We carry on our examination of gameplay in Hunt for Blackbeard where our previous article left off. We had surveyed the state of each player’s hidden area at a moment of play within the third of four possible turns. Now we look at the action on the shared main map board—especially, combat. Like the career of an 18^th-Century pirate, the Hunt for Blackbeard can ever come to a sudden end. Below we again seek to recreate the actual circumstances of Blackbeard’s final stand, 300 years ago. (All art and rules are playtest only, not final.)

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The Main Map

On the table to the side of the players’ screened mats is spread an 11×17-inch gameboard, a Map that reproduces in larger size the geography of the Charts on which each player is logging hidden movements and other information. Twenty-four square spaces on the Map bear facedown blue markers (other, round-cornered spaces represent off-map areas that the Hunters may enter but Blackbeard may not).

Most of the game, the Hunters will see only the identical blue backs of these markers. On their front sides, most markers are blank, indicating no trace of Blackbeard there. But the Blackbeard player keeps the Map updated with a few blue markers that mimic the situation on Blackbeard’s hidden Chart: the fixed location of Blackbeard’s pirate Camp; the current location of Blackbeard’s main means of moving about the colony, his sloop Adventure; and pirate Flags representing local sightings of Blackbeard as he sailed by, in effect the sloop’s information wake.

We see in our first illustration that Blackbeard last Sailed from his Camp at Ocracoke Island in the southeast across West Pamlico Sound to the colonial capital at Bath Town. Facedown blue Camp, Flag, and Sloop markers in these three spaces, respectively, record that information where the Hunters might find it.

Recall that Hunter C^apt Ellis Brand in the previous turn had just reached the ville of Queen’s Anne Creek in the northwest of North Carolina. The Hunters player at that time placed the Brand piece (the actual game piece would be navy blue) onto the main Map at that space, alerting the Blackbeard player to the Hunter’s approach. Brand represents a force of 100-200 men on horseback, led by Royal Navy officers out of Virginia.

After ending his March to Queen Anne’s last turn, Brand automatically got to openly Spot the marker in his space. That is, the Hunters player flipped the shared Map’s blue marker at Queen Anne’s Creek face up. The Hunters player then knew that Blackbeard was not in the Town of Queen Anne’s Creek—and Blackbeard player knew that the Hunters knew that.

C^apt Brand after arrival in Queen Anne’s Creek had the opportunity to send out scouts within his vicinity. He Scouted the adjacent water space of Albemarle Sound—flipping the blue Map marker there face up as well—and thereby determining that Blackbeard was not there, nor had he Sailed through there that turn.

These sorts of flashy expeditions by the Royal Navy, accompanied by essentially hostile military forces from the neighboring colony of Virginia, do not go unnoticed by the locals. And North Carolina is for the most part friendly territory for the pirates. Any such Marching and Scouting about shows up on the shared map-board in Hunt for Blackbeard because Blackbeard is getting word of the Hunters’ activities from his friends.

But the Navy and the Virginians also have friends! Informants can enable the Hunters secretly to Spot information on the Map, albeit in a somewhat less timely way than local reconnaissance by forces on the scene such as Brand’s. The Hunters player may dedicate effort via action pawns to Interview Informants that have come their way. Each such pawn allows the Hunters player to peek underneath a blue Map marker and replace it there face down again, all while the Blackbeard player has been asked to look away. The Hunters play then may, as might be helpful, record on the hidden Hunters Chart whatever was or was not discovered on the larger Map, using corresponding markers at the ready behind the Hunters’ screen.

Recall from the “Peek at Play” article that the Hunters through astute (or fortunate) use of their Informants already know that Blackbeard has his Camp on Ocracoke. They even know that he just Sailed to Bath and at the moment has Adventure docked or anchored there. But in this case, Blackbeard does not know they know that!

Blackbeard’s Actions 

In the earlier article, we posed the quandary of whether the Blackbeard player should now (on Blackbeard’s Action phase of Turn 3) remain in Bath Town to complete a critical visit there with his friend and possible accomplice G^ovr Eden despite the looming threat from C^apt Brand; or whether he should instead give up on the remainder of that agenda and Sail back to the comparative safety of his hopefully still secret Camp.

