While I was at Dragon Con in 2016 I got a chance to see several games published by Mayfair Games. While I had heard of their games (Catan, Agricola, Caverna) and played a few, I had not had a chance to experience so many of them at one time. I discovered some really fun stuff and have grown to appreciate Mayfair even more since then. What was that? “But what about the Booty,” you say? I’m a full grown man, but I’m embarrassed to say I only recently discovered the “Booty.” Booty is a game for 3 to 6 players, designed by Alexander Cobian. It involves negotiation, bluffing, set collecting, and a tiny bit of worker placement, all draped in a pirate theme. In Booty (yes, I’m going to say it as many times as I can) each player is a pirate trying to grab his or her share of the ill-gotten booty previously pilfered from the Caribbean.
Each round a number of cards representing different booty is laid out. Then a player is elected quartermaster. The quartermaster is in charge of arranging the cards into shares. The quartermaster then offers the first share to players in turn order. A player may accept the share, ending his or her participation in the round, or pass on it. If they pass the next player gets a chance to take that portion. If none of the players take the portion offered by the quartermaster, then the quartermaster gets that share of the booty and is out of the round. Then another quartermaster his chosen and play continues just like above until everyone gets a share.
Play continues like this for a number of rounds until all of the booty cards are gone. At the end of the game players count up their victory points and the player with the most wins the game. While the mechanics of the game are rather simple, there is a good bit of strategy involved as certain treasures interact with each other to maximize or hurt their victory point totals. For instance, though a player gets three points for every unique relic in her share of the booty, that player will only score the points for the first one no matter how many of that same relic she has. This makes some of the shares more attractive than others. Additionally, with each share the quartermaster presents, they are required to include an initiative token which determines turn order for the next round. This provides further strategy as you can position yourself not only to have right of first refusal on each share in the next round, but it also puts you in a better position to be the quartermaster in the next round.
My group had a blast playing Booty. There is a solid element of bluffing in the game, as the quartermaster has to make enticing portions that create hard decisions for other players while still reserving some good booty for herself. As a non-quartermaster, do you grab the booty now or wait for better stuff in the next portion? The treasure offered might not be as great as you’d like, but you sure want to be the first player next time, so that token being included with the share makes it significantly more desirable. Most of the treasure earned by players in the game is kept secret, so it does make it a bit more difficult for quartermasters to remember what cards players have already collected. This memory element adds some difficulty to the game, but is not overwhelming and is only important if you really want to win badly enough.
And that was the thing about Booty. I came in last place (the caboose?) and had a ton of fun just participating in the process of the game. Each round gave me an opportunity to position myself in the best possible way so that I could be effective. Even though I was making some terrible choices, those were only in hindsight when we added up victory points at the end. During the game I felt like I was in it the whole time. I don’t like losing, but it doesn’t hurt so much when I have such a great time playing a game, and that’s exactly what Booty provided – a great time.
So do yourself a favor and get on some Booty as soon as you can. Thanks for reading, and keep nerding on.
For this and other booty-licious games, check out www.dicedropgames.com.
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