An import from Rio Grande Games, Rum and Pirates is an enjoyable set collection, worker placement game for 2 to 5 players. Each player represents a gang of pirates seeking to gain renown for their captain while visiting a local port town. They corral their captain to look into rumors of treasure, arrange a romantic rendezvous for the captain at a secret location, or get into brawls with the town guard. All the while they seek to gather up tokens worth points and after five rounds, the player with the most points wins.

The board is made up of nine pieces that are laid out in a 3 by 3 grid of twisting alleyways and intersections. The clever bit with the design of the board is that each section freely aligns with all of the other sections meaning you can get a wide variety of board layouts from game to game. The captain is represented by a single piece and always starts each round at a specific location.

Players take turns moving the captain by using their supply of pirates. For each segment of an alleyway path, they place a pirate. The player ends their move at an intersection moving the captain piece and completing the action at that intersection. They can then pass their turn or continue moving the captain paying a gold coin.

The trick when moving the captain is that each alleyway gets blocked off from their pirates as well as pirates from opponents. So as the round progresses, options for moving through particular intersections become limited. The captain can move off the board and enter from any other open alleyway path from another board edge. This can be a great means to move to a choice intersection, but is costly requiring a gold coin as well as an extra pirate.

As the captain goes through the town, they will pick up pieces of maps, collect pirate booty, or potentially find chests of treasure. Essentially it becomes a set collection game with various tiles. Some score points outright but most require a matching tile or a set number of tiles to award points. It becomes a challenge navigating to intersections to score a combination of tiles, as the player has to balance their supply of pirates for movement, and hope that a clear path can remain open. Having extra gold is very helpful too as you can guarantee being able to steer the captain to choice locations in order to complete tile sets.

To the backdrop of this is another mini game, where players retire their pirates at the ship to rest for the night. A player has an option to bow out of the round and remove any pirates in their supply to the docked ship. At the end of the round, all players with pirates at the ship go through rounds of tussling as they wrangle for the best sleeping spots either in the crow’s nest, the hammocks, or on the deck of the ship. They line up their pirates in a single row based on who entered the ship first and roll dice to see who is eliminated.

It’s a bit laborious to describe effectively, but essentially every player is rolling off for each individual pirate. If a player has 4 pirates and another has 3, then the player with 4 pirates moves one unchallenged pirate across the mast and it is automatically in the next round. The player that went to the ship first rolls a d6. The next player must roll equal to, or higher, to beat that roll. Every player rolls once and the winner advances to the next round, while the losers take their pirates back. In general, the more pirates, and the later you head back to the docked ship, the better you will do in the wrangle.

This continues until there is a first, second, and third place, with each scoring tile points accordingly. You can score a significant number of points and if at least three players are participating, then each one is guaranteed getting a tile for some points. It can be a viable strategy to opt out trying to move the captain to select intersections and instead shoot for getting the best bunk on the ship.

The Good – It’s a fun and different type of worker placement game. I like how you can effectively limit and cut off players moving towards specific intersections. But managing your total is a challenge. While some people might hate it, there is some variation in the point values for tokens. So you can expect a range of points rather than a set amount and this little bit of variation adds some unpredictability. Also gathered tokens are placed under a large tile, hiding it from other players, so this adds some tension to the final rounds as you don’t have precise point counts from other players.

I also like the small mini game with the bunk wrangle at the end of each round. If you get a poor turn, you can opt instead to heavily shift over to the wrangle and scoop up quite a few points. Having another option aside from getting tile sets maneuvering the captain through the city streets is great. The card stock for the tokens and map boards are thick and solid. The player pieces are also nice bits of chunky plastic. Lastly there is a fantastic plastic tray organizer which is wonderful as there are several different cardboard chits to keep organized.

The Bad – The game has a sort of take that mentality with the moving of the captain, and other players can wreck your turn at times. While there are ways to mitigate this, it might turn some players off. There is also somewhat of a gamble when picking up certain tokens. Sometimes getting a rendezvous token can be tricky as you might have to go across the map, or getting some pirate items might not quite fill out the sets you currently have. This lack of predictability might be frustrating for a few players.

The artwork is simple and a bit cartoon-looking, and some of the item icons can take a second look to ensure you have the proper matching sets.

The Verdict – Rum and Pirates is a great little game. The management of your pieces and shrewd use of gold to take extra turns is challenging. Also as you essentially block off routes, you can shrewdly plan out ways to cut off players working towards certain scoring tile sets as you push towards areas on the board that can help you out.