Let us suppose that Blackbeard sets the safer course and returns to the Ocracoke Camp, betting on being able to Careen his Sloop there on the following turn to fulfill enough Acts of Piracy to win. Sailing there requires two of his four action pawns. (He has one less than the usual five pawns because his crew is unhappily low on rum). That leaves him two pawns this phase to Prepare Defenses should the Hunters’ own Sloops appear. (His Camp is on an island, so at least he need not fear Brand’s overland force there!) The Blackbeard player expends the pawns to add Swivel Guns and Grapeshot tiles to Blackbeard’s mat (the Swivel Guns also cost one cube from Blackbeard’s Purse), so that Prepared Defenses appear as shown here. These Defenses will augment Blackbeard’s skilled gunner Philip Morton, already prepared to fend off any naval pests.

To Sail and then Set the Map, the Blackbeard player on the player’s hidden Chart first places the pawns needed for the move (as an easy way to ensure that only the allowed number of actions are taken), clears the Flag marker from last turn, shifts the Chart’s Sloop marker to Ocracoke, and places a new Flag in the transit space involved, again at West Pamlico Sound. Then, requesting the Hunters’ player briefly to close eyes or look elsewhere, the Blackbeard flips all blue markers on the main Map face down and adjusts them all to reproduce the scene on Blackbeard’s Chart. For Sloop Adventure while at Camp, there is a single blue marker showing both Adventure and Camp, so that that situation is recorded with an inverted marker there no different in appearance from that at any other Map space.

Have a look at the Map below showing this movement by Blackbeard in his Sloop, and the blue markers at Bath Town, West Pamlico, and Ocracoke Island corresponding to it. The Hunters at this point would not see any of these markers face up, only their plain blue backs. Let us turn to the Hunter forces’ movement that we see on the Map and find out how these actions came to occur….

The Hunters’ Actions

The Hunters know not only of the Ocracoke Camp and that Adventure lies at Bath. They also had word of Blackbeard’s Piracy off Hatteras on an earlier turn (because filling that Act of Piracy tile required the Blackbeard player to flip up a blue marker at Hatteras). They know that Blackbeard has Sailed back and forth, including from Camp to Bath, and suspect that he is intending more Acts of Piracy at sea rather than just living it up with a Pirate’s Life in town or at camp. Regardless, they would be foolish to bet on Adventure remaining at Bath—and equally foolish not to move on the possibility that she will.

To cover both possibilities as well as able, a pincer is called for. Recall the Sloops Jane and Ranger are already partially equipped with Commandeered Assets and waiting at Cape Henry, Virginia, in the north center. From there, the next move (for a single pawn) takes them to any Ocean space on the map, that is, any dark-blue-edged square along the east or south of the board. Moving to Ocracoke Inlet, for example, they can reach the island Camp for just one more action pawn.

The Hunters therefore have it well within their power to strike at both Bath Town with Brand (for two pawns) and Ocracoke with Jane and Ranger (for another two). This is one benefit of having an early success with a key Informant (it was Blackbeard’s former quartermaster W^m Howard, you may remember, currently an accused prisoner in gaol at Williamsburg).

The Hunters would love to use their remaining three pawns to Commandeer further Assets. But alas that is in the main not possible once the expeditions are under way. Instead they will reserve their actions for Scouting after Sailing and Marching. Afterall, there is no guarantee ahead of sending forces there that Blackbeard will have remained either at Bath or showed up at his Camp! The Hunters player is trying to reason out and anticipate what the Blackbeard player is up to.

The Hunters player places pawns and, if desired, positions corresponding force markers on the hidden Hunters Chart, committing thereby to the planned strike. On the Map, the player places and moves pieces showing the advance and destinations of Brand, Jane, and Ranger, as shown by red arrows and red, white, and blue pieces in the illustration above. After the movement, the player flips up the marker at Bath, where Brand ended, and the marker at Ocracoke Island, where the two Sloops arrived.

