would be perfect.

Summary

2 or 4 players

Pros:

Lots of great new cards to really tweak the decks you already love

New strategies and new combinations

I really like the direction the new art is taking

Cons:

The lack of zero-cost goblins seems like one hell of an oversight - if they weren't bundled with the dwarves, I wouldn't buy that set

If you haven't tried Summoner Wars yet, that's a mistake you should correct immediately. While you're correcting your grievous error, you can pick up the reinforcements and the expansion decks:

http://www.plaidhatgames.com/store.html

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Card Game Review - 500

I have more than a hundred games, and the reason that number isn't more like 400 or more is because I regularly donate heaping piles of games to churches and youth groups and homeless people who use them as blankets. I have set collection games and war games and miniatures games and dungeon games. I have bidding games and party games and sex games (well, OK, just the one, and we keep it in the dresser in the bedroom). And yet, with this cornucopia of games, I end up playing 500.

It's not a game with lots of components - 500 is played with a regular deck of cards, after you remove all the 2s and 3s. You can't play it solo, either - you need exactly four people. Which, coincidentally, is exactly how many people live in my house (also a good number if I ever need to plan a bank heist, except my son would make a horrible getaway driver). It doesn't even come with everything you need to play, because you have to keep score, and it has this horrible scoring system where you can score anywhere from 40 to 500 points in one round (except in this case, instead of calling it a 'round,' it's called a 'hand.')

So why do I play a lot of 500? You would think I would be gravitating toward Warhammer Quest or Arkham Horror or 7 Wonders, or any of the ever-growing pile of games with expensive graphics and cool plastic pieces and oversized cards with pictures of half-naked girls. And while any of those would be my first pick, I don't live with four people just like myself (a blessing, really, because we would be constantly plunging the toilet, and we would never have any beer). I live with a wife and a daughter and a son, and while it can be like pulling teeth to get everyone around the table for a game of Irondale, we can all agree to play 500.

I may sound a little like I'm complaining, and that would probably be due to the fact that I am. I want to play Rush N Crush and Descent and Dominion. But my wife is a freaking shark at 500, and my daughter loves it (though she is an unrepentant table-talker), and my son... well, my son only wants to play poker, because he thinks he's Armadillo Slim and he's going to retire to Cabo on his gambling winnings. But we rope him into playing with us, and just tell him to suck it up, it will all be over in half an hour.

I don't know why I like 500 as much as I do. It's a trick-taking game, which means it's like a dozen other card games, and I suck at all of them (that may be another reason people want to play). I can never figure out if I should play the king of spades or the four of diamonds, because I'm not sure if I'm supposed to be leading my partner or throwing off trump or setting a heart with a backgammon. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what all those things mean. I'm pretty sure that last one was from a different game.

The rules to 500 are ridiculously easy to explain, but the strategy and card-counting that goes into playing the game makes my head swim. How a game can be this easy and still so freaking complicated boggles the mind. My wife's dad plays 500 nearly every day, and he's so good at it, sometimes I would swear he's got a camera behind my chair. He and my mother-in-law will have company over all the time just to play cards, and they only ever play 500.

I can't even begin to wrap my head around playing the same game every day, even if it is over in half an hour. I like to bounce from game to game like a pinball coming off a Ritalin dependency. I show up at my weekend group with a half dozen games, hoping we can get in most of them before we all have to go back to our families. I can't imagine inviting someone over to play the same game I've been playing since I was ten years old.

But it turns out, this is what lots of normal people do. Not all normal people, mind you, but nearly everyone knows how to play at least one card game, and lots of people play a bunch of them. A deck of cards is about the most accessible game component known to man, outside using your hands for rock-scissors-paper, and even your dull-witted Aunt Hetty can play gin rummy, hearts, or if she's been hitting the sauce again, 52 Pick Up.

Happily, I really enjoy playing 500. I learn more about it every time I play, and I'm getting pretty good at counting how many trump are out and keeping track of what suit my partner wants me to lead. I find it fascinating that a game with so little can do so much, and entertain so thoroughly. The other night, I bid a ten no-trick, which is nearly impossible to achieve unless you're holding a hand of cards that's nearly miraculous. By the time the last card hit the table, my heart was about to leap out of my chest - but I pulled it off, and I'm going to be crowing about that one for a long time.

