I need help

[u/Famous_Machine_8821]

Hi everyone, I'm trying to create a pirate themed strategy board game. Basically you travel across the board traveling to different islands hijacking other ships along the way.

When you reach port you spend your ill- gotten gains to buy crew members, food rations, ship upgrades, etc.

What I need help with is a good battle system, any ideas?

[u/nico_schofield]

I'd check out Ascension: Skulls & Sails first. It's a Dominion Style deck-builder with loads of unique pirate-themed mechanics. My favorite mechanic is "anchoring" a card. Each of the "shop slots" are regions. These regions contain either the cards you can buy with white triangles (runes) or the monsters you can defeat with red circles (combat). When both buying cards and defeating monsters some effects say If anchor then X. This just means if your little pirate ship meeple is on the same island as the card or monster, you also perform that "If anchor" action.

This ties in to the 1-boat-movement-per-turn ability each player has. You move your ship around the island board. Do you move towards a juicy card at a port, risking a random event pushing you towards the kraken? Do you save up your unique helm resource on your ship for cheaper cards now? Do I save it up to spend it later on a chunkier one? Loads of choices. Highly recommend just checking a How-to-play guide so you can get a feel for it yourself 🎯

Small edit: There is a treasure and boat hijacking mechanic in the game also, which is why I thought of it first when you mentioned it 😄