OUR REVIEW

Pirates of the Caribbean

TORTUGA

Ships and smuggling

Ile de la Tortue, Turtle Island in English, but far better known by its Spanish name Tortuga. The island can be found on the Northern shores of the island of Hispaniola and is part of the island nation of Haiti. The fame of Tortuga stems from the permission given by Governors in the 17^th century to pirates and buccaneers to settle on the island and use it as a base for pursuing first piracy and later freebooting.  Tortuga served as a central transfer and switching station for smuggled goods and stolen booty for more than 50 years.

The most famous pirate and buccaneer of all was Francois LÓllonais, whose brutality was a match for the likes of famous Blackbeard, Francis Drake or Bartholomy Roberts. In our heads today the name of Tortuga is definitely linked to a character from current cinema events, Jack Sparrow, Captain Jack Sparrow featuring in the films on “Pirates of the Caribbean”.

Tortuga, the game published by Queen Games, picks up those historic facts, especially the role of Tortuga as a reloading point. It ended up on our game table after being financed in a Kickstarter campaign.

Each player is given his own player board which is made up from several areas to upgrade your fleet, hire crew, go hunting for treasures, boarding and raiding an area. In the lower part of the board areas for an island, the crew, the fleet and Tortuga herself can be found. Those four areas are designated to accept treasure chests.

Each round comprises three phases that are always played in the same order. First you roll dice: You take your five dice, of which each side has another symbol and each symbol shows a different number from 1 to 5. The sixth side of a die shows a skull and a letter from A to E. On a screen, which is given to each player, you find a summary of all symbols and numbers for easy handling.

After rolling your dice you choose one or several dice, all with the same symbol, end place them on the area of your board to which the symbols correspond. Then you re-roll the remaining dice, choose and place them, and so on, until all dice are placed. In the areas for Boarding and Raiding a ship is sitting on a counting track indicating the maximum number of dice that can be placed there.

Should it happen that a player has already placed all his dice and others still need to roll some of theirs this player may take one bonus tile and place it on one of the five areas on his board. Each of those tiles raise the value of the respective area by one or two points.

All skulls are jokers and can be used in two different ways: You either rolled only skulls - then you decide which symbol you want the skulls to represent when you lift your screen; or, if you roll the skull together with another symbol, you use the skull for this symbol; in both cases you place the respective die on your player board.

Which actions can then be done with those dice and who may implement them? On each of the five action areas each player sums the numbers on his dice and adds eventual bonus points. The players in first and second place of this scoring are allowed to implement the action.

Expanding The Fleet means that you move your ship marker on the track of eight cases to the right, that is, improve it. The player with the highest dice score moves one step, the one with the second-best total moves one step. The position of your ship on this track indicates how many treasure chests you can store in the fleet are. You begin at position Three.

The second action area is used to Hire Crew and is handled exactly like the area for expanding the fleet. The track is identical and indicates how many treasure chests you may store in the crew area. In the third area you can go hunting for treasures. The player in first place of dice results draws a chest from the bag and puts it onto his island area. He also draws two treasure tiles from those displayed face-down, looks at them and chooses one. The other one is put back and he then shuffles the remaining tiles. The player with the second-best sum draws one tile and keeps it. Those treasure tiles give you additional victory points.  

The fourth action are is Boarding. The player with the highest dice total chooses another player and takes a treasure chest from this player’s Fleet area and puts it in his own island area. The player who was boarded then moves his marker on the Expanding the Fleet track to the left by one step and thus loses one position.

When the player who was boarded has at least one die in this action area, too, the attacker must also move his marker to the left by one step. The player with the second-best total can also choose another player, but not the one chosen by the first player, and takes a treasure chest from the Treasure Island in the middle - provided there is a chest there. The player who was boarded moves his marker one step to the left and, again, so does the attacker if the boarded player defended with at least one die, that is, has at least one die in the area.

The fifth action are is call Raiding and is handled exactly like Boarding. The treasure chest, however, is taken from the Crew area of the raided player.

When the action areas have been dealt with players check if the chests that were placed into the crew and fleet areas may be stored there. This is determined by the track as this states the number of chests that can be stored. Chests, for which there is no room, are placed on the Treasure Island. Only one chest of each color is allowed on this island, surplus ones are put back into the bag.