It's funny to me that I can enjoy a game with no art, no playtesting credits, and where I have to keep track of the score with pen and paper because it doesn't even have a scoring track. But 500 is full of bluffs and misleads, planning and smart plays, and while luck will go a long ways, a good player can win with a bad hand while a bad player loses with a good hand. With these credentials, 500 is a sure-fire winner. Add that to the fact that I can get everyone to play while we're waiting for dinner to finish cooking, and it's going to hit the table on a pretty regular basis. A lot more regular than Nexus Ops, I can tell you that.

Summary

4 players

Pros:

Strategy and tactical plays

Fast and easy to learn

Incredible depth

An element of luck that you can beat if you know what you're doing

People will play it with me

Really, really affordable

Cons:

No art to speak of

No score track

No fancy box or storage tray or plastic bits

Really, just a deck of cards

If you want to play 500, go online and look up the rules. Then go to Target and buy a deck of cards. If you need a link for that, then it's time for you to get a hobby that makes you go outside every now and then.

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Expansion Review - Arkham Horror: Black Goat of the Woods

I've been thinking about Arkham Horror lately, and trying to decide if the town is cursed, or if I am. Every time I show up, people die and monsters drop out of the sky. I kind of wonder if it's like Murder She Wrote - everywhere Angela Lansbury ever went, someone died, and somehow, it was never her fault.

Of course, in my case, nobody actually dies, because it's just a game. But if it were a real place, you can bet your ass I would be on some kind of official no-fly list. Last time I visited, Azathoth tried to wake up and eat the world, and some crazy goat thing was setting up shop out in the woods to help him. Why, I don't know, because that crazy goat thing was just as dead as I was if Azathoth popped up from his nap with a rumble in his belly and turned the whole world into a gigantic unhappy meal.

The reason the goat was helping the Lovecraft version of Galactus was because I was playing The Black Goat of the Woods, in which a thoroughly twisted cult is working with a totally screwed-up supernatural entity to release a completely malevolent ancient being of unimaginable power. It's a cool expansion for Arkham Horror that adds new monsters and cards and stuff to make Arkham Horror even harder than it already is, just in case you were winning too often and having too much fun.

Actually, Black Goat of the Woods was a lot of fun. We infiltrated the goat cult, and then things went from bad to downright nasty, as we started gaining corruption cards that hastened the coming of the planet snacker. We met new monsters and killed them. We wandered in and out of gates to alien dimensions, closing them as fast as we could, but those damned cultists kept screwing us by busting out more monsters and hustling up the clock timer.

Black Goat isn't the most flexible or universally applicable expansion for Arkham Horror, but it did something we've been needing - it made us lose. We had reached a point where we were almost guaranteed to win every time, using our idiot-proof formula of getting a blessing and then succeeding at everything with almost no effort. Black Goat makes the game harder, and it screws up the winning scheme we were following, which means that Arkham Horror gets interesting again.

The reason Black Goat of the Woods makes Arkham Horror more difficult is because of a few different elements. The cult of the Thousand Knuckleheads is interesting, and the corruption you get tends to snowball pretty quickly and is pretty fun. You'll have all kinds of horrible encounters as you infiltrate, and it turns out this is a pretty nasty cult. They don't even have any of that free love you used to hear about in 70s cults, just gross monsters and stuff. I was hoping to join up and then get three subservient wives who would walk around the house naked and cook all the time, but all I got was creepy people in robes who kept summoning horrors from alternate dimensions. Talk about a letdown.

The herald (which would be the black goat mentioned in the title) is really mean. More monsters will be popping out, and some of them will make the sleeping giant wake up faster. People in town get scared faster, and bad stuff generally happens all over the place. It's a great way to accelerate the clock and goose the big bad bogie to get out of bed. Which is great if you're good at the game, but really problematic if you always end up waking the big bad guy and then getting eaten.

The story for Black Goat of the Woods is not as interesting as the Dark Pharaoh expansion, and you probably won't want to shuffle the new cards in with the old ones. But if you want to try something new, and you want Arkham Horror to be as difficult as you remember it being when you first learned how to play, you really ought to give it a whirl. It's a fun expansion, and it adds more to the game, and that's what expansions are supposed to do.

It still doesn't explain why this stuff happens to Arkham every time I show up. That town is a mess.

Summary

Pros:
Adds a new, interesting story
Infiltrate a cult and battle even more heinous monsters than normal
Ratchet up the difficulty level, which is great if you win too often
New monsters and spells and items and other cool stuff

Cons:
Not for new players - you will get stomped

If you want Black Goat of the Woods, so that you can also get stomped in the balls by forces powerful enough to strip you of your sanity, you can get it from Noble Knight Games. Well, OK, they're sold out right now, but if they get another one, it will be here:

GET STOMPED IN THE BALLS

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Expansion Review - Railways of the Western US

Let's say you're playing Railways of the World (which, by way of reminder, is just Railroad Tycoon with a map of Mexico in the box), and you start wondering if there's a really huge map you could play with lots of mountains, so that nobody can actually build any interesting trains before the game ends. If you are thinking that, then you're in luck - you can play Railways of the Western US!

