I reached out to see if this would be available as a replacement part (I know it is not a replacement, so I would certainly understand if I needed to pay for this).

At the end of the game, whoever has accumulated the most money is the best pirate in all of the seven seas.The key to the game is predicting what card your opponents will play while choosing the card that will give you the best short-term or longtime benefit. No, your real opponent is the eponymous Automa who much like yourself will amass a crew, collect doubloons, and generally mess with the best-laid plans of mice and men. The simplicity in the design of Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest belies the depth of strategy inherent in the game.

And yet, despite all players in Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest playing each round with the exact same cards, the games are wildly thought-provoking, simply intelligent, and downright fun. I had a rare opportunity to take this game round to some non-board gaming friends to see how it faired.

When Stonemaier Games announced that Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest, the reimplementation of a game that features a heavy emphasis on player interaction and double-guessing, would feature a solo mode I was more than a little bit sceptical and dare I say even cynical. Ten years since its original release and long since out of print, publisher Stonemaier Games has decided to bring back this old salt from the depths of the sea with an updated version featuring new artwork, components, and most importantly an official solo mode courtesy of the Automa Factory! I have looked around at various places where I thought I might be able to get something that would work here, but so far no luck. I was only playing on the regular difficulty (Automa starts on 0 coins) and I’ve only beat it twice (once sunny, once stormy). I learned from Azul that pulling chunking, colorful bakelite tokens out of the bag is a delightful experience, so that’s exactly the material and size we used for loot tokens in Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest.

Ten years later, we’re celebrating the foundations of the original design with a heavily revised and expanded edition that includes all-new art, 40 characters per player, a reputation system to resolve tiebreakers, premium loot tokens, a robust solo mode, and much more. It’s a very different feel and style to its forebear, and while I think it’s an improvement, your mileage may vary. I can see that we could have been clearer by noting directly in the component list which card number isn’t there. Hutter and Morten Monrad Pedersen at the Automa Factory because spoiler alert: the solo mode that is featured in Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is bloody amazing! You might activate a card that lets you move up the reputation track, remove certain items from the booty space for this turn, or maybe even swap your card out for another.It unfortunately won’t work, because several of Automa’s character cards refer to “you” and there’s no single “you” when there are two humans. These double-sided tiles allow players to change the set-up in an infinite number of configurations!