Written and Reviewed by Chelsea Siaca

Welcome to Pirate Party: Women of the High Seas

Travel the High Seas making a reputation for yourself, as the fiercest woman pirate!

Objective

Play sets to earn the most pirate points.

Components 

Pirate Party: Women of the High Seas is a card game that is made up of 65 cards. The cards breakdown is as follows: 

  • 6 different suits , that include one captain and 7 cards that follow suit,
  • 6 ship cards,
  • 1 booty card,
  • 3 mermaid cards,
  • 1 Kraken Attack card, and 
  • 6 Adventure cards. 

Each card has their name on the top middle on a banner, the points they are worth on the top left, and on the top right the suit (if any). Each Captain has their own special ability. 

Gameplay 

Every player starts with 8 cards. If they are dealt the Kraken Attack card, set it aside and have that player draw another card. Shuffle the Kraken Attack card back into the facedown deck! 

During your turn, you will do 2 things: Play cards and then draw one card. When you play cards, you can do it in various ways:

  • you can play a set of cards to your player area. You can do sets of the same suit or the same kind. 
    • If you are playing a set of at least 3 cards of the same suit. It needs to include at least one Captain and one Crew,
    • If you are playing a set of the same kind, play at least 3 cards of the same kind. 
  • you can expand any set that is already out on the table,
  • you can play an Adventure card. 
  • Lastly, you can continue doing any of the action above until you are choose to stop or cannot play any more cards. 

Once you are done playing cards, draw a card. Then it is the next player’s turn.  This continues until one of the players has played all their cards or the Kraken Attack is drawn. If the end of the game is triggered by the Kraken Attack, the players will subtract the points in their hands from their final score. However, if the end of the game is triggered by a player playing all their cards, that player earns 20 extra points. 

In the run above: I used the Pillage card to steal the Mermaid from another player and it acts as a wild. I chose to use it as Captain Pirate Sayyida Al Hurra, since I didn’t have a Captain for my yellow scimitars. This run scored 70 points and an additional 10 points for the Pillage Card. 

My Thoughts

The moment I saw Pirate Party: Women of the High Seas, I was intrigued, a game that focuses on diverse real women pirates, and they are not oversexualized. In the rulebook, there are little blurbs of each of the Captains. I would have loved to see non-binary pirates in this game as well, even if they weren’t actual historical figures. 

 The rules are very simple. You are collecting sets with the highest points possible in your player area.  If you end up extending another player’s set, you just simply place the cards in your player area. At the end of the game just count up all the points in your player area. The twist to this game is the  Adventure cards, which have special actions on them. They let you take action against your opponents, like stealing a Captain that has been played or a card from another player’s hand. 

I feel like in a 2-player game the Take That might be too  much. In my opinion the  more players you have, the more this game shines! You can also take out the Adventure cards out of the deck, if you want a less confrontational game and ignore the special ability of the Captains. This is a fun quick game that has a twist on your typical pirate theme 

Pirate Party: Women of the High Seas has fully funded on Kickstarter!!