It seems that the reason Eagle Games reworked Railroad Tycoon was a pretty classic one - expansions. By making the game the base set that comes with two expansions, rather than a game specifically about the beginning of the train age in America, they have provided themselves an opportunity to create a whole lot more. And that means they can sell more, which as we all know, is basically why you bother making expansions in the first place.

They are already making considerable progress in the expansion department. Since they released Railways of the World in 2008, Eagle Games has made an expansion every year. Railways of Europe was the first, followed by Railways of England and Wales, and the 2010 release let you build tracks all through the Rockies and Sierra Nevadas, mostly with John Henry and some Chinese immigrants.

If you’re familiar with the Eastern US version of Railways, it’s not like you’re about to stumble onto a whole new game. It’s a new map, which means you don’t have to keep playing the same one over and over, but you could have found that in either of the previous releases, so that’s not a fantastic reason to buy an expansion, unless you have already played the other two until you’ve worn the ink off the board (which reminds me, I need to quit doing lines off mine).

There are a couple new things in the Old West with Trains. New operations and barons are expected, and basically replace the Eastern US cards with their Western US equivalents. But one thing that makes the game considerably more interesting are the color spinners, which change the color of a few of the cities, allowing more opportunities to deliver different color goods every turn. Fuel depots are cool, too, and let you make longer deliveries when you would otherwise be unable to make them work because your trains suck. Of course, you wouldn’t need them if you didn’t keep insisting that the kiddie train at the zoo could deliver cattle to Dodge City. I told you that wouldn’t work.

The new rules elements are interesting, and definitely add a twist to the original game, but the only real reason I can see to play Western US over Eastern US is if you’re bored with New York and want to build out of San Francisco. However, if you regularly play Railways with more than four people, Western US should be your next purchase.

The various maps in the expansions for Railways of the World come in many different sizes, from the gigantic US maps to the miniscule and brutal Mexico map. But if you really need some room to stretch out, the fact that half of the Western US map is covered in mountains will really give you some room to breathe when you’re playing with a crowd. Conversely, a map this expansive will almost completely isolate the opponents in a three-player game, so it could be a real drawback if you like to swipe goods and block people out of their favorite cities.

What you want out of Railways of the World will largely determine whether or not you want the Western US expansion. If you have a large group and want a little more room, this is a good idea. If you play with small groups and don’t like to be cutthroat, you have another good reason to get the Western US. On the other hand, if you despise train games with low interaction, or if you’re looking for an expansion with a thrilling new take on an old game, you may not see much here to whet your appetite. And if you hate train games, then we can assume that you are only reading this review to see if I make another joke about cocaine.

Many of my initial problems with the original version of Railways of the World are still present in Railways of the Western US. For instance, I can still barely tell the difference between the purple and blue. And why can’t I establish industry in a town and turn a gray city red? What if I’m surrounded by red cubes and no red cities? And while I absolutely love playing Railways of the World, I haven’t played Eastern US (or Mexico, or Europe, or England) enough to need a new place to lay track just yet.

On the other hand, I do love the Old West, and while this is kind of a top-down view, I still feel a touch of history when I finally build a line connecting San Francisco to Salt Lake City. I can imagine the train rolling into Fort Worth, loaded down with cowboys, troublemakers and very smelly cows. The fuel depot and the city spinners are cool new additions that definitely change the way you play, so those are also neat.

In the end, I’m glad I have Railways of the Western US, and won’t be dumping it any time soon. I’ll definitely play the hell out of it, especially if I can get a bunch of people together – this map is too damned big for just me and my family, but it would rock with half a dozen railroad barons. And as big as it is, I could do a ton of coke off it.

Summary

2-6 players

Pros:
New map
Huge, with lots of room to spread out
A couple cool new rules add some little twists

Cons:
Low on interaction with two or three players

If you run over to Noble Knight Games, you can pick up Western US right here, and save some greenbacks while you're at it:
WESTERN TRAIN LINK

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Guest Review - Thunderstone: Doomgate Legion

I've got a special treat for you tonight - a guest reviewer! Come to think of it, since that means I didn't have to write the review and got someone else to play the game for me, I think that's a treat for me. Anyway, my old man really likes Thunderstone, and I don't. So I gave him my copy of Thunderstone, and then Alderac sent me expansions. I gave him those, too, because he lives like 1500 miles away and I can't exactly borrow it back for the weekend.

