Tips & Strategies (14)

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Tips & Strategies (14)

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3
Amateur Reviewer
Strategist
Amateur Advisor
20 of 20 gamers found this helpful
“Pirate Hunting For The Win”

In contrast to my “Cold Calulation For The Win” strategy, if you want to feel the thrill of battle, you can go pirate hunting. This is a strategy to use if you really enjoy improving your ship and getting into fights.

If you are going to use up lots of resources on making an awesome ship, then you better make it count. Instead of trying to avoid battles, MAKE SURE you get into them. Don’t bother with the legendary pirates too much. They’ll bust up the best of ships. Instead, try to anticipate where you’re opponent’s are going and show up to greet them. Every time you blow them out of the water, you are getting bonus points for the fight and denying them access to treasure.

Do this enough and you might find your opponents avoiding the best treasure spots out of shear fear of fighting you. Just remember that battle in this game is still pretty random. To stand a chance, you’ll need a healthy dose of luck and some useful tavern cards to bend the fates to your whim.

With fate on your side and a guns at the ready you can win the way pirate games are meant to be won: by blowing the competition out of the water.

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7
Canada
Novice Advisor
The Gold Heart
Pick a Favorite LGS
18 of 18 gamers found this helpful
“Commonly Misplayed: Who the Legendary Pirate Attacks”

There is a rule that appears that many, including myself, has misplayed. It involves the Legendary Pirate fighting off multiple players. Essentially, the Legendary Pirate will attack each player in a specified order until all players engaged with him or her have been attacked. Here’s an example of Blackbeard attacking three players:

When Blackbeard’s turn comes up in the first round he attacks the player’s ship that has the most cannons. Everybody has only one turn (volley) each round of combat, even the Legendary Pirates. Next round, however, Blackbeard will attack the player with the next highest cannons. So, if there were three players fighting with Blackbeard, and we assume that each player survives the first attack from him, after three rounds of combat the players will be attacked once again in order of highest (most) cannons to lowest (least) cannons in the following rounds.

Turn order is determined by sails (fastest ship). The attack (volley) order for the Legendary Pirates is determined by the ship section specified on the pirate’s card. (See page 13 of the rulebook for this.)

Remember also that ties, even for determining the order in which the Legendary Pirates attacks, are broken by rolling a die. (See the last two sentences of the left column on page 6 of the rulebook.)

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5
Novice Reviewer
Novice Advisor
Knight
Baron / Baroness
27 of 28 gamers found this helpful
“Strategy Tips”

Here are some strategies I’ve employed over about a dozen times playing Pirate’s Cove:

– Spend some time thinking about where each player will go and try to avoid these spots. (Sadly) Avoiding combat is the key to winning this game.
– Sails are probably the most important attribute as half the time you get an extra roll on the player you’re fighting.
– Take time to buy cards, don’t only upgrade your ship. The cards can actually be very powerful.
– Make sure to offload your gold on the 2nd to last month as the pirate goes there at the end and there’s no reason to fight him unless you’re extremely powerful.

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5
Novice Reviewer
Novice Advisor
Knight
Baron / Baroness
24 of 25 gamers found this helpful
“Get A Parrot ASAP”

I’ve found that the buying of cards is a bit underrated – most newer players go straight for upgrading their ships. If you play smart you can often avoid battle and the more you play the more you realize dumping all your money into your ship can be a bit of a waste.

Instead, try teching up and trying to get a good Parrot as quickly as possible – it won’t be a waste as you will get lots of useful cards along the way anyway.

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5
Novice Reviewer
Novice Advisor
Knight
Baron / Baroness
22 of 23 gamers found this helpful
“Legendary Pirate Movement Compromise”

My group has found moving the pirate just 1 island each turn is a bit too slow, but we also thought that randomly rolling a dice each turn to see where the pirate went was also a bit too.. random.

Our compromise is to roll a dice at the beginning of each turn:

– 1/2: Pirate moves 1 island
– 3/4: Pirate moves 2 islands
– 5/6: Pirate moves 3 islands

This lets people still pick safe islands but gives others looking for the higher chance of picking an isolated island or just better loot might have to face the pirate.

