“Card Crafting meets 4X! Sail the high seas and choose your path to victory!”
Link: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/276182/dead-reckoning
Playing Time: 90-150 minutes
Weight: midweight
Genre: Card Crafting Open World Piracy Game
Designer: John D. Clair
Players: 1-4
John D. Clair is the patron saint of the card crafting game. He’s now made at least 5 games that use the mechanic of putting transparent card pieces into a card sleeve to Frankenstein together a ‘card’ that gets more powerful as you play. Dead Reckoning is, for my money, the best of these.
A sprawling open-world pirating game, Dead Reckoning allows players to wander freely the open seas, exploring islands, indulging in trade, perhaps building some industry and occasionally relieving some merchants of their excessive merchandise. Each path is viable, and how a player upgrades his crew will largely guide his crew’s fortunes.
The player’s crew is the central engine of the game. A player will draw a handful of these at the start of the turn, and each ‘card’ is upgradeable in its own right – players can not only acquire upgrades to their abilities that let these characters do more things (each card has room for 3 upgrade slots) but at the end of each turn, they can also ‘promote’ a character – flipping or rotating a card so its core ability is better (each character has 4 levels based on the four orientations). Level up your gunner if you favor piracy, or your purser if you hope to instead build a life of maritime industry.
Like most open world games, the game ends once a certain number of player achievements are acquired. The end result is my favorite ‘sandbox’ experience, and indeed my favorite pirate game altogether. Truly, this is a game that lets you imagine another life on the open seas.
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