Rogue Seas Preview

boardgamequest.com:

Note: This preview uses pre-release components and rules. What you see here may be different from the final, published game. This post was a paid preview, you can find out more information here.
The golden age of piracy is a fascinating historical period to me. Popular culture has romanticized these scoundrels into larger-than-life figures sailing the Caribbean and swashbuckling tales of adventure. They have captured the imagination of everyone from Robert E Howard to Jerry Bruckheimer in books and movies.

Today’s preview is a new board game coming to Kickstarter from Mighty Paladin Games for 1-4 scurvy dogs (players) aged 10 and up and plays in 20 minutes per player.

To start the game, each player rolls a die, and the highest roll gets to pick their captain first with other players selecting their captains going in clockwise order. The last player to select a captain gets to place their ship first with the other players following in counterclockwise order. Turns commence starting with the first player and going clockwise. Each captain starts with one treasure map card.

The goal of the game is to have five treasure maps and reach Skull Island.

Each turn a player can move and take an action based on where their anchor touches the seabed.

Moving is rolling a die of the color shown on their player board for navigation and moving that many spaces. You can move through merchant vessels and other players but not monsters, who are rude like that. Some spaces have numbers on them that represent the damage your ship will take moving through that space.

Actions depend on the space you end your movement in. If you stop on an island, you draw a treasure card and place a marker to show you’ve already looted the place. Meanwhile if you end in a space with another vessel or a monster you can battle.

Battling involves rolling the combat die of your weapons symbol and adding any modifiers. Your opponent may have abilities that reduce the damage. If the damage done is enough to