Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest - First Play!

24th May 2022

It's a Tuesday and we're with the Woking Gaming Club in The Sovereigns.

Fly as free as a err flying pirate? Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is set in a world of fantastical aerial ships, anthropomorphic heroes and adventurous voyages to find loot and lost treasure.

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What's in a game?

• Board: The board for Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is double-sided.
  One side has the 'base' game and depicts a cheerful oceanic panorama of land and flying islands in a colourful palette.
  The other side features the same landscape but lashed by heavy rains and troubled by storms. This side is the more 'antagonistic' side.
  Initiative track: This track has space for 6 cards and also tracks initiative throughout the game's day and night phases.
  Loot spaces: There are 6 spaces for 'loot' and are marked day 1 through to day 6. Each space represents a day of voyaging. Each of the game's 3 voyages lasts 4, 5 or 6 days respectively.
  Reputation tracker: There are 6 spaces here (One for each player.) and it runs from left to right, with the rightmost player having the highest reputation. Beneath each space is a gold value and on the left end is a '-2' gold symbol, while on the right end is a '+2' symbol.
  Loot tile spaces: Not to be confused with loot tokens or loot spaces. These provide special rules when loot tokens are taken and also serve as spaces to place 1 each of the game's 7 loot tiles.
  The actions tend to activate either at dusk or the voyage's end.
• Player cards: There are identical sets of 40 cards in each player colour that depict 40 different pirates and are numbered 1-40 in the top left corner. They also display a name for each character.
  At the bottom it lists the ability of each card in the game's 3 phases.
  Bold, brash and cartoony art is used to illustrate the character cards.
• Reputation tokens: There is one of these bulky octagonal reputation tokens in each player colour.
• Scoring dials: There are 2 dials on each of these and again, they come in 6 player colours.
• Graveyard tile: There is 1 each of these tiles for each player and they display a wrecked ship.
• Loot tiles: These can be used to provide alternate rules for when a loot token is taken.
• Loot tokens: Now I'm a pretty big fan of wooden components but even so, these plastic tokens are very chunky and look very cool - even if they look chewy sweets in colourful wrappers!
  They represent the game's 7 different types of loot; chest, barrel, relic, hook, saber, amulet and map. When a loot token is taken, it will activate it's special rule as per the board or loot tiles in play.
• Bag: Used in conjunction with the loot tokens to blindly draw them.
• Doubloons: Gold doubloons are the game's currency. These tokens are made of card and have different shapes dependant on denomination.

Component quality is solid throughout, cards, tokens and tiles are well constructed but the chunky loot tokens really stand out, even if I have to resist the urge to try and unwrap and eat them.

Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest makes use of excellent use of bright, eye-catching, cartoony art presenting a larger than life setting and characters.

About a dozen icons are used throughout the game, they are all fairly clear and easily understood.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Put out the board.
  Reputation track: Take all 6 reputation tokens (Regardless of the number of players.) and randomly put them on the track to determine starting order of initiative. Each player should get 7-12 gold according to their starting position on the track.
  Optional: Players can choose to use the default loot rules on the board or use the loot tiles for a variant on these rules.
• Loot: Put all the loot tokens into the bag and blindly draw loot tokens for each day of the current journey, the number of tokens drawn for each day should equal the number of players.
• Players: Give each player the following in their colour.
  Character deck: This 40 card deck should not be shuffled and instead be in numerical order going from 1-40.
  Scoring dial: Should be set to 0.
  Graveyard: Will come into play later on.

That's pretty much setup done.

On to play
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is played over 3 'voyages' which have a length of 4, 5 and 6 days. For each day, a player will put a character card into play and this is done secretly.
​Thus over all 3 voyages each player will use 15 character.

