Merchants & Marauders

Players begin by selecting a captain and a ship, each with unique stats like seamanship, toughness, cargo capacity, crew size, cannons, and maneuverability. Corresponding tokens for hull, cargo, masts, and crew are placed on the player board to track damage. Special weapons like chain shot and grapeshot, or ship upgrades like hammocks and long guns, can be acquired to enhance combat capabilities.

The primary objective in this player-versus-player combat scenario is to strategically engage and defeat opposing ships. Victory is achieved by destroying the opponent's ship, specifically by depleting its hull points or eliminating its crew during a boarding action.

A combat round starts with a seamanship contest where each player rolls dice equal to their captain's seamanship value, plus any bonuses from ship maneuverability. The player with more successes wins and chooses their action (shoot, board, or flee). In the first round, both combatants must choose to shoot. If the winner chooses to shoot, they fire all their cannons; if the loser also rolled successes, they can fire cannons equal to their successes. If the winner chooses to board, naval combat ends and crew combat begins. If the winner chooses to flee, they escape only if the opponent rolls no successes.

Damage is tracked on the player boards across different ship locations: hull, cargo, masts, crew, and cannons. Each point of damage to cargo removes one cargo card. Destroyed masts reduce seamanship. Destroyed crew prevents boarding actions and leads to automatic loss in crew combat. Destroyed cannons prevent firing. If the hull is destroyed, the ship sinks, and the captain is defeated. Damage from cannon fire is randomly assigned to locations based on a die roll, unless special weapons like grapeshot (targets crew) or chain shot (targets masts) are used to redirect damage.

A captain is defeated if their ship's hull is destroyed, or if their crew is eliminated during a boarding combat. The victorious captain can then plunder the defeated ship. The game continues until a player achieves their overall victory conditions, which typically involve accumulating a certain amount of glory points or gold, often gained through successful combat and plundering.