Board Game Resource Review: Libertalia

Libertalia is an incredibly easy game to learn and play. The gameplay is simple, but engaging, and can be learned in about five minutes. The goal of the game is to collect the most points (referenced in the game as doubloons), both through the abilities granted through pirate cards and special “booty tokens” that players will compete for. The game takes course over the span of three phases, divided into six turns each. Each turn is divided into four phases, which are referred to as “times of day.”

During “sunrise,” each player will play one of the cards from their hand, each one representing a character, ranging from beggar to captain, from the French Commander to the Spanish Governor (and his daughter), from parrot to monkey. Each card has its own ranking in the pirate hierarchy, and whoever plays the card with the highest ranking each turn will have the first choice in collecting the “booty,” which we’ll return to in a moment. It’s also important to note that each player has the same cards in their hand.

However, each card also comes with an action or two, each one unique to its card. Whether you play a dirty scalawag or the pretty waitress, each card will have some sort of effect. The effects are diverse and various, such as giving you more doubloons or bringing back a discarded character, and they will play a heavy hand in your strategy. In addition, each action corresponds to a time of day. As a result, the actions will play out throughout the round, as opposed to right when they’re played.

“Daytime” is when most of the actions occur, and it plays out right after the cards have been dealt. Actions are resolved in order of the cards’ ranking, and then the game moves on to “dusk.” During dusk, the booty tokens are collected. As mentioned before, the selection process goes from highest to lowest, so whoever played the highest ranking card will get first choice. After the booty has been divided, the game moves onto “night” and the played characters move to the “pirate den,” where they will sit until the end of the phase. Any actions that correspond to night will occur at this point, simultaneously across all players.

Finally, after six “days,” or turns of looting, there will be a “day of rest,” which also has its own actions. If there are any cards in the dens at this point that have day of rest actions, they will be played. This is where things get interesting, because certain cards and booty tokens have the capability of killing off cards while, or before they make it into the den. As a result, you have to be wise in making sure which pirates get axed, and which ones don’t. After everything is resolved, booty tokens are added up (the ones that give doubloons), as are points, and the round resets. More cards are drawn (still the same across for all players), and the fun begins anew.

This process repeats itself twice more, until three “weeks” have passed and the game ends. The scurvy crew that amassed the most precious doubloons at the end wins the game.

Libertalia is a game that completely took me by surprise. I hadn’t heard anything about it, and after skimming through the rules it seemed like a simple card game that would be fun for a few rounds and then leave me itching for something a bit more heavy.

Boy, was I wrong.

Libertalia starts off as something incredibly simple, but it quickly unravels into something far more interesting. You start to realize that it might just be a good idea to kill your own pirate before he gets to your own den, or that scary cursed booty tile nobody wants to touch? Maybe you’ll just play your monkey (that’s right, there’s a monkey) and send it over to your neighbor next turn. Should you play your highest ranking card to get the best booty tile, or is it extremely likely that your opponent will do the same thing? There’s a lot of fun tension in Libertalia, and it’s made all the better due to the fact that you know which cards your opponent is capable of playing. What starts off as something simple ends up being a devious game of two pirates trying to outwit each other for the greatest gain. With all of the plotting, competing for the best treasure, and tactically deciding who to kill and who to keep, the game ends up being a strategic affair that, in the end, will have you talking and laughing like a pirate in no time.

The theme also adds a lot to the fun factor here. I love Libertalia because it doesn’t demand itself to be taken seriously. It doesn’t present itself as something deep and serious, and the games are so short that it’s hard to ever find a reason to get frustrated. On the contrary, the thematic ridiculousness of some of the plays is likely to give both players a good laugh (which, again, will be all the better if done like a pirate). If the available booty is valuable, and you play your mighty Captain, anticipating your neighbor to play a high card, it’s a shock when your opponent plays the lowly beggar, not only outwitting you but stealing coins from you in the process (an action specific to the beggar), you’ll realize that you’ve been had, and that a beggar with a pom-pom on his head somehow just cajoled your captain into giving him his treasure. You may have gotten away with the better booty, but the beggar play ultimately robs you of coins AND ensures that you no longer have a high-ranking Captain to play later when it might be important. It doesn’t matter though, because it’s fun, it’s silly, and it doesn’t feel unpleasant when things don’t work out for you. There’s a lot more examples of the absurdity that can occur, but they will quickly reveal themselves if you give the game a try.