Bath is clear of pirates, but the marker at Ocracoke shows that the Hunters have indeed caught Blackbeard in Camp—and they have done so with both their Navy Sloops together in support of one another. A player places the black Adventure Sloop piece at the space with Jane and Ranger, so that the Battle of Ocracoke may commence!

Combat

Battles in Hunt for Blackbeard are short and sharp—we’re not engaging the Spanish Armada here, after all! Outcomes will depend on what firepower each side brought along, how eager they may be to risk the fight, and of course a dash of fortune.

Combat between Sloops follows this sequence: Firing, Escape, Boarding. If one or the other side Escapes the fight, then its pieces move to an adjacent space and Combat ends without Boarding. But if there is a Boarding fight, its outcome will determine the outcome of the hunt: whichever side succeeds in seizing the enemy’s vessel by Boarding immediately wins the game.

Here we will see Blackbeard’s lone Sloop take on both Royal Navy ships together. Blackbeard does have an advantage, though, in that his pirate ship starts out well armed—Adventure had 8 to 10 main cannon, for example, manned by Blackbeard’s hand-picked and hard-bitten core of successful buccaneers.

Virginia and the Navy, in contrast, had had to hire civilian merchant sloops, as their two warships on station in the Chesapeake (frigates HMS Lyme and Pearl) probably were too deep of draft to pass over the shoals among which the pirates might be hiding, or perhaps were feared too slow to catch a lighter pirate sloop. The Navy assigned a lieutenant and a midshipman to command Jane and Ranger, respectively, but the seamen included the ships’ erstwhile civilian crews, probably because many of the naval men available had joined Brand’s horseback posse. Lastly, the hired trader sloops historically sailed into battle against the notorious pirate with no cannon at all, just muskets and other small arms!

So, in the game, each Hunter piece starts all Combat with just a single die, while Blackbeard’s Adventure starts with two dice. Then Defense tiles for Blackbeard and Asset tiles for the Hunters add to that. We have already looked above at what Blackbeard has Prepared as a reception for the Hunters. Let’s refresh our memory on what the Hunters for their part have Commandeered for their Sloops….

A glance at the Hunters’ mat behind the player’s screen shows four tiles that will matter now. The red ones affect only Jane, the white only Ranger, and the pink both. Each of them adds a die for a certain part of the Combat, and Robert Maynard—the daring first Lieutenant skippering Jane—provides the choice of when to add the die that he provides. Naturally, the Blackbeard player is as of yet aware of none of this, nor is the Hunters player aware of what Blackbeard has at the ready….

Firing

Combat between Sloops begins with an exchange of fire, with which the combatants will seek to advantage themselves for either an Escape or Boarding. Look once more at Blackbeard’s gray Prepared Defense tiles, shown further above in this article. With Philip Morton, Swivel Guns, and Grapeshot, the Blackbeard player has emphasized cannon fire, and particularly Firing to go after Hunter deck crews and thereby improve the odds such the confrontation come to a Boarding action:

• The opposing Sloops typically Fire at the same time; but with master gunner Philip Morton, Adventure will fire first, and any hits will reduce the Hunters’ return fire.
• Swivel Guns will amplify that edge by adding a die when Adventure Fires, increasing her total from two dice to three.
• Grapeshot (perhaps in the pirates’ case just whatever scraps of metal were suitable rather than pre-made military shot) will make Adventure’s broadsides particularly deadly against the Hunters’ crewmen, the main impact of that being to make the Navy’s ships easier to overcome and seize by boarding them with pistol and cutlass.

Firing in the game is a single exchange of dice rolls, as shown here. Rolls of 5 or 6 Hit Crew or Rigging, respectively; rolls of 3 or 4 do so only if the Firer has specialized shot; and any other roll is a miss.

A given target may take at most one Rigging and one Crew Hit. Each Hit will then cost that target one die either in an Escape attempt (if Rigging) or in Boarding (if Crew).

