Pirate Games: Theme or Function?

I dislike M&M for a plethora of reasons, the combat only being one of them. It's been ages since I've played the game, but I do remember that my biggest knock against it that it the choice between merchant and pirate is a total farce. The captains all definitely lean in one clear, easily indentifiable direction. You could play against type, but unless everyone else is, that's quite a disadvantage you're putting yourself in. It's not a choice, don't sell it as one. Oh, and the combat sucks.

I do think it might very well be the game that started pushing pick and deliver games into adventure game territory, a sungenre we have plenty of choices in now, but every single game to come after that I've managed to feel more open. Even Western Legends, which essentially boils down into two morality camps offers more options to dabble in (though, if it's dabbling you want, that's where Outer Rim wins out).

I guess it doesn't do it very often, but M&M can generate stories. A friend has a story that he loves to tell about getting in a fight with one of those NPC frigates. All the die rolls went his way in a fight that he absolutely didn't want, and he ended up the owner of a British frigate.

It has generated a great story every single time I've played it. The expansion even enhanced the narrative as you pursue the Urca gold or assault islands.

I agree that the base game captains lean hard into one role, but in roughly half the games I've played, merchants late game have switched entirely to a pirate strategy once they're kitted.

The expansion also helps build up the roles with stuff like contraband. That allows for a more merchant-y player to dabble in criminal enterprises.

This is still one of my favorite games.

charlest wrote: I agree that the base game captains lean hard into one role, but in roughly half the games I've played, merchants late game have switched entirely to a pirate strategy once they're kitted.

Yep. Anyone assuming that they're completely bound by whatever direction their captain leans in basically lacks imagination or ambition or something essential to actually, y'know, trying. I've seen people win with all combinations of captains, ships, crew, and other accoutrements. The variety is what makes the game strong in the first place, but it needs players to embrace it, not fight it.

No matter the captain, I will go hard pirate right out of the gate. I am thankful that our group embraces the PvP aspect of it. We are all looking at who is trying to run to their home port or make a dash to St. Kitt(?) for the sweet ship trade in. losing a combat can be harsh, but not necessarily a game losing proposition. But you also get the games where the merchant raids never fall your way and you end your career in ignominy. The expansion really brings a ton more to the table. There is a TTS mod that plays up to 10 people.

As far a solo variant, there is no reason you couldn't play to a certain amount of glory. I would probably increase the NPC ships or something. The expansion allows for the NPC ships to be kitted out as well to make the battles tougher.

Josh, I think the boundary between merchant and marauder is more permeable than you let on. I've seen people switch between the two quite a bit, although more often from law-abiding citizen to brigand. It definitely produces a lot of variety and narrative moments, which is why I still hold on to it.

It's a weird design though. It has that lumpy feeling where it's a lot of smaller games that are all in the box together. It's definitely cut from the same cloth as Android or Arkham Horror 2e. Those kinds of games would become better-integrated and more streamlined in time, and indeed had already started making that transition when M&M was released. It had a famously long gestation, I think it had actually been pitched to publishers as far back as like 2006. That would definitely explain why it felt so distinctly mid-2000s.

Well I think you answered your 'Theme or Function' question when you posted the ratings from euro-centric website BGG with Themey M&M taking the prize.

Been a while since I played M&M, it's still on the shelf but i have a lot of great 3-4 player games it has to compete with, but from memory it could be a bit too easy based on how VPs are assigned for someone to game the system and race away for a 'boring' win - so we found a variant in the BGG files where you were restricted to getting VPs from sources a certain number of times, requiring you to try most of the VP options to get the win, this made it a bit harder and competitive.

southernman wrote: Well I think you answered your 'Theme or Function' question when you posted the ratings from euro-centric website BGG with Themey M&M taking the prize.

