Pirate Box

Game 49 of the “Bailey Family Summer 2023 Board Game Bonanza” is “Pirate Box,” played by Jack (.8.), Toby (5), and myself.

You know that game that you have probably played with your children at some point, where you put a variety of items on a baking tray and then cover it with a tea towel. Then, you take the tea towel off, and they look at the hairbrush, random figurine, slipper, glue stick, banana, and 50-pence piece that you have placed on said baking tray. After that, you cover it back up with a tea towel, and they have to try to remember what all those objects were. That’s basically what this game is, but a bit more gamified.

The game starts with shaking all the dice and letting them settle into a 4×4 grid. Now, I’m just going to address this from the beginning and say that this doesn’t work. In the manual, it suggests that if the dice do not quite fall into place, a few gentle shakes should fix it. We played three games of this, meaning I would have shaken these dice nine times (including the practice rounds I had), and not once did I manage to actually get all 16 dice to sit in a 4×4 grid without me reaching my fingers in, lifting the lid a bit, and kind of nudging them into place.

Anyway, ignoring that, you then have 30 seconds to look and remember what is on all of the dice faces and where they are. After those 30 seconds, you each, one by one starting with the first player, which rotates each turn, place your pirate markers on the grid next to the box to denote which dice you want to take. At the end of the round, you collect points based on various scoring rules.

A coin is worth one point, a gem is worth one point, but a pair of a coin and a gem is worth three points. Beer bottles are worth two points, but every subsequent beer bottle deducts one point, even going into negative points. Coins are always worth one point. Swords score zero points for one, but ramp up quickly, scoring two points for two swords and four points for three swords. Masks also score handsomely, but they award negative points if you only have one of them, making taking a mask quite risky unless there are many.

Putting aside the fact that the box tray just doesn’t work, the component quality is good. The box has a cool treasure chest design, even if it commits the cardinal sin of not having the box’s logo on the side. The dice are of good quality, and the tokens and board are on reasonable cardstock.

Toby was really good at this and ended up winning the game. Interestingly, this was actually one of the first games we’ve played where, in terms of the playing field, I was probably the weakest of all three of us, and I genuinely performed worse across all three games than the boys did.

The drafting mechanic works well, and the risk-reward aspect of the scoring also works. I don’t really feel that I need to recommend this; you will already know if your kids are going to like this or not. But if this is their sort of thing, I’d give it a try.

Currently as of posting on Clearance at Zatu for £11.99