Tiny Epic Pirates Review

Tiny Epic Pirates from Gamelyn Games puts players at the helm of their fleet trying to amass wealth and fame so they can bury their treasure and become the most notorious pirate. You'll randomly set up the map in a 4x4 grid and place your ships and the merchant and navy ships. You'll also randomly place your actions on the rondel so every game is different. When it's your turn, you'll be able to place deck hands on your rondel so you can skip over up to 4 possible actions while gaining some bonuses along the way. There are 6 possible actions to choose from:

1. Plunder - Go to a settlement and collect booty cubes from the bag to add to your ship.

2. Trade - Sell your booty at a matching merchant.

3. Crew Up - Add new members to your crew while potentially overthrowing your captain.

4. Search - Take a token from the map and gain its rewards.

5. Attack - Battle another player or merchant ship to gain infamy and booty.

6. Hide Out - Reset your deckhands.

You'll place your captain on the action you want then move your ship depending on your fame level and deckhands. Then you'll carry out the action and potentially do bonus actions based on your crew members. If you've passed the line before your Hide Out action, you'll then move the merchant ships and the navy ship and then the next player goes. The first player to bury all three of their treasures is the winner. Treasure is buried as a bonus action on your captain when using the search action. You'll pay the cost on the map and place your treasure token.

The Good: I think I say this about every Tiny Epic game but how do they fit all of this in the box? Gamelyn continues to blow me away with how much stuff they put in a small box. I really loved the way the game flows. Every turn you need to decide how far you want to push your captain or decide if it's worth it to hide out and move everything. Especially because the Navy ship will be hunting you down so you don't want to be close to it. Combat is very simple; roll the dice and determine if you hit anything and either compare to the merchant vessels damage card or compare against the other player and deal with the consequences. It's very simple and eloquent.

The Okay: The buildup to bury your treasure I found to take a long time to actually get to. Let alone doing it 3 times. There are only a handful of ways to make money, mainly through trading. However, pulling cubes from a bag when plundering at random means you could pull cheap cubes and need to continually repeat the process. Attacking merchant ships can get you the cubes you need as well but even those could be cheap ones.

The Not So Good: Setup time takes quite a while. You need to set up the map, the merchant, the ships, your player boards, and get all the search tokens out. While it's not a super long time, for a box this size you'd expect it to be a bit quicker. Especially for the first couple of games.

Final Thoughts: Tiny Epic Pirates may be my favorite of the Tiny Epic series. I was genuinely surprised at how much depth was in the game. It's held back a bit by some time issues but the gameplay itself is really enjoyable. Having to decide what's worth it and what isn't worth it for a couple turns is an interesting mechanic. Overall, I would definitely recommend this. It's a really well made game full of choices and player interaction.

Thanks to Gamelyn Games for providing me with a review copy.