A Gilliam-esque pirate time romp!
CHRONO CORSAIRS
Designer: John Brieger, Vincent Hirtzel | Publisher: Tasty Minstrel Games
If I had to be trapped in a time vortex I could think of worse places to be than a tropical island. Fortunately that’s where Chrono Corsairs’ rival bands of pirates find themselves in this latest release from Tasty Minstrel Games. On the downside, the island of Ouroboros does have the slight problem of being cursed, forcing these shipwrecked souls to tackle its many dangers on repeat for the foreseeable future.
That is the exciting premise of Chrono Corsairs; a twisted mash up of Time Bandits and Groundhog Day spilled out across a colourful modular board. At its heart, Chrono Corsairs is an area control game. Players will spend turns attempting to amass groups of pirates within the island’s several regions, with treasures being rewarded to whoever holds the majority. Treasure largely consists of doubloons and time gems – a mysterious resource that presumably holds the key to escape – with the latter being sought for end game scoring. Along the way, traps will be sprung, and game changing artefacts will be unearthed, giving players more options for traversing the island and ambushing their opponents.
Unsurprisingly, each day starts the same. An anomaly card will detail any particular rules changes for that day, with variations dependant on how far the game has progressed. From here players will refer to the action queue on their ship boards and perform each step in turn. Initially everyone’s actions are identical and predictable, but each round players will be able to play plan cards on top of any action in their queue. These plans offer alternative movement or ambush options, permanently allowing pirates to cover more ground, split up, and access areas of the board much faster than the original action queue dictates. This programmable action queue mechanic offers a lot of options and is a joy to see unfold – at least when it goes to plan – but can often lead to moments of analysis paralysis as you agonise over the order and consequences of your actions. Thankfully, as the game progresses and your goals become clearer, gameplay speeds up comfortably and with an element of tension.
At the dawn of each round, the pirates will find themselves thrust back to the harbour and stripped of any of their remaining doubloons, leaving only their gained knowledge and precious time gems. Doubloons are spent between rounds on more crew, Plan cards, or altering the order of their action queues, giving players some flexibility and customisation when it comes to executing their strategies. Some players might rush to employ as many crew as possible to increase their chances of winning majorities, whilst others may opt for honing their action queue with Stable and Unstable Plan cards (which accelerate the game’s time track).
Whilst higher player counts will likely entail more back and forth interaction, two player games are just as enjoyable. Having just one opponent to plan around makes the tactical thinking needed to succeed at the game that much more attainable. Furthermore, less players means less pirates crowding icons and other information on the arguably pretty small board and region tiles. Aside from this issue of space, the components are of a generally good quality, with nice pirate meeples and suitably thematic illustrations on the various cards. There are a couple of spelling mistakes on both the cards and rulebook but nothing that breaks the game or makes it difficult to learn or teach.
Overall Chrono Corsairs stands out as an interesting stab at Euro-tinged area control. Despite a few aesthetic bumps, the game’s engaging and innovative mechanics succeed at sucking players into its intriguing theme, before spitting them out to do it all over again.
CHAD WILKINSON
WE SAY
Chrono Corsairs handles its furious time storm quite elegantly. Gradually uncovering the island’s mysteries and exploiting your action queue to greedily revisit its treasures day after day feels rewarding, and curiously enough, not repetitive.
WHATS IN THE BOX
◗ 1 game board
◗ 13 island tiles
◗ 5 Ship mats
◗ 10 Plan cubes
◗ 10 Officer meeples
◗ 55 Crew meeples
◗ 28 Event tokens
◗ 5 flag markers
◗ 1 Time marker
◗ 65 Doubloons
◗ 88 Time Gem tokens
◗ 1 Heart of the Vortex token
◗ 1 Storm Stability marker
◗ 9 Anomaly cards
◗ 19 Unstable Plan cards
◗ 30 Stable Plan cards
◗ 35 Artefact cards
TRY THIS IF YOU LIKED LA ISLA…
Stefan Feld’s classic animal set collection game shares a similar action queue mechanism in a similar locale, but if you fancy something trickier and with more competitive bite, Chrono Corsairs is a great alternative.