Libertalia plays quickly, and sets up even quicker. This is one of the game’s strong points – the length of the game is perfectly suited to its depth and design. Some overly complicated games end before they get good, while other, simpler games can often stretch on for too long, like “butter spread over too much bread.” Libertalia hits the sweet spot – it sets up quickly and plays for just long enough to keep you satisfied. It’s a game that often invites multiple plays in one sitting, but that can just as easily be packed up quickly when the group feels satisfied. The box advertises a 40-60 minute playtime, but I found that most of my games clocked in at 20-30 minutes. I’ve found that the playtime increases with a higher player count, mainly because there are more people thinking about what decisions to make which causes the game to stall a little bit. Even with up to five players, the game has rarely ever exceeded 40 minutes in our group.

I’m the “board game guy” of my friends and family. While they all love to play, I’m generally the one that’s teaching stuff. I’ve taught tons of games, so let me just say that teaching Libertalia was a breath of fresh air. After so many games with tons of rules and strategies and iconography, it was nice being able to teach this game, because it was just so easy. As I’ve mentioned already, the game is extraordinarily easy to teach, given that the actual gameplay concepts are very simple. There’s not much to learn here, and you can be playing within five to ten minutes. It’s best to just play the game even if you don’t fully understand the strategy. It’s kind of hard to describe why you would want to play certain cards and when until you just play it. By playing the game, you’ll learn really fast how the strategy comes into play, and after a full game or two, everyone should have the rules down pat.

The player interaction is strong here. Every action you take is measured up against your opponents’, so not paying attention to what they may or may not do is a surefire way to lose the game. This is not a game of multiplayer Solitaire, nor is it a game where you’re building a little engine for yourself. This is cutthroat pirate scheming, and the gameplay reflects that. The game is particularly fun to play with people that you know well, because reading them might give you slight insight on what they may be planning to play. It’s still no Poker in this sense, but it is still a small element that can emerge, depending on who you’re playing with. Your actions, like it or not, will always affect someone every round, because it’s just the nature of the game. The booty is split from highest to lowest, and there is never a tie, and there’s no way around that. The game can be a tad offensive as well, given that you have the ability to kill other opponents’ characters under the right circumstances. It is a warm, lighthearted game, but if you don’t like interacting with other players, occasional offense, or having to think about more than just your hand, this may not be the game for you.

As I’ve mentioned, Libertalia packs a surprising punch of strategy compared to what you’d expect after reading the rules. I think the reason that Libertalia rates so highly on the strategy scale is that every turn demands a different strategy. There are a lot of card games where, after numerous plays, the tried-and-true strategies begin to reveal themselves, and the game can become predictable. Libertalia, for the most part, avoids this due to the clever design of the booty system combined with the card draft. Due to the different booty every turn, the cards you have in your hand, and the cards that you know your opponents have, there won’t be a catch-all strategy, and you’ll have to keep yourself on your toes. Let’s look at an example:

The cards being played in the image above are competing for the four booty tokens in the first section of the board. The treasure chest is the most valuable – five doubloons. The barrels are each worth one doubloon, and the Spanish Officer doesn’t give you anything, in fact, he kills your character before they can make it to the den! A dead character won’t be able to use their “night” (not pictured) and “end of day” (the green anchor) actions. The white player, aiming for the chest, played one of the highest cards in his hand, Governer’s Daughter, just barely beating out the Gambler. Sorry sucker, but it looks like the house won this time. But wait! Green played a parrot, which allows him to play another character after they’ve all been revealed. Green decides he really wants that treasure chest, and bam, decides to play the Spanish Governer, who supercedes his pesky gold-diggin’ daughter (he also happens to be the highest card in the game), taking that precious booty for himself. Now that the order has been arranged, the “daytime” actions are played (the sun icons), and then players collect their booty in order (this being the “dusk” phase), from highest rank to lowest. The Governer takes the chest, while the daughter and gambler make off with barrels, leaving the Voodoo Witch to get diced by the Officer. Fortunately for him, he doesn’t have any nighttime or end-of-day actions, so it doesn’t matter a whole lot if he dies. However, the Gambler and Daughter would have something to worry about since they both cash out at the end of the round. If they get killed, their end-of-day bonuses are null.

But, what about when bad booty is a good thing? Certain cards incentivize taking “bad” booty for a myriad of reasons. Take the Quartermaster, for example. This bloke gives you some booty on your turn, but at the end of the day, demands payment for his services. It’s profitable, then, to do what any good pirate would do, and send him to ol’ Davy Jones’ locker before the payment date. Losing eight doubloons at the end of the round hurts. Therefore, you may want to tactically aim for the Spanish Officer booty token, which will allow you to collect the booty during daytime, and you’ll tactically kill off your Quartermaster before he ends up costing you money. Likewise, killing off other players’ characters might ultimately benefit you more than the treasure would. Perhaps instead of aiming for the treasure chest or gems, you pick up the sword token, which allows you to kill any character in another player’s den. That way, if somebody has their Gambler sitting there, waiting to cash out at the end of the round, you can take him out of the game and watch your opponent experience the sorrow of a robbed pirate.

