Pirate Dice: Voyage on the Rolling Seas First Impressions

In Pirate Dice: Voyage on the Rolling Seas, you’re captaining a ship that doesn’t know where it’s going, around islands…

Does anyone have a compass?

Ready for a taste of high adventure on the rolling seas? In Pirate Dice, you are the captain of a pirate ship, racing through the Caribbean against your fellow pirates. You must navigate the seas, obtain the buried treasure, and return safely to your port. But beware – many hazards await on the rolling seas, not the least of which are your rivals!

You will need more than pure speed to win. Use your wits to block, ram, and fire at your opponents – while doing your best to keep them from doing the same to you! As you take damage, your ship will become more difficult to pilot. But no matter – treasure awaits! So weigh anchor, set the sails, and run out your cannons – there’s no room for lily-livered landlubbers here! It takes a shrewd captain with a sharp eye to navigate the rolling seas of Pirate Dice!

Pirate Dice: Voyage on the Rolling Seas is a dice-based programming game. You roll dice, and place them in the order you want them to activate. Then, simultaneously resolve them with the other players.

Each player has a ship which is essentially a D6 with a ship on it. This ship starts on its 6 side which is its ‘health’ for lack of a better word.

You select a starting point on the board and you’re ready to go.

The goal, get to the treasure… of course!

Dice Selection

You put a screen in front of your player board and roll the dice. You must select at least one for each roll but any you don’t pick you can re-roll.

The dice are to program your ship so you can move forward or backwards and drift or turn left or right.  You don’t always get what you want to so instead of putting a dice on the ‘wheel’ space on your board you can Anchor it so that slot won’t resolve for you this turn.

Movement

This blurry example shows I’m doing nothing in the first round, drifting right in the second, moving forward 3 in the third and turning left in the 4th.

The numbers on the dice are for turn orders. My ’84’ on dice 3 would probably mean I would activate first that time but the 21 on die 4 means I would probably be going last.

The gaps in the board are for the annoying (but thematic) part of the game. Some symbols on the dice let you fire broadside so anyone on either side of you in a line takes damage and will spin down their ship. You can also ram someone too.

Damage

When you hit 4 life, the dice in slot 4 with whatever command is on it is ‘locked’ in place and you must perform that action each turn… annoying! Imagine having that ‘turn left’ locked EVERY TURN!

But it works when you consider this to simulate the damage you’re shipping is taking.

Eventually, you might have 2 or 3 dice locked so you can skip a turn to gain 3 life back… phew!

Other things on the dice are barrels that can make someone re-roll a die and accept the action of whatever they rolled or the anchor which makes them skip their action this turn.

Pirate Dice: Voyage on the Rolling Seas Summary

Pirate Dice: Voyage on the Rolling Seas is a fun and frustrating game. Not sure about re-playability and it may be overly random to be one to own but I would like to play it again, especially with a 4th player in the game.

Jesta ThaRogue