Stonemaier Games | Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest | Board Game | Ages 14+ | 1-6 Players | 45-60 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

I really appreciate that this is a fantastically entertaining game that I can play with my two elder sons, or non-gaming enthusiasts, and seasoned board gamers, alike. They will all understand it, and genuinely be able to compete. It’s probably not an entry level game, in the same way as Wingspan isn’t for me, mainly due to learning the game in the first instance. However, it certainly is a gateway-plus game that will remain in most board-gamers’ collection for all the right reasons. I watched a playthrough of the original Libertalia on TableTop a while ago, and I was intrigued. Unfortunately, it was widely unavailable so I waited a long while in the hopes it might come up. Recently I discovered it on Board Game Arena, which is a significant part of the story of how the second edition came to be, and I enjoyed the gameplay but there were a few issues I had. Product Details: The SKU is STM550. It will be published in a number of languages from the following partners: Grok, Feuerland, Matagot, Phalanx, Ghenos, DeltaVision, Maldito, ALBI, 999 Games, and Surfin’ Meeple. Anyway, I’ve been pleased to discover that Winds of Galecrest lives up to its promise in being an evolved and improved version of Libertalia. Not only that, but it is perhaps the most un-Stonemaier-like game in their entire product lineup. Against Stonemaier’s usual tropes and their stated tenets of game design, Winds of Galecrest is inorganically round/phase-based and highly interactive to the point of potential hostility. Indeed, it appears that Jamey Stegmaier is willing to make exceptions to his carefully crafted brand when it involves a favored classic—and thank goodness for that! Maybe you want to play the Collector. The catch is, that his anchor ability only goes off if he is on your ship during the anchoring phase, and the Gunner was a part of everyone’s hand, which discards a rival character from an opposing ship.

While the game can play well at low player counts, we think Libertalia shines best at player counts of 5-6. Libertalia doesn’t leave with an ocean of paralyzing possibilities, however. You aren’t trying to predict which of the 40 cards the other players will play. Instead, it draws a line in the sand by limiting those possibilities each turn in a way that makes every game feel different. Your hand of cards begins the same as everyone else and then diverges over time. Nautical Divergence The all play mechanic ensures there is very little down time and days and journeys pass like ships in the night. In fact, Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest excels at scaling up and down between player counts without adding to the overall game time. In that regard it has cemented itself as one of my go-to games for five and six players. It will still see oodles of plays at three and four too. The two player variant in Libertalia Winds of Galecrest is…fine. It’s not bad, but it’s also not great. Two more voyages will follow, with six more characters drawn into the hand, new loot placed out and doubloons gained. At the end of the third voyage, count up your money and the highest total wins. Final ThoughtsLibertalia: Winds of Galecrest offers oodles of replayability with a great selection of cards, variable board and its ability to scale nicely between player counts. I don’t normally enjoy the “Take That” mechanism. Also, I find it confrontational when people have decided to spend their time playing with me, but in this game, it works incredibly well with the theme, so everyone knows what to expect. The tactical decisions you make are based on almost complete information. You know what characters your opponent has, how much money they have and what loot items are available.

At the end of each voyage, some cards and most loot tokens also have an “anchor” power that activates. These mostly net you some bonus gold but there are fun exceptions such as the hook token that lets you keep a card you’ve played in your tableau, which can be handy if it has an ongoing “night” effect. Libertalia: Wind of Galecrest makes full use of the simple day, dusk, night and anchor system to come up with some really engaging effect combos, ensuring there’s plenty of variety among its motley crew. The flip side of the board even has a whole new set of loot token effects to increase player interaction.

During each round, if players earn doubloons, they’ll take those and add them to their ship. If any characters are to be discarded, they are removed from the board or the ship and placed under their player’s graveyard tile. After resolving night abilities, players begin the next round and go through the same steps. Loot token abilities can be explored and modified to the group’s preferences for gentler effects, nastier effects, or a mix of the two. We owned the original Libertalia and sold it a few years ago in one of our game purges. Now that we’ve played the new Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, will it meet the fate of the original and find another home? Or will it find a permanent spot in our game closet?

I’m always keen to discover hidden gems in the hobby that have been forgotten or overlooked. And if you’re wondering where the best place is to start digging for gold, you’d be hard pressed to find a better mine than Reiner Knizia’s ludography. After my first play of Factory Funner (the updated version just barely released by Board Game Tables dot com) It didn’t take me long to be reminded of Calico—the popular puzzly game of quilts and cats from the hotness of 2020. If players have to discard one of their characters, they’re placed face down on their graveyard tile. This is repeated with each voyage and coins are earned and stashed in the treasure chest. Each voyage lasts a day longer than the previous and six more character cards are added (and combine with characters not played in the previous voyage) until the end of the final voyage. Anchors Away Let’s illustrate this with an example. Loot tiles aren’t all equal in value: indeed one, the Relic, costs you points if you collect it. So if there’s a day with a couple of Relic tiles among the loot and you have the rank 5 card Cabin Boy, you might be tempted to play it. The Cabin Boy’s “day” power nets you gold if he’s the leftmost card, which is likely given that he’s rank 5. At “dusk” he stops you from taking any loot which, if it’s a Relic, is quite helpful. So he looks like an easy choice: except all the other players will have a Cabin Boy and they’ll all be thinking the same thing. All of a sudden he’s not likely to be the leftmost card anymore, and you might want to reconsider. Unless all the other players are also thinking that same thing, in which case ...After my first two plays, I’m mightily impressed with what Paolo Mori and Stonemaier Games have managed to do with a 10-year-old design. They took a game I was lukewarm about and turned it into one that I love. Not only is The Winds of Galecrest one of the best reimplementations I’ve ever seen, but it might end up being one of my favorite releases of 2022. Libertalia Winds of Galecrest expertly updates what was once an exciting pirate game to make it even better. Libertalia was originally released in 2012. Ten years later, we’re celebrating the foundations of the original design with a heavily revised and expanded edition that includes all-new art, 40 characters per player, a reputation system to resolve tiebreakers, premium loot tokens, a robust solo mode, and much more. Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest manages to be a satisfyingly deep game that’s still lightweight. In my experience, the two rarely go hand in hand. But the game puts a lot of potential thought behind the very simple decisions that it asks you to make.