Stonemaier Games | Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest | Board Game | Ages 14+ | 1-6 Players | 45-60 Minutes Playing Time

Product Information

To set up the game, players first choose the side of the board they want to play – Calm or Stormy – with the difference being different loot abilities. The Stormy side of the game board has more cutthroat loot abilities.

After my first play of Factory Funner (the updated version just barely released by Board Game Tables dot com) It didn’t take me long to be reminded of Calico—the popular puzzly game of quilts and cats from the hotness of 2020. Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is a game of reading your opponents at the table and working out what others might play. With the added spice of varying degrees of take that everyone at the table is invested with a good level of player interaction.After my first two plays, I’m mightily impressed with what Paolo Mori and Stonemaier Games have managed to do with a 10-year-old design. They took a game I was lukewarm about and turned it into one that I love. Not only is The Winds of Galecrest one of the best reimplementations I’ve ever seen, but it might end up being one of my favorite releases of 2022.

You place the Automa tiles at the bottom (the hook and saber have been replaced here, it’s a bit different for the stormy side of the board, where there’s a specific Automa tile for Barrel and Amulet). The reputation tokens are randomly placed with yours and the Automa’s tokens placed in the third and fourth spot. The loot tiles are randomly selected as usual but with three tiles. One is for the Pilferer who is separate to the Automa. Anyway, I’ve been pleased to discover that Winds of Galecrest lives up to its promise in being an evolved and improved version of Libertalia. Not only that, but it is perhaps the most un-Stonemaier-like game in their entire product lineup. Against Stonemaier’s usual tropes and their stated tenets of game design, Winds of Galecrest is inorganically round/phase-based and highly interactive to the point of potential hostility. Indeed, it appears that Jamey Stegmaier is willing to make exceptions to his carefully crafted brand when it involves a favored classic—and thank goodness for that! In both Art Robbery and Cover Your Assets, players each have a hand of cards that dictates what they’ll be able to claim or steal. If I have a coveted 5 card (or gold card) in my hand, I can play that card to steal the 5 (or gold) sitting on display in your possession. With Cover Your Assets, this mechanism feels like a brainless gotcha game of slap-happy take-that. With Art Robbery, this mechanism reveals itself to be far more calculated, clever, and engaging. While the game can play well at low player counts, we think Libertalia shines best at player counts of 5-6. If that weren’t enough variety, throw in the option to play with the Stormy side of the game board – where the loot token powers are ratcheted up a notch. Plus, the game also includes loot tiles that players can use to cover over the loot ability spaces on either side of the board. This means you can mix and match whichever loot powers you want to play with each game! Each loot type has a Calm and Stormy action. Mix and match in a game to create even more variety in how the game plays out.Libertalia Winds of Galecrest expertly updates what was once an exciting pirate game to make it even better. Once a machine is added to a board, it can never be adjusted or relocated. But the thing that really puts the “funner” in Factory Funner comes from the ability to rearrange everything else on your board every single round, and the fact that this flexibility comes with a cost. Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest manages to be a satisfyingly deep game that’s still lightweight. In my experience, the two rarely go hand in hand. But the game puts a lot of potential thought behind the very simple decisions that it asks you to make. But efficiency is the name of the game here. While you’re welcome to remove connectors and reservoirs from your board for free, every time you add a piece to a space, you’ll lose yourself a point. Placing a machine will grant you the amount of points that it displays on the tile, but that might be a bad machine for your board if it costs more new connector and reservoir tiles than it is worth. Fortunately, it feels extra good to connect the matching colored inputs and outputs of different machines because doing so will grant you significant bonus points at the end of the game. If players have to discard one of their characters, they’re placed face down on their graveyard tile.