OUR REVIEW

THREE FRIGATES ARE WAITING

DIE GULLI PIRATTEN

SCOURGE OF THE SEWERS

The box reports: Deep down under the realm of thriftless humans lies an unexplored world, unnoticed by the busy bustle of the surface dwellers. Only the most courageous of those creatures of the upper world descend down into the mysteries of the underground and challenge fate aboard one of the legendary sewer frigates, wanting to loot immense treasures.

This game Die Gulli-Piratten takes you down into Oceana full of garbage and dirt and offers you the chance to become your own pirate’s legend, in the midst of dirt and feces. Assemble a fearless crew of pirates and choose its members from charismatic rats, lightning-quick cockroaches, persevering toads and brawny raccoons which will all support you with their variety-specific abilities. Don’t be content with less than fast-food leftovers and thrown-out toys to finally attain your goal and become a true legend among sewer pirats.

Sometimes, one gets the chance to accompany something from the start, to be present when something comes into existence instead of only seeing the finished product.

For many years now the Viennese Games Academy together with the Games Museum holds a meeting of game designers in August in the museum in Leopoldsdorf. Designers from all over Austria congregate and show their designs. Several times already the presentation at this meeting has resulted in the publication of a game.

That was the case, too, when Andreas Pelikan in 2009 showed a game under the rather dry working title „Pirates on Booty Quest“ to the CEO of Heidelberger Spieleverlag, Harald Bilz. At that point the Heidelberger were – besides being distributors for small publishers – especially renowned for publishing German versions of the opulent miniature games of FFG. A short time ago, though, they had begun to enlarge their range of self-produced games. In the pirate game Harald Bilz spotted a potential for their first home-made miniatures game. This opened up the possibility to equip the different kinds of pirates with different special abilities. And so the designer was tasked with developing and testing such special abilities.

On occasion of SPIEL in Essen, 2011, the game will now make its appearance under the name of „Die Gulli-Piratten: Der Schrecken der Kanalisation“, that is, “Gulli Pirats: The Scourge of the Sewers”

The big square box, nowadays standard fare with many games publishers, is well filled. Foremost you notice the 30 plastic miniatures. Six different clans of sewer inhabitants in pirate’s garb are at first reminding one of “Pirates of the Caribbean”, at a second glance a little bit also of “Flutsch and Weg”. Five rats, racoons, cockroaches, toads, snails and weasels, all in neutral grey, wait to be equipped by players with color clicks on their feet.

Each of the two to five players holds four of those clickable color markers, which thanks to noses at the sides stay in place very well. He uses them to mark the four members of his crew. Added to this, the game components comprise three big ship boards, 42 square booty markers, 14 round booty upgrade markers, 54 talisman cards, 6 animal tribe cards and two summary cards.

The three wittily-illustrated ship boards are placed next to each other in the middle of the table; they represent the legendary sewer frigates: An old bathtub, car tires that were lashed together and an inflatable crocodile. On each frigate you find three spots for the crew and a spot for the captain, separated by a sail. Left front on each ship the ship’s talisman is shown: A cat’s skull, fishbone and a bird’s skull.

In front of each frigate you place a group of three booty markers and one booty upgrade marker, all face-up. These treasures drift along the sewers and are available to be picked up by the crew of the frigate. To allow for a little planning ahead, a second group of three booty markers and one booty upgrade marker is placed in front of each frigate. The other markers serve as face-down stock.

The talisman cards are shuffled and placed as a face-down draw pile at the backside of the ship boards, four cards are laid out face up. Finally, each player receives a certain number of talisman cards and four pirates, which he marks with his color clocks. The exact mode for this depends on the level of the game you did choose. You can choose from a basic game and three more levels.

In the basic game, which in essence is identical with the prototype presented in 12009, the starting player and his left neighbor receive three cards each, all other players are dealt four cards. It does not matter which figurines you take, as you play without special abilities. The basic game is also suitable for younger players from ages 8+, or for getting acquainted with the game mechanics. In the advanced levels the special abilities of the clans are added. The three advanced levels only differ in the set-up of the game.

Aim of the game is to loot the fattest booty, in this game fattest is to be taken literally because – disregarding a few exceptions – only edibles do count. All markers show a score value in a round bubble or in a star. Markers with a bubble score their value directly, points in a star only score in combination with other appropriate markers of the same color. Ketchup alone, for instance, is without value, but increases the value of each of your French Fries marker by 5 points; the Fries markers alone already have values between 2 and 4. In the same way you can boost Wok Noodles (3-5 points) with Chili (+4 points) or Burgers (4-6 points) with a milk shake including a crown (+3 points). Even more points, 7-10, can be scored by dolls and teddy bears, but you need a talking parrot to do so, because only he can exchange those “hostages” for food from humans.

Using a parrot you can either score all your own dolls or all your own teddy bears. If you want to score both groups of toys you need two parrots. Each parrot on his own scores one more point, probably because of all the stories he can tell. The list is topped by tins, 10-15 points are possible with tinned food, but you need a tin opener for each tin that you want to score! The tin opener by itself, with or without tins, scores two points.

