I was idly browsing the shelves at EB Games, when I spotted a small display with Pirates of the Spanish Main in it. It looked cute. It looked interesting. It looked cheap. I had a closer look, and then walked away with a booster pack.

So here’s the skinny: Pirates is a CCG, a collectible card game. And a constructable card game. The booster contains a pretty large fold-out map with the basic rules on the back, and a bunch of plastic cards the size of normal playing cards, about as thick as credit cards.

The plastic cards have various parts that you punch out and build ships from, as well as treasure markers, crew and some other stuff. The cards also serve as distance rulers and a stat sheet for the ship you build from it. Small ships typically take two cards for all the parts, the Leicester took three cards.

I got two ships in the booster: The Carrion Crow and the HMS Leicester. The Carrion Crow is… well, crap, stats-wise as well as looks-wise. It has two masts, and a fair chance to lose one each time it fires. But it is also a measly 4 points.

The Leicester is a big but still decently speedy four-masted ship with lethal cannons, although the accuracy is pretty bad, and looks like a good centerpiece for a fleet, but it’s pricy at 18 points.

The recommended point value is 30 points worth of ships and crew per player, unless you want larger battles.

On this image the Leicester just blew the crap out of the Carrion Crow. If a ship loses all its masts it can’t move, and if it takes another cannon hit it sinks. If you have more ships in your fleet you can tow it back to your home island and repair it, and then it’s as good as new.

My kitchen table may not be a very realistic ocean, but that’s what your imagination is for. I used a cardboard environment object from Chainmail as the wild island that contains all the treasure, seen in the background. If you want it more realistic, just get some blue cloth to play on.

This could probably be a pretty decent wargame. I’ll nag at my friends until they also get themselves a fleet of ships, then we can duke it out on the open ocean!