At the outset of the Firing step, our Blackbeard player declares the three Prepared Defenses that will modify it and sets them out near the game board for both players’ reference. Philip Morton grants Blackbeard the first shot; the player rolls two dice for Sloop Adventure and a third die for Swivel Guns. Let us suppose that the Blackbeard players rolls a “2”, a “5”, and a “3”, as shown by the black dice here. A “2” is always a miss, while a “5” is a natural Hit to Crew and a “3” Hits Crew if Firing Grapeshot. The Blackbeard player has rolled two Hits and is able to apply both of them, one Crew Hit each to Hunter Sloops Ranger (red) and Jane (white).

Now the Hunters will return fire. Unfortunately for them, the two Hits that Philip Morton achieved deprive them of two Firing dice. Each Hunter Sloop only contributes one die, so that would be no Firing at all! However, the Hunters player declares and displays L^ieut Maynard. Maynard once per turn may add one die to any one part of Combat involving Jane, provided that the additional die does not increase total Hunter dice for that step beyond three.

The Hunters’ Fire is two dice, minus two for Philip Morton, plus one for L^ieut Maynard, equals one die. No special cannon shot is available (nor cannon, for that matter!), so only a 5 or 6 will Hit. In the event, the Hunters are lucky and roll a “6” (pictured in red), a Hit to Sloop Adventure’s Rigging! (In the 1718 battle, musketry from Jane severed Adventure’s jib sheet, hindering the pirate ship’s movement.)

Escape

That Rigging Hit will now come into play as the combatants determine which of them will have the option either to Escape the fight or to press a decisive Boarding action. Hunt for Blackbeard resolves Escape attempts as well as Boarding and Arrest (by Brand if he catches Blackbeard and his Sloop in port) by rolling dice and comparing the single highest roll on each side.

Escape rolls are simultaneous. Blackbeard has no Defenses to bring to bear on Escape, but the Hunters do. The Hunters player declares and reveals Master W^m Butler, a local pilot hired to help the Navy navigate the Outer Banks’ tricky passages and shoals and thereby hope to avoid running aground when engaging and chasing the pirates. (In the midst of the real 1718 Ocracoke battle, both sides appear at times to have run aground. The same happened during another Carolina pirate battle several weeks before—Blackbeard’s ex-ally Stede Bonnet’s failed attempt to escape pirate hunters from Charles Town in the Battle of Cape Fear River.)

Master W^m Butler will add a third die to the Hunters’ Escape roll, while Maynard’s lucky Rigging Hit will subtract Blackbeard’s second die. Despite the pirate’s broadside, then, the Hunters are rolling three dice to Blackbeard’s one. Let’s say the dice rolls are as pictured here. Blackbeard and the Hunters each have a high roll of “3”.

Hunt for Blackbeard resolves such ties in the following way. At any point in the game when no Escape has yet occurred, the Hunters receive the advantage of Surprise. Blackbeard historically either did not know—or at least could not be certain—that the Virginians were hunting him. In the game, before any Escape, the Hunters win ties on Arrest, Escape, and Boarding rolls. Should Combat occur and either side achieve and opt for an Escape, Blackbeard is henceforth Warned and wins all such ties for the remainder of the game.

Thus, the Hunters with a tie have won the Escape roll. It is they who have the option either to Escape or not. Why would they ever want to Escape? They’re hunting Blackbeard, aren’t they? Indeed. But recall that losing when Boarding means losing the game; they may choose not to risk that:

• The Hunters won’t always have both Sloops together when engaging Adventure—often Jane and Ranger are scouring different parts of the map in search of the pirate. And Blackbeard may well have Defenses ready to give him the advantage in Boarding.
• The Hunters may decide to seek merely to block Blackbeard from his Piracy victory conditions, and it is the pirate who desperately needs the decision by close action.
• And perhaps, as in our example, the results of Firing have so mauled the Hunters—here they will be down by two Boarding dice—that a chance to recover and try Combat again on the following turn may be the attractive course.