Players can now take back their dice. Then players relocate their treasure chests. Treasure chests in the fleet are are moved to Tortuga and are safe from boarding or raids; chests from the Crew area are shifted to the Fleet area and the chests from your island are shifted to the Crew area. Should there be too many chests for Fleet or Crew area the surplus chests go to the Treasure Island or into the bag.

Should it happen, that one or more players have six or more treasure chests in Tortuga, the game ends and a final scoring takes place. For each treasure chest in Tortuga you score 3 points, for each one in the Fleet are 2 points and for each chest in the Crew area 1 point. Purple treasure chests score double points in each area. For each set of one red, one blue and one yellow treasure chest that you have on your board you score 3 points.

For each step that you made on the Fleet and Crew tracks you score 1 point and treasure tiles you collected score the points indicated on them. The player with the highest score wins, in case of a tie all included in the tie win together.

If you want a longer game you can play until there are 8 chests in Tortuga. For a game of two players the rules give the necessary modifications.

The designers of the game are so far unknown here, their games produced before Tortuga did not make it across the Big Pond. Publisher Queen Games did finance the game with a Kickstarter project. Currently, two expansions have been published, too, Queenie 1 – Treasure Tiles and Queenie 2 – Island & Island Tiles.

The game runs very smoothly once you have grasped the rules. And this may take a while. We had a freaky effect with those rules that repeated itself with several groups of people who did not have contact with each other: Mistakes in reading the rules. I do not know why. My first game of Tortuga took more than two hours due to this mistake and only after talking to someone who had played the game did we spot the mistake.

A somewhat irritating feature of the game is that stragglers of the first moments cannot recuperate and therefore are condemned to be background actors. When playing in families I found that they do not usually always target the same player, so that his effect is negligible as regards to the main target group for the game.

Components and illustrations are very nice, sturdy and attractive, but I have a small complaint here, too: The dice are too complicated. As each die has different values and you constantly need to check up on the summary which options are left when rolling one’s dice, it gets a bit tedious. Colors might have been a better solution for this.

I must confess that I did not try a two-player game of Tortuga, but instinctively I would assign it to a three or four players. The tactic surely is defense in the Boarding and Raiding are, so that it gets costly for the attacker, and then expand, expand, expand, especially as you score for expansion at the end. Don’s ever forget the sets, they are nice additional points on the go and don’t get too enamored with the purple chests. Expenditures to get them very often do not match the points they yield.

The pirate topic is of course very up-to-date, due to Jack Sparrow. As we only concern ourselves with treasure chests, the treacherous assassinations, the craft of pirates, has been set aside to make the game family-friendly. All in all a very nice game that we finished in 35 minutes with a group of quick players, but usually the duration given by the publisher is wishful thinking.

Let me end with Yoho! Yes, I am a fan! Get in the mood for the game!

„The King and his men stole the queen from her bod and bound her in her bones. The seas be ours and by the powers where we will we’ll roam, Yo, Ho, haul together, hoist the colors high, Heave ho, thieves and beggars, never shall we die!

Yo Ho, Heave Ho….“

Kurt Schellenbauer

Players: 2-4

Age: 8+

Time: 35+

Designer: Jay Cormier, Sen-Foong Lim

Artist: Claus Stephan, Patrick Rennwanz

Price: ca. 33 Euro

Publisher: Queen Games 2014

Web: www.queen-games.de

Genre: Dice placement

Users: For families

Version: de

Rules: de en es fr nl ru

In-game text:

Comments:

Attractive, sturdy components

Best with 3 or 4 players

Entry threshold for rules and dice

Compares to:

Games with dice placement to choose actions

Other editions:

Currently none

My rating: 5

Kurt Schellenbauer:

When you have taken in the rules, Tortuga turns out to play smoothly and providing an attractive family game.

Chance (pink): 1

Tactic (turquoise): 1

Strategy (blue): 0

Creativity (dark blue): 0

Knowledge (yellow): 0

Memory (orange): 0

Communication (red): 0

Interaction (brown): 2

Dexterity (green): 0

Action (dark green): 0