There are countless things I could say about the strategy. See those voodoo mask tokens? Those each cost you three doubloons at the end of the round. But wait! You’ve got a preacher. So, how about letting the other players fight for the good stuff, and deliberately choosing those bad tokens, so you can get rid of them all at the end and just save yourself a headache? Or maybe you can play a monkey and transfer the bad luck to another player. There are tons of possibilities, and each round will demand its own tactics.

Strategy-wise, though, I’ve said nothing about the fact that everybody has the same hand. This makes it extra fun, because in addition for scheming for the best token, you know that everybody else has the potential of playing the same thing. It turns into a brilliant game of reading your opponents, and calculating which cards are more likely to be played. Also, you have nine cards in your hand at the beginning of each round, but only six of them end up being played. When the next round occurs, six more cards are drawn (the same ones for everybody), but people’s leftover cards may be different at this point. So, if everyone but Red uses their Governer card the first time, then they’ll know that, at any point in the next round, Red can bust out his Governer at any time to guarantee himself the best booty for one turn. Since the Governer is the highest card, everyone will have to take this into account. It’s a blast trying to determine who will play what, and it functions as a built-in design mechanic to prevent predictability and repetitiveness. If the obvious play is to play a certain character, well, the play isn’t going to work so well anymore if everybody does it. This requires constant re-evaluation of your tactics, and forces you to think outside the box.

Overall, Libertalia is one of the best examples I’ve seen of a game that is so fundamentally simple and easy to play, but that really digs deep with its depth of strategy. It’s a game of outwitting your opponents, calling their bluffs, and playing your own impeccable strategy all the while. It can be cutthroat, and what could be more fitting for a pirate game than that?

Libertalia is a peculiar game, because there is a lot of randomness in the way that the game is setup, but at the same time, luck is severely minimized and is nearly non-existent in this game. I credit the perfect information mechanic, which dictates that all players have the same cards. Because everybody is on an equal playing field, the randomness of which cards come out is a non-issue, as well as the randomness of which booty tokens are drawn. The simple fact is that everybody has the same opportunities, and thus every player is equally susceptible to the same misfortune. From a strategic standpoint, this effectively casts luck out of the picture.

There are a couple very, very minor exceptions. One example would be the Spanish Spy card. This allows you to discard any Officer tokens, and to draw new booty tokens in their stead. The tokens are randomly drawn from a bag, so you may end up cashing out, but you’re just as likely to draw cursed tokens that will make you lose points. Even this, however, is a built in caveat of the card itself, and by playing it, you’re acknowledging the fact that it could either help or hurt you. The odds of somebody drawing tokens that puts them at a significant advantage (for example, multiple treasure chests) are extremely low.

One small criticism I’ve heard from others about the game is the tiebreaker mechanic. Indeed, everybody has the same cards, and thus it’s likely in many situations for people to play the same card. The game deals with this by giving each character a secondary ranking on the bottom of their card, measured from 1 – 6. This determines their ranking in the event of a tie, given that their “main” ranking will be tied. The character with a higher tiebreaker rank will take precedence when determining the order. A critic of the game might say that it’s unfair when they play their level 2 Spanish Officer, only to be ousted by another player’s level 5. This is an invalid complaint in my opinion, given that it should be accounted for when you’re deciding which card to play. If you see a hand where it’s likely that other players will play the same card, then it’s up to you to determine if your card is valuable enough to play. A low ranked card is likely to lose, whereas a higher one is safer. If you’re expecting a tie, then the odds are right in front of you, so it’s hard for me to call this a broken mechanic.

There’s not a whole lot to say here, due to the perfect information mechanic. Every player has the same hand, and the game is so dynamic that I’ve never been able to find any kind of game breaking formula. The cards are all well designed, and none of them seem to be excessively powerful. Sometimes, sometimes, a certain combination can play out that really hurts one player, such as three or four beggars being played, causing one player to pay up a ton of money. Losing all of your money in a turn can be potentially game breaking, but the number of cards that allow for one player to get blasted by multiple players is extremely small – in fact, I can only think of two (out of thirty). On top of that, the odds of each player playing the same thing, and having the negative effects stack on one player is even lower. Gameplay flukes like this almost never happen (I’ve never experienced one myself), and if they do, they’re more likely to inspire laughter from the sheer absurdity of the situation.

