Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest Review

boardgamequest.com:

We review Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest from Stonemaier Games. Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is a new edition of the popular set collection board game Libertlaia and we let you know how this new edition plays.

The year was 2015. The date was August 1. The time was 1:53 p.m. (I don’t actually have a record of the time. I’m just setting a mood. Go with it.) I had been pretty deep into the hobby for a few years at that point and would still frequently browse the internet for good deals to fill out my collection. During a large game sale at an even larger online retailer, there was one game that caught my eye. It was pirate-themed and had its players jockeying for position to claim the best treasures. It looked interesting and, after allowing three-to-five business days for shipping, I was holding Libertalia in my hands.

Paolo Mori’s design hadn’t left my collection since that fateful August day. It survived more than a few of my purges, including the Great Board Game Dump of 2017, where so much of my cardboard went to a better place.

Now seven years later and a full ten after its initial release, the long out-of-print game has been revamped, upgraded, and given the full Stonemaier treatment. Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is a new game that uses the core concepts of its predecessor as a launching point for new mechanisms, new balancing, and even some new species for the pirates.

While I’ll mostly be judging Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest on its own merit, I will spend some time looking at how it sizes up to the original. Also—and this is important—I promise not to make a single pirate joke over the course of this review.

Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is an action selection game for one to six players in which each