This alone would be pretty fun, but having the option to dabble in another side-game for additional points is also helpful for the player to have different paths to win. Added to this are rum barrels which allow for rerolls providing the player a chance to recover from a string of bad luck and alleviate it some. It’s a nice touch that the map boards are segmented and can be shifted around to add variety from game to game.

Overall it’s an enjoyable board game that is surprisingly challenging despite the light elements and theme. The look and feel isn’t as polished as some modern worker placement and set-building games. You could argue it’s likely dated some. But you’ll find a game that seems to appeal to a wide audience. Younger players will likely enjoy the tactile feel and play of shuttling their captain to pick up tokens for points, but it’s deceptive in how light it initially appears. You can dig a bit deeper and realize paying a little gold to take a second action, or snagging some rum to help with the wrangle in the end of the round, can make you ponder and plan out more during your turn. It’s that broader appeal which makes up for any shortcomings. Rum and Pirates is an enjoyable game, and likely would appease a wider age audience range that what you might initially expect.

A reprint from an earlier edition, Formula D is a racing game from Asmodee for 2 to 10 players. Each person is a formula or street race driver competing on defined racetracks, trying to be first across the finish line. Out of the box the game offers two versions, a basic game and a set of advanced rules. Each player selects a driver, a car, a playing piece, and then they’re ready to race.

The player’s car is represented by an interesting player mat. Pegs are inserted into slots on a cardboard sheet over a plastic frame box which represent the current gear cars are in, and the boards also have spaces to keep track of damage incurred while racing. Each player takes a turn based on their pole position initially or based on their current track position as the race progresses. To move players roll special dice matching the gear that they are in, and then simply move the spaces indicated by their die roll. Yes, it’s a roll and move game but with a bit more nuance.

First are the gears. Each higher gear is represented by a higher numbered faced die. Additionally the die numbers are not normally distributed. An eight sided die for example will go from at least 4 spaces up to a maximum of 8 spaces, with most die results ranging from 6 to 8. There are also restrictions on the lanes and spaces cars can pass through. In general once a player moves from one lane to another, they must either maintain that lane, or move again in the same diagonal direction. In corners this is further reinforced with each space indicating legal spaces using directional arrows. If a player gets behind another player on a straight section, they can gain a bonus slipstream move.

Corners are especially tricky. Each corner on the track has a specified number of stops. That means the player must end their turn movement a number of times matching the value of the corner. If the go too fast and can’t stop enough times within the curve, their car takes damage (in the advanced game it will be a specific car part). For some corners if a car doesn’t stop enough times passing through it, they crash automatically. A player can always move less spaces by braking, but this also puts wear damage on their car.

Additionally if ending their move next to another car, they might take damage determined by rolling a special die. If they ever exceed the damage their car can take, they crash and are out of the race. But this might be worth the risk because if you end up directly behind another player going fast enough and in at least 4th gear, you can get a bonus move for a few spaces using a slip stream maneuver (which can be chained to repeat again on a different car). The players continue taking turns until they run a certain number of laps, with the winner being the first crossing the finish line.

The basic rules offer a fun racing game. There are some difficult choices where a player has to decide if it’s worth downshifting a few gears to navigate through a tight corner, or be risky and incur a little tire damage by braking. You might consider keeping in a middle gear on a straightaway, hoping to end up directly behind a player gaining extra movement so you can easily slip down to a lower gear for a tight corner, rather than just pushing a high gear on those straightaways. Positioning yourself on the board to get the optimal number of stops in the highest gear possible is a key point to the game.

The advanced game opens up more depth. Instead of a single type of car damage, you incur damage to specific components. This leads to the importance having a pit stop mid-race to repair tire damage. These car components are impacted by different actions. Also each racer can tweak the starting component values of their cars or provide a special ability, offering another layer of variation among the cars. Lastly there are rules for weather and track effects, team races, and rules for a longer league circuit.

The game comes with a formula race track and a street race map on the opposite side. The street race has different road conditions, hazards, and additional challenges. This can be a fun change from the vanilla flavor of a proper formula track.

The Good – The concept of rolling higher-faced dice as you go up in gears is clever. It’s balanced with having to stop a set number of times passing through corners, giving the managing of braking and shifting gears while trying to cover as much ground as possible a challenge to work out during your turns. All the while you have to monitor the wear and tear to your car.

The components are excellent, with bright, colorful art for the tracks, to solid cardstock and plastic bits for cars. Some of the driver art is a tad cartoon-like but it works. Yes, you won’t find a hyper-realistic depiction of formula racing. You will find a spectacle of pieces and game bits to sprawl out over the table.