Just for discussion, suppose for a moment that Blackbeard had won the Escape roll. Would not the Blackbeard player opt for Escape, especially with the advantage gained of winning ties in all later Combat? Probably, but the Blackbeard player may well instead press the attack. The decision would rest in large part on what Blackbeard’s Piracy prospects were, as shown on the Piracy display of the player’s mat (that, of course, hidden from the Hunters).

Refreshing our memories of Blackbeard’s strategic situation beyond the desperate clash now underway off Ocracoke, here is what the player would see on Blackbeard’s mat. Noting that, in the end, either the upper or the lower row of Piracy tiles must receive cubes greater in number than the sum of gold boxes on the tiles there, prospects at this point do not look good. The player has four cubes among nine boxes on the Act of Piracy row and none on Pirate’s Life. Blackbeard is at his Camp where Careen Sloop might be filled, but no pawns are assigned to that tile (because Adventure just Sailed there and so cannot Careen). And regardless, the Hunters have discovered and arrived at the Camp—any Escape in Adventure would be away from Camp, so the Sloop is simply not to be Careened with just one turn left in the game.

The Piracy alternative of switching to the Pirate’s Life row this late would leave only one turn (and with only four pawns at that, because of Buy Rum), to place at least six cubes, so that’s out.

Blackbeard’s Act of Piracy possibility would be to hope for a relatively easy 4^th Act of Piracy tile next turn (two gold boxes instead of three or four) and then stabbing at either finishing up Divvy with Eden or whatever the new tile is. There are several Act of Piracy tiles with only two boxes, and they can be filled away from Camp—they involve seizing prizes at sea similar to the Cape Hatteras tile show at box 1.

But with Adventure’s Fire having been so effective against the Hunter Crews, a clean Boarding victory would be a hard temptation to resist. Historically, Blackbeard boarded Jane, not the other way around, and it seems unclear whether he was unable or dissuaded from the attempt to escape because of his cut jib.

Returning to our example, Blackbeard does not have the option anyway. The Hunters won the Escape roll and, in this case, decide to press the fight: there will be no Escape. The Hunters player does not have a good fix on how well or poorly Blackbeard’s Piracy has fared. But the earlier observed Piracy off Hatteras suggests that Blackbeard is set on Acts of Piracy rather than on a Pirate’s Life. That actually makes the discovery of his Camp less relevant to Blackbeard’s objectives, the Hunters might reason, since not that many Acts of Piracy are likely to occur there as opposed to out on the ocean. (Fewer Act of Piracy tiles can be filled from Camp than Pirate’s Life tiles. The Hunters do not know that Blackbeard drew Careen Sloop.)

Boarding it is! Blackbeard’s Sloop Adventure will roll its base two dice: neither any of Blackbeard’s Defenses nor the Rigging Hit on the Sloop affect Boarding. The Hunters start with a combined two dice for their two Sloops; they lose both those dice for the Crew Hit on each of them. But now the Hunters player reveals Commandeered Extra Hands, one tile each for Jane and Ranger. Despite the Crew Hits, the Hunters will roll just as many dice as Blackbeard! And because there has been no Escape, they retain their advantage of Surprise and will win any tie.

(In the real Battle, Maynard kept his fighting men mostly below deck, where they were safer from Adventure’s guns. As Blackbeard boarded, Maynard ordered his men up to overwhelm the smaller pirate boarding party.)

Having weighed the risks, the Hunters have determined that the game will end now, on this roll. In our example, the players roll the results shown here. The Hunters’ roll of a “6” on one of their two dice (in red) ends it: even a “6” from Blackbeard would lose to the Hunters’ Surprise advantage.

The Hunters’ early intelligence coup of discovering the Ocracoke Camp via the Informant Wm Howard set them on course for a swift and accurate strike that, in the event, ended Blackbeard’s reign. The great pirate is dead and his surviving crew on their way to Williamsburg gaol cells and thence, for most of them, a gibbet.

Between players who know the game, this three-turn session would have lasted about a half-hour—plus the likely removal of screens and inevitable post-game tales of woe! We hope that you enjoyed the action and will give pirate hunting a try for yourself.

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Hunt for Blackbeard: A Peek at Play