So please give a warm welcome to our guest reviewer, who is doing me a big favor and writing my column for me tonight - my dad!

Right up front, I take it for granted that if you’re reading this review you already own Thunderstone, and take it a safe assumption you already own the expansion Wrath of the Elements as well. That’ll save us all a lot of needless explanations and we’ll understand just what I’m referring to.

My first thoughts when I got Doomgate Legion was, “Hmm, just like the last expansion.” When I opened it up, I was confirmed – at first sight it’s REALLY like the last expansion. A solid box with great inserts and such, just like the box to Wrath of the Elements. If you have all the games in the series so far you’ll now have two extra boxes, since all the cards fit in either WotE or DL – I know, because all mine are in the DL box now. Not that I mind the box and inserts, but you may end up with a collection of boxes. OK, enough about the box. As I perused the cards I was anxious to get them on the table. Lots of new cards and lots of new ideas – so in this respect not so much like the last expansion. Thunderstone should never get boring.

The rules: Look just like the previous rules, and these rules fit in the box. The writing has improved, IMO, over the first game, so they’re pretty darn clear to understand. And the rules seem easier this expansion.

Now, about the rules, I have a thought of a not-so-positive nature; did anyone proof-read the rules?!? Thunderstone is a slick product, and I’m fairly impressed with the quality of the cards, but the little glitches in the rules are just stupid. For example, I spent a long time looking for the Bodyguard. You know what? There is no Bodyguard!! He’s a “Border Guard.” Jeez Louise! This should have been caught in the rough draft of the rules! And I took a long time finding the Squire – BECAUSE HE’S THE “Doomgate Squire”! In the future, you ought to be able to find some homeless guy with time on his hands to proof-read your rules.

The cards: I’ve read some disparaging remarks regarding the art work of Thunderstone. Some guy says they look like comic book art. I don’t see it, but . . . what’s wrong with comic book art anyway?!? Some of the cards are maybe a bit dorky, but all-in-all I think they look great for the theme. No complaints on my part.

I noticed in one post the reviewer mentioned that his cards were about 1mm larger than the original cards. Not so with mine – I checked. My Doomgate Legion cards are exactly the same size (and color on the back as far as my failing eyes can make out) as the original. Everything fantastic so far.

Some of the new concepts: Well, Disease is a major new change in this box. Holy smoke, but if all your monsters lurking the dungeon are from DL, be prepared to take a lot of Rest actions. Most of the new monsters seem to infect heroes with something in each battle. And there’s now an assortment of diseases, so you don’t just lose attack points. Like I said, be prepared to Rest fairly often. All-in-all, I’m not overly taken with the variety of Diseases, but maybe the one game I’ve played didn’t have a sufficiently shuffled deck. But I have to say, I think the idea of monsters infecting heroes with diseases is clever and is well done.

DL also has Treasures that are lying on the floor of the Dungeon and, when a monster is killed or sent back to the bottom of the dungeon, they appear, and the player who moved the monster just picks it up. Kind of like, you just killed this monster and behind his dead body you find the valuable treasure. Very clever concept, and I like it. Also kind of cool that the treasure doesn’t go in your discard pile but stays on the table in front of you, so you can use it’s special effect on demand. (I can feel a house rule developing here – if you send a monster back to the bottom of the dungeon and a treasure appears, you don’t get to take it. I play with guys who might just do this very thing to find a treasure.)

There’s a “Spirit Blast” card you can buy in the village that seems kind of odd. You see, if you play Spirit Blast in a battle, for each XP you have saved up, you get an attack point. I can see someone developing a strategy by not cashing in his XPs, but I and all the guys I play this game with level up our heroes as soon as the opportunity presents itself, so Spirit Blast didn’t see much action in the game we played with it on the board.

Well, I don’t have a lot to say about various heroes and monsters – you can read other reviews to get the details. But the variety of cards for Thunderstone just keep expanding, so you could play this game for many years and play a different game each time. In fact, this might just be one of those games that, if you were stranded on a deserted isle and could only have one game, this is the one you’d choose. (Well, for myself I have a different game passion, but I can see someone choosing this one.)

Now we can sit on our doorstep and wait for the delivery of Thunderstone: Dragonspire. The box shown for this next expansion looks fantastic, and the new concepts I’m reading about have me anticipating this one. Of course, it means my box collection will be growing.

Summary

Pros:

Awesome art (even if it does possibly look like comic book art).

