December 8, 2024

#UnboxingDay – Blackbeard from GMT Games

Brant Guillory, 19 August 2021 ~ #UnboxingDay

It’s an older GMT Game, but it’s one that’s squarely in the ‘adventure games’ category rather than an outright wargame.  Certainly many of the trappings of a wargame are present, with the map & counters and dice and player aid cards.  But the conflict is not necessarily directly with other players and there’s plenty to do besides high-intensity shootouts.

click images to enlarge

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Standard GMT box?  Check.  Period-appropriate cover?  Check.  More info on the cover than you’d normally get these days?  Check.

 

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Back of the box.  All the usual information, und auf Deutsch!

 

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Everything in the box!  A big map, 10 pirate player cards, 2 countersheets, player aid cards, actual game cards, and a rulebook.

 

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The front part of the rulebook looks well-illustrated.

 

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It’s a ruse.  The rest of it looks like this.

 

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Until you get to the bios of the pirates in the back.

 

2 identical 4-panel player aid cards.

 

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Player cards for tracking your ship and yes it does look an awful lot like and RPG character sheet.

 

Counter detail.  Lots of tracking counters, so lots of basic numbers and repetitive markers for the pirate tracking cards.  Some of the typography is hard to read when shrunk down that small, even if the font is period-appropriate.

 

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The map is el-grande.

 

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Nice, evocative detail.

 

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Good tracking charts, and nice graphical touches on the nationalities.

 

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Not sure how well the Isle Ste. Marie plays with a permanent fault line through it.

 

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Transit boxes to get from continent to continent.

 

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A selection of event cards.  Note that the finish on them gets very tacky in the humidity, making it nearly impossible to shuffle worth a darn.

 

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A selection of pirate cards.

 

Can you trick you non-wargaming friends into trying something wargame-adjacent with a pirate theme?  Maybe.  It’s not as fast-and-furious as newer titles, but it’s a Berg design and a GMT production, so it’s solid, even if it’s more complex than a lot of people might otherwise expect.

 


Thanks for joining this month’s #UnboxingDay with the Armchair Dragoons and we hope you enjoyed our recon of our recent acquisitions.
You can always leave us your feedback in our #UnboxingDay thread, or in the comment area on this article, below.
The regiment also occasionally musters on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, and occasionally at a convention near you, once we’re allowed to hold them again.

Brant G

Editor-in-chief at Armchair Dragoons

View all posts by Brant G →

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