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3
Amateur Reviewer
Strategist
Amateur Advisor
21 of 22 gamers found this helpful
“Cold Calculation For The Win”

Okay, this strategy is effective but can be kind of unfun. But hey- sometimes you just feel like trying to win.

Basically, the best way to win pirates cove is to almost never improve your ship and almost never fight. It takes observation and anticipation. Avoid islands that you’re opponents are likely to go towards (ones that have really big instant fame points, really big treasure chest awards, and ones that improve weak parts of their ships).

Rember that every gold you spend improving your ship is actually 1/3 of a point you are giving up. Also, gold coins are the treasure you can hold in unlimited amount regardless of your hull size. If you fail to ancipate your opponents moves, you may end up losing some fights. However, you can make several mistakes and still come out on top.

Let your opponents arm themselves you to the teeth while you just quietly sail off with all the treasure.

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7
Canada
Novice Advisor
The Gold Heart
Pick a Favorite LGS
15 of 16 gamers found this helpful
“Stealty Legendary Pirate”

If you’re feeling especially chaotic one day and “the winds, they be a changing”, try playing Pirate’s Cove using random appearance for the Legendary Pirates. After every one has revealed their destination islands roll a die to determine which of the six islands the Legendary Pirate visits – the number on the die corresponding to the island’s number. Decide at the start of the game if your group wishes to have the Legendary Pirate automatically go to Treasure Island on turn 12 (my personal preference) or have it random as well.

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3
I Am What I Am
23 of 26 gamers found this helpful
“Legendary Pirate?”

A house rule I enjoy is that you play the game with the Legendary Pirate hidden until someone chooses to attack them. It spices up the adventure a little and add some additional risk.

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6
South Africa
Treasure Map
9 of 10 gamers found this helpful
“Extended game”

My girlfriend and I don’t discard any treasure cards that haven’t been taken at the end of each round and this extends the game a bit. Though it usually ends up with the player who has the unlimited chests parrot running around with 30 or so chests but that makes it all the more exciting when you do sink them because they’ve been too greedy to unload.

It is also a good idea to limit the amount of tavern cards each player may have else battles revolve around who can roll more 6’s owing to smokescreen.

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5
Intermediate Reviewer
Gamer - Level 3
18 of 22 gamers found this helpful
“Island Selection Strategy”

When choosing which island to move to add the treasure value to the fame value; this will give you an idea of the total number of points available at an island, provided you can hold onto and bury all the treasure.

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3
Reviewed My First Game
Strategist
Subscribed to BG News
20 of 25 gamers found this helpful
“Consort-Counter”

Your ship is bursting at the seams with treasure, ready to deposit at Treasure Island. But no! The blue player fires off a Consort! Dont forget, if you are anchored at Treasure Island, it is your option to bury treasure. If you bury none, the Consort player gets nothing!

You essentially waste a turn this way, but if you have a lot of treasure to bury, this is very effective indeed.

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8
Intermediate Reviewer
Paladin
Tinkerer
Novice Advisor
15 of 20 gamers found this helpful
“Timing of the black ship”

There are two times during the game when the black ship will go to treasure island. Don’t get stuck with a less than battleready ship at round 12 if you have treasure onboard!

Also, try to peek on the other players ships to decide what islands they would prefer to go to, upgrading the ships is more valuable than the treasures to claim. Getting a slightly sorse treasure but the ability to upgrade and NOT fight is often worth it.

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5
Intermediate Reviewer
Gamer - Level 3
14 of 21 gamers found this helpful
“Swap out the ship models.”

Use the ships/models from Pirates of the Spanish Main instead of the included plastic ships. It doesn’t change the game any, but it adds to the theme.

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5
Knight-errant
Gamer - Level 5
Count / Countess
BoardGaming.com Beta 1.0 Tester
13 of 20 gamers found this helpful
“Loser Swabs the Deck”

Just a fun thing to spice up the game and stay in theme. Declare the “loser swabs the deck” rule before the game. The essence is the loser cleans up the game or as my wife insisted on one particular game, cleaned the floor. Has nothing to do with the game play but it does make a panic to not be the ship with the lowest treasure.

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