High Seas

About the Game

"Avast ye, Mateys! All hands on deck - thar be an enemy ship on the horizon! Load the cannons and grab yer cutlasses, we'll send 'em to Davy Jones' locker!"

As captain of your own pirate ship, command your crew of cannoneers, musketeers, and boarding parties in a high-stakes High Seas battle against another pirate crew. Out think the enemy, prioritize your resources, and claim dominance over the seas in this new take on the ol' rock-paper-scissors classic.

The Battlefield

The gameboard consists of two pirate ships, each with 5 areas where cards can be placed. These are called "staging areas". A cannon facing directly outward can be placed from each staging area. Each staging area has a number of hearts (denoting health). The pirate ships face each other so that the cannon from each staging area face an enemy cannon.

The board may also contain other imagery, such as water, but it plays no factor in how the game is played.

Components

In addition to the gameboard, this game consists of the following:

10x cannons
38x heart pieces
30x playing cards
- 10x cannoneers
- 10x musketeers
- 10x boarding parties

Objective

To sink the other pirate ship by disabling all 5 of their staging areas. In the event that both ships have survived, but no more moves can be made, the captain with the most staging areas remaining is the winner. If both captains command the same amount of staging areas, the final tie breaker is the total amount of heart pieces remaining for each captain's ship.

Setup

1. Place a cannon at the front of each staging area facing directly outward, as shown on the gameboard picture.

2. Shuffle the deck of 30 cards. Deal 6 cards (also called "a crew") to each player face-up so both players can see all cards. If a captain should be dealt crew members who are all of the same type, one card is discarded and another is drawn until that captain has an additional crew member type. The remaining deck is placed to the side face-down.

The Crew

Your pirate crew consists of three types of pirates, each of which has an advantage over another. They are as follows:

Cannoneer - A cannoneer is a group of two pirates who work together to load and fire a cannon. While the loading and firing process is too slow to hit a musketeer before he hits both pirates, the cannon hits hard and can destroy an entire boarding party in one hit before they reach your ship.

Musketeer - A musketeer is a single pirate who operates a rifle and attacks from a distance. He can hit both pirates operating a cannon before they can fire one shot in return, but is overwhelmed by the sheer number of pirates in a boarding party.

Boarding Party - A boarding party is a group of 20 pirates risking life and limb to board the opposing pirate ship. Though a musketeer will surely take a few of the pirates out before they reach the enemy ship, their sheer numbers will overhwhelm him; however, one cannon shot will sink that boarding party with ease before they even reach the ship.

As you may see, each part of the crew holds an advantage over another part of the crew and no crew member is the best. Below is a graphic that depicts their strengths.

Game Play

Each turn consists of the following actions:

Each captain looks at their crew and the crew of the enemy captain. Captains are allowed to write down the enemy's crew composition. In online play, the enemy crew composition should remain visible to each captain until the round's battle commences.
Based on the knowledge they've learned, the captains place their crew members face-down in any order filling each staging area on their ship.
Once each crew member is in their staging area, the current round of battle may commence! When the battle starts, each staging area for both sides attack simultaneously. The cannons at each staging area are visuals for denoting which enemy staging area it is attacking. One heart is deducted from each staging area that loses its crew match-ups. Below is an example of what this could look like:

All staging areas start out pointing their cannons directly across the water to the enemy staging area in front of them.

From left to right, the first staging area battle is a draw between two musketeers and no heart pieces are lost for that staging area.

The second battle is a win for the bottom ship as a boarding party beats a musketeer, and the top ship removes one heart piece from the second staging area.

The third battle is a win for the top ship (musketeer beats cannoneer) and the bottom ship must remove a heart piece from that staging area.

The fourth is a tie between two boarding parties. No hearts lost.

The final is a loss for the top ship (musketeer beats cannoneer). The top ship loses a heart piece in that staging area.

4. Once the tallies are taken and heart pieces removed, the crew members are all

placed into the discard pile. Any staging area that lost all of its heart pieces

closes down and can no longer take place in the battle. It's cannon is removed

from the ship.

5. Captains may orient their remaining cannons to face the desired enemy staging

area (see section below).

6. A new crew is dealt to each captain (face-up). The number of crewmates dealt
to each captain is equal the staging areas that their pirate ship still has +1. If

a captain were to be dealt crew members who are all the same type, they

discard one card and draw another until they have 2 types of crew. A new

round starts at step 1. Once the draw pile has been exhausted, the discard pile

is shuffled and becomes the draw pile, again.

The Cannons

The final aspect of the pirate battle to master is the positioning of your cannons. Once an enemy staging area is destroyed, this frees up the ability of your cannon directly opposite of it to freely position itself to face another target. Cannons, however, are difficult to move so their positioning is limited only to the staging area directly left or right to the one immediately in front of it - never further than that.

In this picture, you see that the top ship's middle staging area does not have any more heart pieces and its cannon has been removed. This frees up the bottom ship's middle cannon to attack another. Green arrows show an acceptable orientation, while the red arrows show where the cannon cannot aim.

It also takes time to orient the cannons, so a cannon can only shift its orientation by one staging area per turn. As an example and utilizing the picture above, a cannon can shift from facing staging area 3 to staging area 4 in one turn; however, to shift back to support staging area 2, it must take a turn to orient toward 3 and then take the next turn to face staging area 2. Choose your orientations carefully!

The cannon orientations help shape the way a battle plays out. In the example above, the cannon changed its oriented to support staging area 4 in hopes of sparing the remaining heart piece on its own staging area. When the battle commences all staging areas attack at the same time. As a rule, a crew can only attack the staging area in which its cannon is facing, but it defends from all attacks regardless; however, an attacking party does not lose a heart piece if the enemy's cannon is not facing them. Above, the opponent's staging area 4 is hit by both a cannoneer and a musketeer. It sucessfully defends the cannoneer, but the musketeer overpowers the cannon, causing it to lose its last heart piece and now the bottom ship has two mobile cannons that it can aim. The next picture shows a slightly different scenario.

The only change made to this picture is that the bottom ship now has a boarding party in its middle staging area instead of a musketeer. Now, as the battle commences, the top ship's staging area 4 takes no damage as it defends against the boarding party and draws to the cannoneer. Note that the boarding party does not take damage in this attack since their target's cannon wasn't pointing at them.

Copyright

The text of these rules is subject to applicable copyright laws. This does not protect against the usage of game mechanics or trademark the game name.

Please feel free to publish these rules and to program High Seas for online or offline play. No licensing fee or royalties will be asked for. My only request is that you don't change the game name or rules, and attribute the game to me, Nicholas Wolff.