El Capitan
El Capitan Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
- 72 Pirate cards (12 cards in each of 6 colours)
- 27 Captain cards (back side reads "El Capitan")
- 6 Ship tokens
- 1 First card, 1 Second card and 1 Last card
- 130 gold coins
- 1 chest
- 1 hourglass (1 minute)
- These rules
Game Idea
The old captain has decided to retire. But before he hands over his treasure and his ship, he wants to test the memory and speed of his pirates.
Goal of the Game
Each player has, face up in front of them, the same series of Pirate cards. Each card shows a picture: players must memorise where each picture is, then these cards are turned face down. On their turn, a player reveals a card from the draw pile showing one of the pictures. Each player must then remember where the revealed picture is among their own cards, quickly place their Ship token on it, and place their hand on the draw pile. After checking the answers, the gold coins are shared among the fastest players. At the end of the game, the richest player wins and becomes captain!
Setup
Each player takes 1 gold coin, a set of 12 Pirate cards of one colour, and the Ship token of the matching colour.
Set aside the 3 Captain cards Spyglass (Longue vue), Black Flag (Pavillon noir) and Storm (Tempête). Randomly take 13 other Captain cards and shuffle them together with the special cards Spyglass, Black Flag and Storm to form a draw pile of 16 cards. Any surplus Captain cards are removed from the game.
Each player shuffles their cards, then lays them out in front of them, face up, to form a rectangle of 4 cards by 3 (see fig. 1). It is important to place the cards in the order in which they come, without changing their positions. Then turn the hourglass over: each player then has one minute to memorise the position of their cards. When the hourglass has run out, players turn their cards face down.
Playing the Game
The oldest player begins. They quickly turn over the first card of the draw pile, so that everyone sees it at the same time. All players, including the one who turned over the card, must then place their Ship token on the one of their cards that they think matches the card just turned over. Once a player has placed their Ship, they tap the draw pile and leave their hand on it.
Warning: all players are required to place their Ship on one of their cards and to place their hand on the draw pile.
When everyone has played, the First card is given to the player who tapped the draw pile first, the Second card to the second, and finally the Last card to the slowest player. The other players do not receive a card.
Then the answers are checked: every player turns over the card on which they placed their Ship, and for each player this card is compared with the card from the draw pile.
- If the two pictures do not match, each player who was wrong must return 1 gold coin from their loot, if they have any.
- If the two pictures match, each player receives a share of the captain's treasure, or not, depending on their ranking (see fig. 2):
- the player with the First card receives 3 gold coins;
- the player with the Second card receives 2 gold coins;
- all the others receive 1 gold coin;
- the player with the Last card receives none.
Once the gains or penalties have been awarded, the First, Second and Last cards are put back into play. Players turn their cards face down again, and the turn passes to the player on the left of the previous player: they turn over a card from the draw pile and a new turn begins.
Two-player game: in a two-player game, the faster player, if they made no mistake, receives 2 coins and the other player receives none. If the faster player was wrong, they must return 1 coin from their loot.
Special Cards
When the Storm card (Tempête) is turned over, each player takes back their cards, shuffles them and places them back face up. The hourglass is turned over: each player has one minute to memorise the new position of their cards. Then play continues normally.
When the Spyglass card (Longue vue) is turned over, each player may turn over one of their cards to check its picture, then turn it face down again.
The player who turns over the Black Flag card (Pavillon noir) may swap two cards in the layout of an opponent of their choice.
End of the Game
The game ends when all the cards in the draw pile have been turned over. Players count their coins: the player with the most coins is the winner.
Variant for Cabin Boys
For younger players, the difficulty can be reduced by playing with fewer cards. In this case, the players together choose the same number of cards (at least 3) with the common illustrations. They then take these same cards from the Captain cards and shuffle them together with the Storm, Black Flag and Spyglass cards to form the draw pile. All surplus cards are set aside and removed from the game.
Variant for Reckless Pirates
For players who have already played a few games, the following rule may be added to make the game more challenging.
If, at the start of a turn, a player turns over a picture that has already been revealed in a previous turn, then the player who first calls out "Boarding!" (À l'abordage !) receives 1 gold coin from each of their opponents (if they have any). Then play continues normally.
Example: in a previous turn, the players had to find the parrot picture. Tom begins a new turn and turns over the first card of the draw pile. This card again shows a parrot. Julie calls out "Boarding!" and receives one gold coin from each player.
Warning: if a player calls out "Boarding!" by mistake, they must put one of their gold coins back into the chest.