Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace is a light-hearted card game of exploration and piracy by the folks over at Cambridge Games Factory.
Players: 2-6
Playing Time: 45-75 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)
The Components
Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace comes with 84 cards, a pack of plastic chips, stands, and dice, and a rulebook.
Cards: As with all of CGF's games, this one is at essence a card game, and its cards were printed by a business card printer. The result is sturdy, glossy cards which are quite a bit brighter and thus more evocative than most cards you find in games. Their only deficit is that they're all square-edged.
Ice Pirates uses 37 cards to form a map, laid out in a hexagon. This includes 7 islands in set locations and a collection of other islands, shipwrecks, and open sea cards (the last inevitably featuring icebergs of different sizes) which are randomly distributed (face-down) to form the map. Setting up the game is a bit time-consuming, and cards laid out in this type of structure always tend to get messy, but beyond that they work OK. The cards themselves are all well-designed, with text, colors, and symbols helping to show how they're used.
Another 40 cards feature various items you can get, including telescopes, cannons, ice breakers, main sails, jibs, grappling hooks, three maps, and the legendary treasure of Conception Bay. Again, color-coding and text make them easy to use.
A double-sized wind card is used to show which direction the wind is coming from. This is combined with 3 wind cards, each of which shows the possible movement directions for two directions of wind. Together these all make Ice Pirate's movement system easy to follow.
Finally, each player gets one of the six ship cards which is placed in a color-coded plastic stand. The ships sort of overshadow the board, and I would have preferred plastic or wooden bits, but the cards are a fine compromise given the component design of this game.
The cards all feature artwork by Ed Carter. They're all somewhat cartoony, and some of them are computerized. Some of the computer designs look like they've been blown up too far, and show pixelation, but I actually only noticed that when I sat down to write this review, not when I was playing. Overall, the artwork is attractive.
Plastic Bits: As noted, there are six plastic stands in the player colors (black, yellow, purple, green, red, and white) which are used to hold up the ships.
There's also a set of 28 plastic chips: 6 captain chips in the player colors, plus 22 blue crew chips. They're all huge chips that are good quality. CBG has used these in others of their games, and I liked them there as well.
Finally, there's a set of four six-sided dice: two black (for attackers) and two green (for defenders). They're of pretty standard manufacture.
Rules: The rulebook is printed with a good-quality color Inkjet and bound into a sturdy cardstock cover. It's attractive, full of good examples, and generally well done, as with the other CGF games.
Bag: The game is packaged in a ziplock bag, rather than a box.
On the whole, Ice Pirates lives up to the standards of the other games in the Cambridge Games Factory line. It's colorful and attractive and amazingly well-produced for a small, indie publisher. Good work has also been done on the utility of the components. As such I've awarded it a "4" out of "5" for Style.
The Gameplay
The object of Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace is to collect the three lost map fragments, and use them to uncover the Pirate Admiral's treasure. But even after you've claimed the treasure you still have to get away from the other pirates!
Setup: Conception Bay is laid out with 37 cards. The starting point, Bell Island, is laid in the middle of the hexagonal bay, while the six ports are put at the corners. All the other bay cards are flipped upside down, shuffled, and placed. They'll be explored as the game goes on.
Each player gets a boat which he places at Bell Island plus a captain and three crew members.
Moving Your Ship: On your turn you move your ship. Where and how much you move depends upon the current wind direction.
- You can move into the wind only by expending 1 crew token (spent rowing), and then you can only move one space.
- You can tack (moving toward, but not directly into the wind) without expending crew, but you only get to move one space.
- Finally, you can sail with the wind (that's the direction the wind is blowing and the two adjacent directions) and then you get to move a second space afterward, which may be any direction except directly into the wind (and not back to where you started either).
As you move onto face-down cards, you flip them face up.
Most are open sea, but open sea always has icebergs in either 1 or 2 of the six potential directions for movement. You can't move through an iceberg (and if you just revealed an iceberg blocking your planned movement, you don't lose your move, you just have to go in another direction).
Some cards are storms, which immediately (and randomly) change the wind direction. They also force you to stop unless you expend a crew.
You can't end a turn on a space with another ship. If you end a turn on a special card you get to pick something up, as noted below:
Bell Island. Here you get back any crew that you've expended.
