Yo-Ho-Ho And A Bottle Of Rum

TINY EPIC PIRATES BOARD GAME REVIEW

 The Tiny Epic series has almost every popular setting – from zombies and fantasy to westerns and space – so it was only a matter of time before a pirate game appeared.

 In Tiny Epic Pirates , your goal is to outrun rival pirate captains and be the first to bury three treasure chests. By moving the figure of your captain on the spinning wheel, you will choose actions, collect goods, sell them and bury the received gold in the appropriate places.

 On your turn, you move your captain 1 or more divisions depending on how many meeple sailors you are willing to allocate to move him. After your ship takes a move action, you activate the action you selected on the roundel:

• Robbery : If you are in the same location as a city, you can draw 1-2 (depending on which location) goods tokens from the goods bag and put them on your ship.
  
• Selling : If you are in the same location as a merchant that is interested in the type of goods you have, you can sell any number of goods of that type and receive gold based on their current price. After that, this type of goods is sent to the lower part of the goods track and its price is reduced to a minimum.
• Quests : If you are in the same location as a quest token, flip it over and receive the specified reward. These can be resources (gold or goods) or tokens with a one-time bonus to future actions.
• Team Recruiting : Take 1 of the 3 Team Member Cards offered. Each of them gives some kind of bonus when you do certain actions and increases the damage done in battle.
• Attack : If you are in the same location as another ship (merchant NPC or another player), roll a number of dice equal to your attack parameter. Each match with one of the values listed on your captain and team members cards means 1 hit. Whoever has more hits wins. If you beat the merchant, you will receive his goods and the bonuses indicated on his card. If you beat another player, move 1 space on the glory track and activate the effects marked there, if any.

 The action you choose can also be enhanced by the effects of your crew members and meeple sailors. Yes, if there are meeples in the rigging, you get bonus movement points, and if there are meeples near the guns, you deal extra damage.

 The last action, located at the top of the pan, is to hide in the lair. If you are in the same location with an empty lair, move there, remove all sailor meeples from all positions and redistribute them as you see fit. At first glance, this is a rather pointless action, but it is often useful.

 When you completely go around the rondel, a warship will sail in your direction. If he successfully swims to you and you are not in hiding, then you automatically lose the battle and 2 of your meepla sailors go to repair the ship. They become unavailable until you re-enter the lair.

 This is the basis of the gameplay, but there are many nuances here, and together the game leaves an ambiguous impression. Most of the players in our cell felt like they were playing more like a thieving merchant than a pirate. Indeed, it feels like you spend a large part of the game playing fetch. The most stable way to make money is to engage in robbery and attack merchants as often as possible, selling trophy goods when a decent amount is collected.

 While the game clearly tries to encourage players to fight, there's almost no point in attacking opponents, since (unlike an NPC with its fixed attack parameter) winning a fight with a player who also rolls dice is too random. Also, while progressing through the fame track gives useful bonuses, it's very difficult to progress (unless players are actively destroying merchants, resulting in more dangerous merchants that also gain fame).

 The oversaturation of random is much more unpleasant. Let's start with the fact that the rondels are randomized at the start; they are different for all players. Because of this, a player with a good placement of actions on the rondel has a much higher chance of winning.

 Goods are drawn randomly from the bag. The team members card is one of three randomly available at the moment; they are not all equal. When attacking, the die determines whether you win or lose...which can result in you losing the game.

 Yes, there are aiming fire tokens here that allow you to set a chosen value on the die, but they are not easy to get unless you have lost the fight. But in this case, you are already behind.

 I've had to play games where my opponent was pulling very valuable items one after the other, selling and burying the treasure with no problem, while I couldn't pull a single decent token. Although low-value chips can also be used to collect treasure, this game is all about speed, so whoever gets the early lead is likely to win easily. Yes, you can attack the enemies, but they only get rid of the meeple-sailor for a while, which goes for repairs. So you can't stop the one who broke ahead, unless you're very lucky.

 The map also suffers from randomness. At the start, all locations are randomly placed on the map. Some of them have storms. When entering a location with a storm, the player is forced to send a meepla-sailor for repairs, which makes it difficult to achieve the set goal. Depending on the schedule, storms can hurt newbies/careless players a lot, especially if they don't have free meeples. Yes, some team member cards allow you to ignore the storm penalty, but this clearly shows how unbalanced some of the team member cards are. Admittedly, these are specific to the Crimson Silver mini-dope, but they still show that the availability of certain cards at certain times can make or break the game for you.

 I really wanted to love Tiny Epic Pirates like Galaxies, Quest and Zombies in the past. But a lot of design decisions harm the atmosphere of the game. You feel more like a merchant than a pirate. The mechanics are chaotic and inconsistent. The winner usually wins by a wide margin.

 Those looking for a low-key filler might get a kick out of Tiny Epic Pirates, but in my opinion, any of the Tiny Epic games listed above are better than this one. And if you want a game about pirates, then Libertalia, although it is very different from Tiny Epic Pirates, in terms of feelings, conveys the atmosphere of managing a pirate team much better.

CONCLUSIONS

 Tiny Epic Pirates is a game for those who want to relax in the company of friends while throwing dice. It is a bit difficult for casual players, but it can be suitable for players who care less about points and victory than about blowing up their friends' ships.

USEFUL LINKS

Tiny Epic Pirates on the BGG portal

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/309430/tiny-epic-pirates

Tiny Epic Pirates on the Game Theory portal

https://tg.in.ua/boardgames/65676/tiny-epic-pirates

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