Gamehelplibertalia

How to Play:

When it comes down to it, the actual game play of Libertalia is fair simple. Each player has a (mostly) identical set of crew cards. At the start of each round, one player deals out 9 crew members and reads them out loud to the rest of the players. Each other player then finds the same cards and pulls them into their hands. Thus, each round, players are playing with the same crew cards. Each crew card will have a strength (representing what order they choose their booty), and a special ability. Each card also has a tie breaker number, in case 2 players chose the same crew card. Once you have your hand of 9 cards, play begins. Each campaign is broken up into 6 days of looting. Each day has 4 phases:

Phase 1: Sunrise

Phase 2: Day

Phase 3: Dusk

Phase 4: Night

Phase 1: Sunrise In this phase, each player secretly chooses one crew card to play. Once everyone is ready, the players reveal their chosen crew members and place them on the main pirate ship in decreasing order. At this phase, any special actions that take place during sunrise would happen. Players also will need to use the tie breaker number on any crew cards if 2 or more people played the same crew member.

Phase 2: Day The only thing that happens in this phase is any crew member with a day action, may take it, in increasing order of rank. (lowest goes first).

Phase 3: Dusk Now, each player chooses a booty token from below the ship. Token are chosen in decreasing order of rank (the opposite of Phase 2). So your high ranking cards will get you the best tokens. Also, any dusk actions happen now.

Phase 4: Night Once again, the only thing that happens in this phase is crew members may use their Night actions. The difference here though, is any crew members in your cabin, may still use their night actions. So that Barkeep card you played on day 1 of the current round, (his action is to score you 1 doubloon each night) will keep paying you each night of the campaign. Play those night cards early!

After the 6th day of the campaign, the round is over. Players resolve any “end of campaign” actions of crew members till alive in their dens (yes, crew members can be killed). Then, each player adds up the value of their booty tokens and moves their score marker ahead on the track. To reset for the next campaign, all crew members used are removed from the game, all doubloons are returned to the bank (except 10) and all booty tokens returned to the bag. The key here is each player should have 3 cards left in their hand. They can use those in the next 2 campaigns. So everyone will have a somewhat different hand going forward. To start the next round, someone draws 6 new crew cards and everyone else takes the matching cards into their hand. Round 2 and 3 play just like round 1. At the end of the game the player with the most victory points is the winner.