Up until very recently, my son was obsessed with pirates (we’re talking about nearly a decade-long obsession!). There are quite a few pirate-themed games, so it was easy to find lots. Not only is Piratoons pirate-themed, it’s a fantastic resource-management game.

The biggest downside to Piratoons is that it has a large box, but there is very little wasted space. Two boards (these make up the “treasure chest”), eight pieces for the bows and sterns of ships, twenty-four inner ship pieces, and forty-eight equipment tiles make up the game. There are also six crew pieces per player, 40 “doubloons,” a fifteen-second sand timer, and 32 scoring tokens.

The game takes place over 8 rounds; each round, all players compete for three ship pieces and six equipment pieces. Players use their crew pieces to bid for these pieces. At the beginning of each round, turn the sand timer over and begin placing your crew members on different pieces. You can only use one hand and cannot block other players.

Pieces set up in the “chest”

Once the timer runs out, any player can say “stop.” You can go longer, so it’s not timed. The timer is a minimum amount of time for a plundering round. At the end of this plundering, any crew pieces you didn’t use collect “unemployed sailor pay” and an auction is held for unclaimed ship or equipment pieces.

The same pieces as above, after the “chest” is flipped over and ready for plundering.

To hold the auction, each player secretly places however many of their doubloons as they want to bid in their hand (none is fine, too). Whoever bids the most gets first pick, then second, etc. Ties are canceled out and don’t get any pieces (so they don’t pay). The rest must take and pay for a piece, even if the one they wanted is no longer available.

The first time we played Piratoons, I didn’t read the scoring rules and just tried to create a big ship. Unfortunately, this left me with an empty ship, so my score was not good. Ideally, each player wants to create a ship in which the ship pieces line up and as many places for equipment are filled as possible. Since then, I’ve had very good success by being very selective in which boat pieces I add to my ship and focusing on equipment pieces.

Equipment pieces and word-free scoring guide

While playing Piratoons, players are working on resource management, fine motor control (you need to place pieces carefully and not knock anyone else’s off), bidding and bluffing (hello, social skills!), and quick thinking as you compete with other players for limited resources. At the end of the game, players need to using matching skills to determine points (lost or gained), of course lots of counting, and finally, addition and subtraction.

Overall, if you have the room for the box (which isn’t our largest), definitely snap up Piratoons if you can find it. Since it is competitive, it’s not one we can pull out when emotions are fragile. However, it is a ton of fun and not as cutthroat as other games. For example, there’s no way for another player to mess with what you have already acquired.

Same boat, partially filled with equipment pieces