The Ports. There are six ports on the edges of the board. At them you can pick up a cannon, an icebreaker, a main sail, a grappling hook, a telescope, or a jib. There's just three of an item at a port. Each item is free to the first person, costs 1 crew to the second, and costs 2 crew to the third.
Shipwrecks. Shipwrecks give the first person who stops there an extra crew member, which also increases their maximum crew size.
Lost Islands. Each of these three islands gives one of the three parts of the treasure map. There's enough maps to go around to every player.
Kelly's Island. Finally, this island gives the Pirate Admiral's Treasure to the first player who makes it here with all three parts of the map.
Fighting Battles: During the game you can raid other pirates. You do so by passing through their card and then ending on a card beyond them.
The attacker and the defender each roll a die, and then each announces a value equal to the higher of their die roll or their current crew size. The higher number wins, with ties goes to the attacker.
Then the loser may choose to swashbuckle if he wants. To do so he expends a crew and rolls his die again. Now the swashbuckler wins ties.
This continues until a loser chooses not to swashbuckle.
If the attacker won he gets to take all the maps from his opponent, or else the Pirate Admiral's Treasure.
The Port Upgrades: The upgrades you can get at the various ports can help you out in various ways:
Cannon. Lets you roll two dice in combat and take the best.
Grappling Hook. Lets you end your turn in a space with another player (and raid if you want).
Ice Breaker. Lets you move through small icebergs and move throw storms without losing a crew.
Jib. Lets you take a second move after tacking.
Main Sail. Lets you take a third move after two movements with the wind (or after tacking if you have a jib too).
Telescope. Lets you get the rewards from a location without ending your turn there.
Winning the Game: The game is won when a player with the Pirate Admiral's Treasure either ends his turn on Harbour Grace or else escapes into the Atlantic (between Bay de Verde and Pourch Cove). This will happen after someone recovers the maps then grabs the treasure, then a whole bunch of raids occur which probably result in the treasure changing hands a few times.
Relationships to Other Games
Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace is an exploration and movement game with elements of character development (here, ship development).
The exploration aspect of the game is fairly simple, just involving flipping up cards as you move around the board. It's a common mechanic for exploration, particularly nautical exploration, and can be found in other games like the German Entdecker and Anno 1503. This is a pretty different game from those, however, because it's a very American design with lots of luck and some aggression that's largely missing from the German games.
The movement aspect is pretty unique. Most games are either play and move or roll and move, but this instead centers movements on environmental conditions. It's a neat idea, and one of the stand-outs in the game.
Overall the game reminds me somewhat of Days of Wonder's Pirate's Cove. They both involve ports where you can upgrade your boats and piratical fights with other ships. Pirate's Cove is a more serious, somewhat longer and more complex game, while this is a shorter, simpler cousin.
The Game Design
Ice Pirates of Harbour Grace really shines in its movement system. It's simple yet feels thematic, like you're really sailing with the wind. Both the movement system itself and the drive-by combat system contribute to this.
The ability to improve your ship is appealing, and the development is enjoyable. However, it doesn't feel like you really have enough time to do much work on your ship. A few turns in, after you've gotten one perhaps two improvements, the map islands have all been revealed and the final chase is on.
The gameplay of Ice Pirates is, as noted, pretty random. The exploration element does a lot to determine the game, just based on who was able to get improvements for their ship and who got blocked by too many icebergs. The die-rolling combat system, though pretty clever & evocative, also is largely random.
This randomness is played up further through the endgame, which uses what I call last-man-standing gameplay. The winner is largely choosen through exhaustion, as players take the victory condition away from the winner until someone gets lucky enough to hold onto the victory and win.
All of these aspects of randomness are pretty common for an American game design, and ice Pirates plays right up there with games from Steve Jackson and others. As such I rate it a "3" out of "5" for Substance: average. And I'll add the further comment that I had fun though I didn't feel like I had much control over the ending.
Conclusion
Ice Pirates fo Harbour Grace is a well-tuned American game design with evocative and enjoyable theming. If you're a fan of Steve Jackson Games or other beer & pretzels American designs, this is well-worth a look, as Cambridge Games Factory has consistently been putting out well designed games.
If it's not available at your local game store, check the CGF website.
Review Summary