Hunt for Blackbeard

Fort Circle Games have focused on asymmetric two-player games with a historical theme; their previous titles include Votes for Women and the Barbary-pirate themed Shores of Tripoli. It's a return to piracy with Hunt for Blackbeard; a hidden movement game designed by Volko Ruhnke, with art by Marc Rodrigue, where one player represents the notorious Edward Teach (aka Blackbeard) and the other, hunter, is the Royal Navy and Virginia militia intent on catching the pirate and bringing him to justice. The game is set in 1718 in colonial North Carolina.

Players have their own individual player boards, shielded by screens. Wooden blocks on the central board conceal Blackbeard's ship and camp but most of the blocks are initially blanks with nothing but seagulls on their reverse. The hunter has two ships at sea and a militia on land but their locations are not concealed. The hunter draws tiles that include informants' tip-offs with clues to Blackbeard's locations and Blackbeard draws tiles from two different stacks giving him objectives that he needs to fulfil to win the game, but he has to be at the appropriate location in order to meet an objective. It's the objectives tho' that help to drive the game because Blackbeard must achieve objectives to win. Even if he evades capture for the game's four rounds, he cannot win the game just by avoiding detection.

Tho' it's only the hunter that cannot see what's on the reverse of the wooden blocks, the pirate player doesn't get to see which blocks the hunter peeks at when they take actions to scout areas on land and at sea. That's the one slightly clunky aspect of an otherwise well-designed game because it means the pirate player has to look away at various points during the hunter's turns, and, likewise, the hunter has to close their eyes every time Blackbeard takes a move action and places out blocks that, when searched, indicate where Blackbeard's ship has passed through.

Hunt for Blackbeard isn't merely a pirate version of Scotland Yard (Ravensburger) or the many similar hidden movement/chase games where one player just has to locate the other. If and when the hunter catches up with Blackbeard, that doesn't mean he's beaten. He can use his tiles and resources to bolster the defences of his ship. The hunter too can take actions to upgrade their ships. If and when it comes down to ship-to-ship combat, there's an exciting dice roll-off using standard six-sided dice. The upgrades determine initiative and the effect of certain rolls; you're mostly only doing damage when you roll a 5 or 6 but certain weapon upgrades can give you a hit with a 3 or 4.

Both players need to make choices about what to prioritise, including over how much time and energy to expend over ship upgrades. There's a lot more going on than in most other 'cat and mouse' hidden movement and chase games but the game doesn't have an excessive rules overhead. Tho' it's highly asymmetric, it's well balanced between the two protagonists and it plays remarkably briskly; our plays at Board's Eye View have all come in at around 45–60 minutes. Fort Circle have succeeded once again in bringing history to life.

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