Madeira Preview - Part 3

The pirate dice

In part 1 we showed you how to get the cool dice to make all the nice actions with we showed you in part 2. This time we show you more dice!

There is an area in the game called the City Watch. At the beginning of each round, when we roll the turquoise guild dice we showed you so far, we also roll three black dice. We call them the pirate dice. They represent the bad guys in the jail, where all the bad boys belong in. The players also have workers in the City watch that are on duty and watch the dice to not do any criminal activity.

Half of the sides are black like a pirate soul the other half is black like the cellar of the watch tower they rot in.

Fortunate enough for the criminals these pirate dice are always open for a deal. You let them free and they return the favor by helping you getting your actions done. You also leave the city watch as you are no noble man, if you are making deals with criminals.

These pirate dice are there to give you additional actions. But everyone has access to them as long as they have workers in the city watch.

The watch tower

The watch tower. Everyone here keeps the people of Madeira safe.

There are still some differences to the regular guild dice. First of all they only give you character actions. They return the favor but only to some extend. Second they only go to characters where no other pirate dice is. Two criminals in one spot cause too much trouble, no one can control. And third, they are one of the dice at a character. So in a 4-player game there is only place for 4 guild dice or 3 guild dice and 1 pirate die.

So if your opponent took a pirate die for your favorite action, you have to take a regular guild die if you want the same action right now, or you need to choose another action if you still want that pirate die, before they are gone. Oh we love choices you have to make.

But what happens with the building action? When you want to perform it, you need to pay for it. The character worked for the greater good of the island, but without some taxes the land would go bankrupt. Everyone who does not pay, because he cannot or does not want to, gets pirate chips. These tokens represent the criminality the players cause requesting something, and then not paying for it. With a pirate die on a building you can receive a lot more pirates, since these gallows birds are causing extra trouble.

Pirates are piling up

Of course in a 4-player game you might say that one player does not get a pirate die. That is true. But there are several reasons to not be sad about this. At the end of each round, the player who has the most workers in the city watch may also send one home to get 4 prestige points, as honor for not making deals with the pirates. That’s not shabby.

But what are the pirate chips for?

The short answer: They give you minus points, but only at the end of the game. The player with the most pirates loses 16 prestige points. To put that in perspective, the crown’s requests earn you a maximum of 15 to 20 prestige points per request. The player with the second most pirates still loses 8 points and so on. The only way to not lose points is to have no pirates at all.

But fear not. You might not always prevent getting pirates, but you can still get rid of them later. You might call it community service. Send a worker to the city watch and you may discard three of them. And this way, the circle about the pirates closes where it started. So getting pirates is not always bad, as you can get rid of them and at the same time prepare your position to use a pirate die next turn. Let’s call that a win-win situation.

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Be seeing you,
Matthias from What's Your Game?