The Bad – Experienced players will find optimal paths on tracks, learning the ‘best’ routes to navigate the course (which somewhat mimics the real thing). If you play the hell out of the game, eventually you will be learning the sweet lane spots for taking corners, so the game can become a tad like a mechanical exercise if you don’t embrace the theme. The play with multiple individual players can drag some with downtime. There can be a little interaction with the bumping of cars, but you are pretty much sitting around waiting for your turn. Working in teams of cars seems to work best rather than every driver for themselves.

The Verdict – Formula D is a fun racing game. I think what works especially well is that it can offer a light racing game to new players, then turn around and provide something with more bookkeeping and interesting racing conditions with the advanced rules. There are many race track expansions available which certainly adds to the variety of tracks to race with, stretching out the value of the game. Over the recent years there have been some other games released that likely capture a more realistic feel of car racing, but Formula D offers an enjoyable game with some strategy and a dash of luck. Combined with the colorful components and board, it’s worth picking up if looking for a more approachable racing game.

From White Wizard games, Hero Realms is a 2-4 player deck builder game. Using similar play mechanisms in its sci-fi predecessor, Star Realms, players each start out with similar base decks and slowly accrue more cards, trying to eliminate other players. There are a variety suggested game variants such as players forming teams or everyone can just jump into a free for all, where the last player standing wins.

The game is played by taking turns, with each player being able to take a series of actions in any order (and as many times as they wish). From a hand of 5 cards, a card can be played, abilities on current cards in their play area can be used, cards can be purchased from a common pool, and finally, a player can attack another player.

Purchased cards are placed directly in the player’s discard pile. However cards that are played can be used for various actions. Some will add gold to a player’s resources which can be used to purchase more cards, while others are used for attacking players. At the end of their turn, except for played champions, used cards or ones still in the player’s hand are put in the discard pile, and a new hand of 5 cards is drawn.

Attacks commonly use a pool, or total, of an attack value that will damage an opponent’s health. When their health reaches zero they are eliminated. Some cards can heal damage, and other cards have a defensive value that can reduce the attack pool number. As an additional tweak to combat, players can directly attack champions (cards with special abilities) in their opponent’s play area.

To bolster the defense of those champions or a player, some special champions are guardians. These guardian champions must be eliminated before other champions or a player can be attacked. To eliminate a champion or guardian, the attack pool must equal or exceed the defense value of the card. Once a card is eliminated it goes to the owner’s discard pile (allowing it to be drawn and played again on future turns). Alternately some card abilities can ‘expend’ itself, tapping it and changing its orientation. The card is in play but can’t be used for its abilities or provide defense.

That is the heart of the game. A rather simple numbers game where players try to beat the defensive cards of their opponent, while being able to maintain enough defensive abilities to bolster their health total. The wrinkle of course is the four faction types and interactions with various cards of the different factions leaning towards particular action types (attack, defense, purchasing cards, etc.).

As mentioned the game out of the box can handle 2-4 players. An interesting move regarding expansions are various starter decks which allow for more players. Unlike the starter decks in the base game, these have a few unique cards. This offers some light replay value by dabbling into different expansion packs as you can have some variation with starting hands (provided you buy enough expansion packs).

The Good – Out of the box you can have a fun deck builder that can handle 4 players. The card faction options and abilities or actions that allow for expending/stunning other cards open up for some different strategies. The set includes some clever cards to track health/score of the players, and the art for the cards is well done with bright, lovely colors, and layouts.

The Bad – Purchasing cards can lead to buyer’s remorse, where a better option becomes available replenishing the card pool after a purchase. The abilities are interesting but at times healing can get out of hand, almost outpacing damage. Adding to your deck can very much become a race, where the player that manages to scoop up cards to make a working combo first can really shift the balance in their favor.

The Verdict – Hero Realms is an enjoyable game. Being able to play 4 people out of the box is great. However the 4 card factions and limits on purchasing cards hampers strategies that players can explore. I also felt some games could just be a slog, with opponents countering damage easily through healing or being able to reliably get out champion cards.

I don’t know how the character expansions will work with the game. I do wonder if they will have balanced starting hands. Also as each expansion deck adds a unique starter deck, a person almost has to go all in buying at least four to offer parity. You don’t have to do this, but I could see some players grumbling they are stuck with the ‘regular’ cards while someone else gets new cool toys to start out with.

Nonetheless, it’s a reasonable product with room enough to discover fun combos, and there are expansions out there to diversify your card pool if wanting more. It’s a light deck builder that is enjoyable. I am somewhat not too keen to gush over it though. I feel Cthulhu Realms seems to capture a more fun experience out of the box with tighter game play. However if looking for a fantasy themed game akin to Star Realms that provides a 4 player deck builder with a single purchase, Hero Realms isn’t a bad buy.