Mr. Pfister did it again.

It was a 2p game, and it took us ~2.5h, which is really long. I still don’t know if it was because it was our 1st play, and the information overload is there at the start, but everything becomes clear after you do one full turn sailing around Caribbean. From there on playing was a pure joy.

Game is a combination of engine/route building similar to the one in Great Western Trail, but with without punishing for stopping on other players locations. Additional actions are created by placing assistants on different locations on the sailing route, which are obtained by buying assistant cards. The amount of cards in the game is huge, so every game is going to be different in that regard. Another major part of the game is increasing the “value” of 3 countries England, Spain and France, through fighting for them, and gaining influence with those countries. There is no fighting other players or anything, its just carrying out different type of action called combat, which will most of the time place country markers on the board indicating that given country now controls certain locations on the board. This mechanism is very similar to the companies and influence in Mombasa.

So overall, it feels like a great mix of GWT and Mombasa, with some interesting twists. A lot of meaningful and interesting decision making, where you just can’t do everything. Replayability seems to be huge, even without campaign/legacy mode. It was only our first play-through, so its to bee seen how this will do on repeated plays, especially with more than 2p, since the only concern I have is duration. Hopefully it can be brought don’t to 45min/player once everyone know the rules. But even if not, I liked it so much that I would still love to play it 🙂