Captain your ship and gather your crew of skeletal minions to conquer the high seas. Trade, invest, gamble, or attack other vessels. Board them or blast away with your cannons. Visit bustling Port Skull, a mystic fortuneteller, Asylum Harbor, the trading post, and resource rich islands.

Salvage more crewmembers in the bone yards. Pursue any one of an array of different viable routes to victory, gathering more gold than other players. Are you a pirate at heart, an explorer, a rumrunner, a trader, an investor, a master of deception, a gifted negotiator, or something else?

With a fast playtime, deep strategy, charming art, resource management, and loads of fun, Skeleton Crew will earn a permanent place in your collection of beautifully themed European-style board games.

Skeleton Crew’s playful theme belies a deeply strategic planning game of careful resource management. Each player commands a vessel on the Skeletal Sea, which the players form at the start of the game, ensuring every play is different. Key locations offer chances to trade, gather new resources, repair ships, seek safety, and even gain magical fortunes that can help players falling behind catch up for the victory.

The goal is to collect the most gold, but strategies can be very different. A player need not focus on combat, could try to explore or trade exclusively, and just carry enough cannons to defend her cargo. Islands can be claimed, and there are several ways to gather resources for exchange.

The genius and balance of the game comes in the strict limit on each player’s ship capacity. Only 16 resources can be held in the hull, so a player focusing on combat may have little room for storing the plunders from the seas, and be forced to abandon some, or push a cannon overboard to keep another chest of gold, making him more vulnerable on his trip back to Port Skull to store those ill gotten gains.

Players have a warehouse and agent back at Port Skull, and can even acquire a second warehouse during the course of the game, so there are places to safely hide goods, but a player has to get there, first . . .

Resources include cargo of (1) animals, (2) vegetables, (3) rum, and (4) gold, and ship enhancements of (a) sails, (b) lumber, (c) cannons, and (d) skeleton crewmembers. Of course, skeletons have no use for animals, vegetables, or even rum, so those are just gathered to trade off for what they really want: chests full of glittering gold!

Ships that meet at sea have an opportunity to trade or even gamble together, if both players choose to come in peace, but they could also fire on the other’s broadside or attempt to board and raid that player’s ship! The action is nonstop and intense in Skeleton Crew.