Avast ye pirates! Gather your crews and set sail for adventure on the high seas in Rum & Bones: Second Tide!
Based on online MOBA (Multiplayer Online Battle Arena) style games, Rum & Bones has 2-6 players taking control of legendary pirate heroes, each with unique powers and abilities, as their crews fight over Davy Jones' legendary treasure!
Players each control up to five heroes at any time, moving them across the game board in an attempt to destroy various key features on their opponents' ship. Victory is obtained by destroying enough of these features. Your heroes are not alone, however, as your crew also consists of deckhands and bosuns who, while not controlled by the player, will work on a simple AI to wreak havoc on the enemy!
Of course, what would pirates be without plunder? And in Rum & Bones the most sought after treasure are Davy Jones' mythical pieces of eight! Players amass these powerful coins during gameplay to unleash devastating abilities and attacks from their Heroes, crushing all enemies before them until only they remain!
This game is both a stand-alone and compatible as an expansion to Rum & Bones. In Rum & Bones: Second Tide, 2 to 6 players will take control of one of two deadly pirate crews: The mysterious and monstrous Deep Lords, who seek to claim Davy Jones’ treasure in an effort to flood the world and reshape it to their liking, or the Marea de la Muerte¸ a crew of ruthless gold-seeking Spanish cutthroats who will stop at nothing to claim the treasure for their own greed!
Players control teams of three to five heroes, depending on the number of players, each with various and unique powers and abilities. These Heroes are drawn from five different classes, each with their own strengths and weaknesses:
Captains: Jack-of-all-Trade Heroes who specialize in buffing other Heroes.
Brutes: The toughest of the tough, Brutes can take a ton of punishment and only get stronger for doing so!
Gunner: Ranged damage dealers, Gunners have the lowest HP of all classes, but can also dish out the most hurt.
Swashbucklers: Like Gunners, Swashbucklers specialize in dealing damage, but prefer the up-close-and-personal approach.
Quartermaster: While they don't deal the most damage, Quartermasters make up for it in raw utility: specializing in healing and buffing Heroes, and also enhancing your Deckhands and Bosuns!
The most notable change to gameplay is their new "dynamic Leveling System". Now each Hero begins the game with their Basic Attack skill card. As they gain Coins, which are obtained from KO'ing enemies and Objectives, they can use those Coins to buy new skills, as well as level up existing skills! Also, they've introduced a new "Alternating Activation" method of play where players will take turns activating 1 Hero (or their Crew), and then their opponent will do the same, continuing back and forth until everyone has gone.
- Massive content and huge faction/miniature variety across editions
- Strong thematic coherence with tactile, visually impressive components
- Upgrade system maintains momentum and player agency
- Crossover compatibility allows mixing editions and factions
- The game scales well with different crew builds and strategies
- Setup and teardown are time-consuming and can be fiddly
- Component management can be a logistical headache during play and storage
- Pricing is high due to Kickstarter exclusives and collectible components
- Finding the crossover player sheets and accessories can be difficult
- Pirates, sea battles, crew combat, supernatural elements
- Naval pirate battles on the high seas with ship-to-ship boarding, crew management and a looming Kraken threat
- highly thematic, cinematic with evolving factions and upgrade-driven momentum
- Rum & Bones (First Edition)
- Rum & Bones: Second Tide
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Action economy — Each hero has three actions per turn to move, attack, or use cards and abilities
- Crew deployment and boarding — Players deploy crew and bosuns to boarding positions to contest ships and objectives
- Deck management and resource balancing — Key cards and crew resources must be managed to avoid gridlock and maximize actions
- Dice-driven combat — Combat relies on dice rolls to determine hits and outcomes, with various modifiers from upgrades
- Gold economy and VP pacing — Defeating opponents and completing actions yields gold and victory points toward a threshold
- Unleash the Kraken phase — A dedicated phase where the Kraken can be released based on accumulated points/conditions
- Upgrade cards and leveling — Players spend gold to upgrade their captain and crew cards, increasing power across rounds
Video topics + discussion points
Quotes (from this video)
- it's the most successful implementation of a video game system into a ball game that we've played
- the amount of content that this game has produced over the years is enormous
- this is a highly thematic game
- five out of five