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Pirates of Van Zandt TextVersion

The Pirates of Van Zandt
A piecepack game by Andy Van Zandt
Copyright 2008 Truekid Games
www.TruekidGames.com
This may be used for any purpose as long as this header is included and unaltered.

Intro:

Loose lips sink ships, and due to the loosening of several lips by a little bit of grog, several groups of pirates just realized that they've all buried their treasure near each other, in the same group of islands! Now they've all rushed out, not as much to defend their own treasure, which has no doubt been ingeniously hidden, but to unearth the booty the other groups have hidden and claim it as their own.

Disagreements may arise, such as Who exactly is on whose island and YARRRRRR!. These should generally solved with tap on the shoulder with a cutlass, or a friendly reminder via cannonball.

The Setup:

Give each player all the coins, the pawn, the ace and null tiles of their suit.

The Pawn is their captain. The ace and null coins are their cannonballs (used value side up), the other coins are the crew (used value side down, except when they are required to reveal their value). The ace tile is their whirlpool, and the null tile is their ship. Place everything except the whirlpool on their suit- side up ship.

Turn the rest of the tiles suit side down, they will be the island(s). Roll 1 of the dice to determine the island configuration (make sure the gaps are large enough to slide the ships through, and that the tile edges on outlying islands still maintain general edge alignment with the others):

http://www.truekidgames.com/pictures/6islands.gif

Then, starting with the youngest player, each player in turn places his ship (loaded with captain, crew, and cannonballs) directly adjacent to a land tile (ships can't overlap). Then each player, in the same order, takes the dice of their suit and places it in any square on the board. These are the likely spots for buried treasure.

Play:

Again, starting with the youngest player, each player takes turns. During each turn, you may take two actions, which can be any combination of the following, as long as you meet the requirements (including two of the same action in a row):


Action List:


Thorough action descriptions:

Ship actions (you may not take a ship action unless your captain is on the ship):

Crew actions:

Open-ocean actions (these may only be taken while your ship is open-ocean):

Winning the game and notes about the captain:

If any one player claims 2 treasures and no-one else has any, he wins. When 3 treasures have been claimed (assuming the prior condition wasn't met before then), each player with treasure compares total values, the higher value wins. If there is a tie for first place, play continues until the 4th treasure is claimed. If the 4th treasure is claimed, and there is still a tie for first, each player rolls the treasure dice they have collected, highest result wins. Repeat until a clear winner is determined.

If it was not clear from the above descriptions, the captain cannot attack or be attacked, and cannot be killed. Any of his crew that is in any diagonally or orthogonally adjacent space gets +1 attack value and +1 to movement. The ship cannot do anything besides hold crew while the captain is not on it. The captain can check for treasure, he counts as the null result.