This is a really fun game which captures the feel of the theme perfectly.
Each player has a bag of treasure consisting of coloured jewels and gold doubloons. They also have a home port with a number of coloured jewels in.
During your turn you roll 2 dice or 3 if you have become the Dread Pirate.
You gain treasure by battling other pirate ships, trading or raiding at ports. Most of these actions involve rolling a dice each with the victor taking the amount of treasure equalling their roll. In the case of Trading your roll determines how many doubloons you pay to Dread Island and your opponents roll determines how many jewels you receive from their port. Once you have traded or raided you can not do this port again until you have taken one of the actions or battled with another pirate.
In order to land at Dread Island and steal free treasure you need to collect one of each of the coloured jewels and the first person to land on Dread island becomes the Dread Pirate. The Dread Pirate uses an extra dice to move and may add 1 to his trade or battle rolls. To collect treasure from Dread island you need to land at the port and roll a dice, collecting the amount of doubloons equal to the dice roll.
To become the Dread Pirate once someone has the Jolly Rodger on their ship you have to defeat them in battle.
There are optional rules using the Wind dice which means you only use the lowest dice when moving into wind but use both when with it. To be honest this should always be used as it adds a lot to the game. Movement is only Horizontally and vertically and you can not cross land.
If you land or cross one of the marked triangles or Shark squares on the map you draw a Dread Pirate card which are read allowed then the action followed. These cards add more theme to the game and are a lot of fun.
The winner is the one with the most treasure once all the coloured jewels are collected from the ports. If there is a tie then it is the one with the most doubloons.
There are extra things that can be done to make it more interesting for advanced players. Overall this is a really fun game, the pieces are fantastic and the game plays really well.
2nd Edition Rules1st Edition RulesAlternate RulesFiles listed Courtesy of
www.boardgamegeek.com