I’m just going to say off the bat that Libertalia plays extremely well as a two player game. While I had fun at all player counts, I’m tempted to say that it was most enjoyable with two players. The two player game is fun and allows you to only focus on your opponent. It’s easier to form your tactics, because you’re not worrying about a whole table of people, and the game ends up feeling like a clean duel. It’s easy to keep track of your opponent’s characters, and there’s overall less analysis paralysis. Drawbacks with a two player game is that certain cards are more versatile and interesting with multiple players, and the booty always comes down to “best” and “worst” with nothing in between. You’re usually both battling for the same thing, which isn’t always the case at higher player counts where there are a lot more options. This makes for a fun strategy on its own that you can only find with two players, so it’s hard to say whether it’s better or worse, though it certainly is a little different.

Fear not though, the game is still a blast with multiple players. It’s certainly more of a challenge, because it’s much harder to get the exact booty tokens you want. It’s not hard to play the highest pirate in two players, but in a five player game where you might need a token that’s less desirable, it’s an interesting challenge finding the pirate that won’t be a waste to play (i.e. a high value pirate that you want to save for a more important moment) but that will also put you in a good enough spot to get the token you want.

The game is also more challenging due to the fact that there’s four of every pirate. There’s some nasty cards in there, such as the brute, which kills the highest pirate on board before they collect booty. When there’s four brutes in a game, it’s much harder to deal with than just two, because until they’ve all been played, you always have to keep on your toes. There are many examples of similar cards, and it makes playing with more players a much more nail-biting experience.

Analysis paralysis can take a toll in games with a higher player count. The game doesn’t play in turn order, but everybody does have to have their card played for the round to proceed. If you have a player that’s prone to excessive analysis, this game won’t be immune from them. The higher the player count, the greater the potential for this to happen.

Overall, the game works well at all player counts. It is a fun game at every level, and increases in scale as much as one would expect with each count, and it has the added benefit of working well as a two player game.

There are only thirty different characters and a small variation of booty tokens, so after a few games it’s likely that you’ll have experienced them all. However, this game is brilliantly designed so that each game will be dynamic and different, which gives it high replay value. The speed, fun factor, strategy, and length of the game all give this a favorable replayability score. The replayability here will largely come down to personal taste. If you enjoy a nice simple, yet strategic game and can play something over and over, the design mechanics allow this game to be consistently fresh and you won’t be disappointed.

However, while the game offers a plethora of tactical decisions to make every game, the game doesn’t feel deep. In other words, it doesn’t take long to fully “experience” Libertalia. Some games are replayable because of the multitude of strategies they provide and it takes a while before you feel like you’ve truly experienced everything that the game has to offer; Libertalia isn’t one of those games. It is much more tactical than it is strategic, meaning that you’re generally making decisions based on what is placed in front of you in the moment, rather than analyzing the game as a whole and developing long term strategies that can be expanded upon in future games. A strategy that is used in one game of Libertalia probably won’t apply in the next game, given that each game is very different. The game will always be a tactically rich experience, but you won’t have to dig deep to really “get” it.

Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily. Like I said, the game will challenge you tactically every game due to its clever design, and it will always demand its own form of strategy. If you’re the type of person that doesn’t mind playing something over and over because it’s just fundamentally good, this game will deliver. However, if you’re the type that really likes to “discover” your games and figure them out from head to toe, you might feel the urge to move on to something new and more challenging after you’ve played this one enough.

Libertalia is listed at $50 MSRP. This is a little steep in my opinion, given that many games for this price give you a little bit more for your buck. Libertalia is short and sweet, and isn’t incredibly component heavy. That being said, the game is highly replayable and well designed, and will give you your money’s worth after enough plays. Fortunately, the game makes the purchase more justifiable with its top-notch production quality. The aesthetics and component quality are top of the line, so even if the game feels more like a $30 game, at least you’re getting quality stuff when you buy at MSRP.

The game can be found for $30-35 online. At this price, the game is absolutely worth buying. There’s a lot worse you can do with $30, and this game is well worth it at that price, plain and simple. If you’re on the fence about this one, it is a great deal online and you won’t regret your purchase.

There are no current expansions for Libertalia, and at this point, prospects look grim for ever having one (the game was released in 2012). I can think of plenty of ways that the game could be expanded upon, but it’s likely that we’re just never going to see any extra content for this game if it hasn’t come out already.
That being said, not every game needs an expansion, and Libertalia, fortunately, is well designed to the point where it all works well on its own. Expansions, in fact, could disrupt the basic gameplay premise, given that the game is completely designed around the 30 cards it shipped with. Adding ranks above 30 would conflict with the natural design, meaning the only reasonable cards that could be added would be “alternate” cards for existing ranks. The game could certainly have more booty tokens, and that would be an easy implement, but the game also works really well with the current amount. There’s a perfect distribution of good and bad booty tokens, and adding more to the pool might dilute the game instead of enhance it.
Sometimes, less is more, and Libertalia does fantastic with what it has. Could it benefit from expansions? Sure, but the designers were kind enough to give us a game that doesn’t need extra content to be good.