Is it still Euro-centric, though? Like I said, those ratings aren't anywhere close to being properly weighted polls. You look at the top 10 and see two versions of Gloomhaven, TI4, Gaia Project, Pandemic: Legacy, and Star Wars: Rebellion. The only really Euro-y design is Brass: Birmingham. The next 10 gets a little thicker in that respect (Concordia, Castles of Burgundy, more Brass) but still has things like War of the Ring. I think BGG has evened out quite a bit in recent years, which may help explain the ranking of M&M over Black Fleet (or it could be any number of other random factors, including the fact that BF is out of print.)

southernman wrote: Been a while since I played M&M, it's still on the shelf but i have a lot of great 3-4 player games it has to compete with, but from memory it could be a bit too easy based on how VPs are assigned for someone to game the system and race away for a 'boring' win - so we found a variant in the BGG files where you were restricted to getting VPs from sources a certain number of times, requiring you to try most of the VP options to get the win, this made it a bit harder and competitive.

Huh. That's interesting. I've never even thought about altering the victory conditions. Our games always seemed like weather and random events threw up enough interference to keep everyone in the same ballpark until more than one player had been able to make a ship purchase and started moving ahead. But it also depends on how aggressive your group is (i.e. Are there people willing to risk the combat and take someone else down?)

Jackwraith wrote:

southernman wrote: Well I think you answered your 'Theme or Function' question when you posted the ratings from euro-centric website BGG with Themey M&M taking the prize.

Is it still Euro-centric, though? Like I said, those ratings aren't anywhere close to being properly weighted polls. You look at the top 10 and see two versions of Gloomhaven, TI4, Gaia Project, Pandemic: Legacy, and Star Wars: Rebellion. The only really Euro-y design is Brass: Birmingham. The next 10 gets a little thicker in that respect (Concordia, Castles of Burgundy, more Brass) but still has things like War of the Ring. I think BGG has evened out quite a bit in recent years, which may help explain the ranking of M&M over Black Fleet (or it could be any number of other random factors, including the fact that BF is out of print.)

Still a lot more euro-centric than Theme or War gamey, also consider those ratings are over ten years so a lot of that time would have been when it was very euro-centric. I think that the fact that you pointed out non-euro games that are highly rated shows that if a Theme\War game gets get a high rating then it must be pretty GOOD

I was going to attach an image of the Glory Point variant but adding attachments is still broken for my Windows/Browsers combinations, so here's the post at BGG:
boardgamegeek.com/thread/731788/gp-rule-more-thematic-game

Jackwraith wrote: Is it still Euro-centric, though?

It's both euro-centric and non-euro-centric, because ratings never expire. For older games the ratings and comments are far more euro-centric. For recent games there's far more gushing over big miniatures in bold primary colors.

What Sag said.

It's not Euro-centric anymore. It may seem that way in comparison to this site which rarely features Euros and, for as forward thinking we may be in some areas, a portion of the vocal community here is still content to to talk about 15 year old games and put dated "AT" design on a pedestal. I'm not saying we should all be embracing the point salad games, what I'm saying is that the name might have changed, but have we?

That's what I was thinking. The audience at BGG has shifted quite a bit over the years to the point where I don't think it really has an identity, per se. Plus, I think the only reason it really had the Euro identity originally is because many of the best and most enduring games on the market at the time were German, like Knizias, or things like Puerto Rico. But once design trends began shifting (TI3 incorporating PR's strategy/role cards, CitOW, etc.) the divide between so-called "Euro" and "Ameritrash" basically disappeared.

As for trends around here, I can only say that the last two actual reviews I've done have been for Abyss and Tiny Epic Dinosaurs; far more "Euro" in design, albeit "AT" in theme, which kinda proves my point.

Yep. For the presumably more "Euro-ish" design, Black Fleet is a game that really rewards aggression, which is exactly what a pirate game should be. The movement cards present so many good choices, even with only two of them to pick from.

Also, on topic, I was watching one of Dice Tower's videos about incoming stuff this year and two of them spoke very highly of a pirate game called Dead Reckoning. Zee was insisting that it was going to be the pirate-game-to-end-all-pirate-games and it looked kind of like an enhanced M&M. I don't know much about it, otherwise.