In Merchants and Corsairs, you play as an influential merchant or a ruthless pirate roaming the sunny Caribbean.
You start the game as a simple captain with a small stack. If you manage your actions well, you will soon be able to own a frigate or a galleon. Why, maybe you can even get one of the giant warships?
Will you call at Port Royale to sell tobacco, buy wood in Curacao, or do you undertake a top secret mission for the governor of the French port of Basse-Terre?
You have to be careful though - powerful pirates like Captain Barbarossa and his crew roam the seas. They don't ask questions - they will put your ship full of precious goods to the bottom without hesitation, regardless of your nationality.
In the fight against pirates, you can count on the support of the navy of the most important powers of the time - Spain, England, the Netherlands and France. On the other hand, if by chance you "happen" to hunt a merchant's ship, those fleets will chase you down to death.
Why will you love this game?
Merchants and Corsairs is an unusual game in which the climate known, among others, is felt very strongly. from classic computer games like Sid Meier`s Pirates! or Patrician.
The atmosphere of pirate (or merchant) adventures has been captured perfectly with relatively simple mechanics. The game contains all the elements you would expect from a pirate game, and has a reasonable gameplay time - it should not last longer than 3 hours.
However, even these 3 hours pass very quickly, because the gameplay provides enormous emotions, and during it there are amazing twists, surprising fights and interesting adventures.
How it's working?
Players navigate Caribbean ports, each of which is controlled by a different nation and each has some special rules associated with it. During a visit to the port, the player can, among others:
- buy and sell goods, including those for which there is a special demand in a given city
- buy a new ship, equip your ship with special ammunition or make advanced modifications to it
- try to find out about interesting people and places
- accept the mission from the port governor
- recruit the crew for your ship
At sea, it can attack other ships - other players, pirates, neutral merchants or warships. Each attack has consequences - the attacked nation assigns a reward to the head of an aggressive captain. It may be tempted by other players who, if successfully attacked, also have the option of taking over its goods and even the entire ship.
In addition, wars break out on the seas - even a peaceful merchant must carefully watch for the presence of a nation that is at war with his home country on the horizon.
All this has been enriched with a beautiful edition - a thick, colorful board, lots of cards, plastic ship figures and great illustrations on the captains' cards.
A real pirate game!