• Voyage start: I said earlier that no one should shuffle their character decks. Well now, one player should shuffle their deck, draw 6 cards and show them to all other players.
  Every other player should now take those 6 cards out their deck and put them into their hand.
  This means that all players will have identical hands of 6 cards.
• Play card: Each player now chooses and plays a character card from their hand and plays it face-down.
• Reveal cards: Once all players have put a card down, they are all simultaneously revealed.
  Cards are then placed on to the initiative tracker in numerical order with the lowest value going on the left (And going first!) all they way to the highest on the furthest right (Who goes last.). Ties are resolved according to the reputation tracker.
• Phases: The following 3 phases are played which will trigger various actions which gain or lose players gold, reputation or even character cards.
  • Day: In initiative order (With the lowest value characters going first.) activate each character card's 'day' ability (Provided the character has one.).
  • Dusk: Now in reverse initiative order, each player should remove their character from the initiative tracker and places it in their playing area, if the character has a dusk ability it should now be activated and then they take a loot token from that day's space. If the token chosen activates a rule with a dusk ability, it is also immediately resolved.
    If for any reason a player's character has been sent to the graveyard, the controlling player does not collect the card or a loot token.
  • Night: Players now activate any night abilities on the cards they've placed in their personal playing areas in any order they choose.
    ​Once this is done all cards in a player's personal area are discarded to their graveyard.
    Any loot tokens a player has acquired stays in their playing area until the end of the voyage.
• Next day: Once all night actions have been resolved, play moves on to the next day and any unclaimed loot tokens from the previous day are returned to the bag.
  Each player now puts another character face-down into their area and the 3 phases are resolved again.
• Voyage's end: When the last day in a voyage has ended and night actions for that day have been resolved, then end of voyage actions are resolved. Typically these will be actions related to loot tokens and loot rules, although there are character cards with abilities to be resolved now too.
  Gold: However much gold a player has accumulated on this voyage is now added to their scoring dial and is considered 'banked', this means that if a player loses gold for any reason later in the game, it does not come off of the dial.
  Tokens: All coin tokens are returned to the supply and all loot tokens put back in the bag.
• New voyage: The setup is now done for a new voyage which will be a day longer.
  Loot tokens: All the days for this voyage are now populated with loot tokens following the previous rules.
  Draw cards: The player who initially drew 6 cards at the start of the 1st voyage now draws another 6. All other players also draw the same 6 cards.
  All players will now have 8 cards in hand, 2 from the previous voyage and 6 identical from the start of this one.
  Play now progresses normally for the allotted number days.

Endgame
Play progress until the night actions for the 3rd and final voyage are resolved.
Players compare their scoring dials.

​Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest feels like a complex game but in practice is quite straightforward. In essence, a character card is played and the resolved up to 3 times.
Where the game's complexity comes from is how a character card played interacts with character cards played by other players.

Everyone starts with the same hand of cards and will acquire a further identical 12 cards during the course of the game.
It means that all players will be using the same 18 cards played over in total 15 actions. But since it's unlikely that all players will make use of the same cards at the same, it means the game encourages players to watch their opponents. Knowing when someone has or hasn't played a certain card can prove very useful. This contextual information can allow players to adapt their tactics and can change the flow of the game.

Additionally; Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest injects a dose of 'take that' into the game, the 40 cards have a varied set of abilities that can be brought to play, including being able to eliminate other characters, pulling cards out of the graveyard, etc.
It's also worth noting that while the 'calm' side of the game board has the potential for some friction between players the 'stormy' side increases this.

The game also provides short and long term goals which require short, mid and long term strategies.
Day abilities on cards give players immediate benefits, but dusk and night abilities can also provide desirable benefits. A player may choose to put a high value character card on to the initiative track so they go earlier in the dusk phase to secure a certain type of loot.
Which brings me to long term strategy, loot is vital here. Loot typically provides benefits during the end of voyage phase and the loot for all days is openly shown on the board which players must take this into consideration during the whole journey. 

All of this means that Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest hits a sweet spot of accessible but tactical game play. Players are always given meaningful decisions to make using a degree of imperfect information.
I found it an engaging game. Definitely one to try.