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Nathan James
United States
Covington
Ohio
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First off, Capt'n W. Kidd is three games in one. The same board and pieces are used for each game but the differences in the rules are big enough to qualify them as truly different games. This review will be of the version called 'Loyal Captain.'
All three games are played on a faux leather board which presents the player with a point-to-point map of Captain Kidd's pirate ship. Don't get too excited here as the theme is very light. The fact that one space is next to the cannon and others surround a treasure chest makes no difference at all. There are eighteen spaces on the board. Twelve of these connect to three other spaces, and the last six spaces are designated 'start' spaces. Start spaces connect to two other spaces and have third trail leading to the start space from another deck of the ship, the gang-plank or some such.
The 'Loyal Captain' is a wholly non-random game. It is a tactical game about surrounding your opponent. The interesting bit about this game comes in the fact that the pieces used have essential three sides. The actual components are circluar tokens with pictures of pirates on them. Each token shows three paths, one points back the space the token was last moved from and the other two show the spaces to which it may move next. So while most spaces have connections to three othe spaces a token occupying any of these spaces can only move to two of them as the third will be the sace it just came from. Rotating the tokens in place to change the spaces they can move to is never allowed.
The play of 'Loyal Captain' proceeds in a simple fashion. On your turn you will either place one of your tokens on a start space or move one of your tokens to an empty, adjacent space. Frequently all the start spaces will fill up before anyone moves out from them, but this is not required in 'Loyal Captain.' The goal is to eliminate all you opponent's tokens by surrounding them. Any token or group of same-color tokens which is threatened from all sides is captured. This has a certain similarity to Go in this sense. A token only threatens the spaces to which it could move, that is, it never threatens a piece which is behind it. Once a player moves his token off the start space the other player is free to introduce a new token right behind him. The new token immediately threatens the first player's token. This gives the game a feel that reminds me of team based tag where teams send out players who can tag anyone who was on the field before them. I enjoy this aspect of it. The game ends when one player can not make a legal play. That player loses - of course!
I don't know how deep the tactics may go in this game, as I have only played twice, but I enjoy it. I don't think it is nearly so deep as anything like Chess or Go, but it may approach a game like Nine Men's Morris. (which is another game I enjoy) It could be that when the novelty wears off I will not have much use for the game but at this point I'll give it a thumbs up. I'd recommend it to those who enjoy light abstract tactical games and are looking for something different. I imagine the othre two games included are fun as well, but I have yet to try them. Of these one uses a die so it moves more towards backgammonish play. I may write a review for the others once I have tried them.
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