I think this is a tough game to play just once. You need to play it to get used to the rules and dynamics. If I played again, I might like it a bit better. Plus I think we played with the wrong number of cards. The draft concept was new to me for these kind of games and I liked that.

I'm totally into playing this, but I always seems to miss it when it comes out. I think it's a clever little game that suffers from poor card design. It's also missing a few small mechanics that could really make it shine. But it's still fun.

I really liked this one. I was repeatedly reminded of To Court the King even though it really isn't anything like it. I wish I had realized that I could stack victory points from the Subs early on, I would have tried to run with the win!

Somehow I have spent the last several months thinking this was a different game that I really didn't like. Well that was rather foolish of me, I ended up REALLY liking this one. It was also a lot quicker than I expected.

To bad it really isn't the kind of game where you can screw someone else over without screwing things up for yourself.

I learned a lot of interesting circus facts, but mostly I just left it with a strange urge to play Skip Bo.

The circus facts were the best part of the game.

Thanks for trying it out. I'd snagged it from a Tanga deal a while ago. I like the art, too. As for the game itself, I didn't think it was all that bad for quick, mediocre filler.

DRAW.

I'd be up for giving it a shot with the advanced rules, but as we played it, I thought it was just completely meh. Nothing bad per say, but nothing compelling that isn't better represented in the multitude of games that this one took all its mechanics from.

On the plus side it is a fairly nice production and the physical wheel works well for the simple market system they have going on. I think I totally hate the term "Veeples" though.

I think it also pissed me off that the game is supposedly about Vikings but it might as well have been about Parisian dress makers (and in fact I think I would have been happier if it was). I love a good game of bean farming as much as anyone, but it just rubs me the wrong way to seemingly misrepresent such a cool theme as vikings. My vikings don't give a fuck about how much fish they have at the end of a scoring phase, dudes get hungry it's time to go pillaging or eat the bummy vikings that couldn't get their stupid selves onto a proper island and start producing something.

Your vikings are cannibals??!?

The advanced rules add 4 new mechanics. (1) Bidding each round to determine who plays first. (2) First player draws 13 veeples and chooses one to discard. (3) 4 bonus tiles are put out - you earn one when you purchase the highest priced tile out. (4) Boatsmen ferry one viking each, no more. (In the basic game, they ferry all vikings of one color or one viking of each color.)

I'm not sure the advanced rules would improve your thoughts on the game, though who knows.

Lazy Vikings are of a different species than my fierce go-getters!

The advance rules sound like they would make for some more compelling decisions to make and a more interesting game, though I agree that I don't think I'll be in love with this one.

So let me get this straight, Adam showed his face just to demolish people at Glory to Rome?

I had the "All your clients count as Laborers" card, the +2 client card, the +2 vault card, and 3 merchant clients. I'd suck stuff in via laborer, merchant it away later. It worked out pretty well; I believe I had room for 11 goods, and won 4 of the 6 majorities. I ended the game with a Catacombs build.

I was going to stay around for Ninja Burger, but I didn't want to get too sleepy, so I decided to head home. It was great to see all of those familiar faces again!

We missed you too!

Neither Ed nor The Boy had played before and it was interesting how totally opposite their styles were. The Boy, as I expected, went totally wild early on and wasted his good castles. He only had "1" castles left for the whole last round. Ed on the other hand waited way too long to deploy his big guns and in fact only got his "4" castle out on the last turn to score only 4 points and he ended with both a "3" and "2" in his hand.

There was a lot of serious fuckery from everyone though.

Since this was my first time playing this game, I was assessing the level of treachery that was allowed/occured in this game. However compared to the -60 (or something to that effect) that the Boy got for his four castle, I will take my measling four points any day!!

I'm out for blood and first born children when my bean truck comes rolling into town.

Nice to see this one come out. Hope to make it next time...

Yeah, I'm definitely willing to play this again. Unless things change drastically, I'm sure I'll bring it next time.

This is a really good game. I'd like to play this again now that I know the rules and some of the strategy.

Oh how could I forget!

It actually went pretty meh. None of us had ever seen the rules before (Ralph started punching it when he got there), so we kinda slogged through it to start getting a feel for how things go. It's not the kind of game that picks up super easy.

From my brief experience, I think it's got a lot of good stuff going on, but at the same time seems a little onerous on the bookkeeping and fiddlyness for what one seems to get out of it. I could see it being one of those games that when played with quick experienced players would dramatically improve the experience.

I like the rather large level of freedom to do pretty much whatever (you know, that would make any amount of sense for a pirate to be doing), but that in turn can lead to a sort of aimless feeling at times.

But again, we didn't get very deep into what was going on and I'm for sure interested in giving it another go once Ralph has the rules a little more internalized and it doesn't take a few minutes every turn to see how something works.

I didn't get to try Blackbeard, but I will note that Plunder is the best pirate game I've yet played. I can bring it next time if anyone feels like buckling some swash.

This game has a lot of raw potential. I like that just about anything can be done, but the constant looking up rules and organizing flow charts does slow down the pace tremendously. I want to sit on another game or two because it has a lot of things I love in games, we just need to actually slog through and learn this beast of a game to get to the really good stuff.