Great new concepts that add to the game.

Same great quality of product.

Cons:

Stupid glitches in the rules. You can do better than that.

If you're going to buy Doomgate Legion, I sure would love it if you get it from Noble Knight Games. It would also be great if you told them I sent you:

DOOMGATE LINK

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Bidding Game Review - 1655 - Habemus Papum

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Board Game Review - Pirates: Quest for Davy Jones' Gold

If you're a game nerd, you've probably at least seen the pirate game from WizKids, the one where they print punch-out pirate ships on credit cards and then you put them together yourself, usually after breaking one or two of the masts in half. Many of you have probably played that game, too. Some of you even think it didn't suck, but sadly, you would be wrong, because it did. The pirate ships were fun to build, though, if you could figure out how to get them together without snapping pieces into little plastic splinters.

When I picked up a copy of Pirates: Quest for Davy Jones' Gold, I didn't expect it to be particularly impressive. It was a board game version of that popular collectible game, and so I was prepared for it to be dull, unimaginative, short on strategy, long on arbitrary die rolls and prone to fragile bits flying across the table. I did not expect the pieces of the game to be crappy, though - I used to buy the boats to put them together, just because that part was neat. So the absurd vinyl play mat took me by surprise.

Right out of the gate, simply so that we could play, we had to mod our game. In this case, we had a large piece of plexiglass that we put on top of the plastic mat where we were supposed to play. This worked very well, which was good, because otherwise our pirate ships never would have been able to cross the Grand Teton mountains rising out of the ocean at every spot that the vinyl son of a bitch wouldn't lay flat. If you buy this game, consider also removing a window from your house so that you can slap the glass down on top of the crappy plastic board.

The game itself is basically just the collectible version, but with training wheels. All the ships have the same movement, and many of the other game elements are trimmed out to make it easier for first-time players. You each have two ships, and you visit islands and try to pick up treasures. Some of the treasures will tell you to fight Davy Jones, who is a total bastard and will beat the crap out of you nine times out of ten. Some of the treasures tell you to go kill sea monsters, which is really hard to do because they get a dozen chances to hurt you before you can even get off your first shot, unless you're the guy who can move then shoot, in which case you'll probably miss because your cannons suck.

The worst thing about this game is the curse token. There are actually four of these, and when you draw one, all your ships travel from wherever they are and wind up stuck in a pile of seaweed, or lost in a fog bank, or run aground on a reef. Then you have to sit there for the rest of the game, and your turn consists of rolling two dice and then using very harsh language because you still didn't roll doubles. These curses add absolutely nothing good to the game, and serve only to frustrate and irritate. The creators of these curse tokens should be dragged behind a plastic pirate ship over a vinyl mat until they get friction burns on their ass cheeks.

I do remember that while I did not much enjoy the collectible version of this game, it still had some depth. Not a whole hell of a lot, mind you, but it had some cool play options, and you could spend a fun couple hours building a good fleet. I guess in order to appeal to the new Pirate purchaser, WizKids decided to remove the part of the game where it was fun. The strategic element of choosing your ships is completely gone. The part where you tactically maneuver and try to take out the enemy ships is watered down to a thin, tasteless gruel. The best way to win this game is to rush to the island, fill up your ship, and be luckier than everyone else. It's not fun. The ships are cool, though.

I can't say with complete sincerity that I was disappointed in Pirates: Failed Quest for Something Interesting in the Box. But I wasn't disappointed because I wasn't expecting very much, and that's what I got. I still love the pirate ships, and the sea monsters were very cool. The game could be fixed to actually be fun, but you'll need to laminate the board, remove the curses completely, nerf the sea monsters so they don't completely cripple the players who have to kill them, and give people a good reason to shoot each other instead of just rushing for treasure like contestants on a stupid reality television show. But I don't really have the inclination to fix a game when I have dozens of games that I already love, and that don't need repairs, so it seems this pirate game is going straight to Davy Jones' Goodwill Donation Box.

Summary

2-4 players

Pros:
Doesn't matter how many I already have, I love building those plastic pirate ships
The kraken and the sea serpent are totally bitchin'
Lets you get a taste of the collectible game without having to buy a case of boosters

Cons:
Weak rules remove all the fun parts and keep all the bland parts
Stupid vinyl play mat is too small and won't lay flat
Desperately needs a good game designer to fix it

If you would like to try Pirates: Davy Jones' Stanky Crotch, go to a thrift store. If you don't find it there, don't get it somewhere else. If you pay more than three bucks, you're going to be pissed.

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