Now, how do get those booty markers? Well, by going for a booty quest in the sewer frigates. But to do this you have to board the frigates first, and as you are a superstitious pirate you need a talisman for this. The game is played in turns around the table. In your turn you have one brief action, you choose from four different actions: Take a talisman card, move a pirate to a crew spot, become captain or set sails.

If you draw cards, you may take two cards from the open display and/or the face-down draw-pile. Then the open display is augmented to four cards. If the active player now has more than 6 cards, he must discard redundant cards of your own choice. If you discard a talisman card corresponding to the ship you can place a pirate on the most backward free crew spot of the ship and move him on to the next free spot(s) by discarding additional talisman cards.

If crew spots are already taken you jump over them, and you can also move a pirate further ahead that is already on board the ship.

To become captain is possible by applying the same rules, but is a separate action. Because you can only move to the captain’s spot when there is no free spot between the intended pirate and the captain’s spot. Far a pirate already on board this costs you exactly one talisman card. If all crew spots are taken on a ship, you can move a pirate from your stock to the captain’s spot, but this costs you three appropriate talisman cards. The Pirate’s Union looks after their own and sees to it that cannot easily ignore faithful seamen.

When at the start of your turn one of your own pirates is on a captain’s spot, you must set sail with this frigate. This is your action of the round. The captain receives the booty upgrade marker and can choose one of the three booty markers first. Then the pirates on the front-most spots can choose one each of the remaining booty markers. Pirates who did loot booty take it and go off board back into stock of their owners. Pirates that did not manage to loot booty stay on board and advance one spot. Then the ship sails on to the next booty pile, which is also can be moved to the ship, just as the size of the table allows. Finally, a new booty pile is placed for preview purposes.

When the stock of booty and booty upgrade-markers has been used you go on playing without preview booty piles, until there is no booty pile left in front of one of the ship. When this happens, ships where the captain’s spot is occupied set sails immediately and then the game ends instantly. Players add the values on their booty and booty upgrade markers and the player with the highest total wins.

Due to the short actions the game is played rather fluently and quickly, even with five players. If somebody sets sails you need to pay attention who is next in turn, because the game continues with the player to the left of the captain, and not to the left of the player who was the last to choose a booty marker.

It is advisable to collect sets deliberately. The relative values of the different sets shifts according to the number of players. In a game for two the cumulative bonuses come into play more, with a full complement of five players the tins are more efficient. But if all only try for tins French Fries in Red-Red turn into a delicacy that you should not turn your back on.

In the advances levels the special abilities of the six different clans come into play. Rats are greedy and take two booty markers when the loot is shared. Behind a rat, not much is left to take. Cockroaches do not fear the wrath of the gods and pay one talisman card less for each movement; to move onto the next free spot for them is free of charge. This saves actions, because you need to draw cards less frequently. If you move over a raccoon, you must pay an appropriate talisman card to its owner. This can be used to countermand the cockroaches a little bit. The toad can renounce its share of the booty and remain on board.

This gives her an excellent starting position for the booty in the next pile. The weasel can do two actions in a row. This seems to be rather powerful, but is evened out when you remember that both actions must be done with the same weasel and that drawing cards is not a character action. The snail can always, when it moves on a free crew spot, slide on to the next one, if it gets lucky, by turning up the top talisman card from the pile, and when the talisman fits the ship the snail moves on to the next spot, which can also be the captain’s spot. When the next spot is taken, the snails exchanges places with the pirate there.

Level 1 is intended to get you acquainted with the strengths and weaknesses of the different clans. Four clan cards are drawn blindly, each player takes one piece of each clan that was drawn; talisman cards are dealt as in the basic game. The length of the game equals that of the basic game.

In a level 2 game each player assembles a team of four by chance; several pirates of the same clan are possible. When the teams are assembled, they are auctioned; each player receives 8 talisman cards for bidding.

In level 3 number of players times four pirates are lined up in a row and auctioned one by one. For the pirate in front 0 is a valid offer, for each pirate that you leave out the minimum bid is raised by one card. Due to the auction the length of the games in level 2 and 3 gets a bit longer, for level 3 you should plan 10 to 15 minutes more.

All in all this is an attractive new game which title and design assign to the the Fantasy genre, surely a good move, because it could have been an abstract game which would have not created the same interest and flair.

Ferdinand de Cassan

Players: 2-5

Age: 10+

Time: 30+

Designer: Andreas Pelikan

Artist: Martina Fahrenbach

Price: ca. 30 Euros

Publisher: Heidelberger Spieleverlag 2011

Web: www.hds-fantasy.de

Genre: Fantasy pirate game

Users: With friends

Version: de

Rules: de

In-game text: yes

Comments:

Fantastic components * cute topic * three different levels of difficulty * topic and mechanics go well together

Compares to:

All games of set collecting and worker placement; first game with this combination of mechanisms

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 6

Ferdinand de Cassan:

A pirate game of the first water, always you need to take the best decision to get the best part of the booty; an attractive game by an Austrian designer.

Chance (pink): 2

Tactic (turquoise): 3

Strategy (blue): 2

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0