Raiders of the Cariddean Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Goal of the Game
• How to Win
• Components
• Setup
• What Are the Goods Cards?
• How to Play
  • 1. Raid a Good
  • 2. Raid Several Goods
  • Placing Goods
  • Restoring the Convoy
• Scoundrel Actions
• Threat Cards
• End of the Game and Counting Prestige
• Solo Mode

Goal of the Game

Players are Raiders of the Cariddi, competing with other rogues of their rank to plunder different kinds of Goods from a merchant Convoy, aiming to accumulate as many as possible and so earn the coveted Prestige Points.

How to Win

Let's start from the end, since we like to explain games that way. To pull off the Big Score you must total more Prestige Points at the end of the game. Prestige Points are earned through Majorities and Ships.

Majorities (calculated for each Good)

• The player with the most cards of a Good scores 7 Prestige Points.
• The player in second place for that Good scores 1 Prestige Point for each card.

Whoever comes after that gets shame and jeers.

Ships

• A player with Ship cards in their personal area scores 2 Prestige Points for each Ship card.

Example: Maurizio has 5 Cutlasses, Francesco 4 and TinuZ only 3. Maurizio scores 7 Points, Francesco 4 and TinuZ shame and jeers. This Majority calculation is made for all Goods. However, TinuZ has 4 Ship cards in their personal area, and with those will add 8 points to their total!

Now that you understand how to get the Big Score Hat, know that further Prestige Points can be grabbed with the Expansions (have you bought them?). And now let's arm ourselves... and set sail! Hiiiiyaa!

Components

• 69 cards, as follows:
  • 1 cover card (First Player).
  • 60 Ship cards. The front shows Goods, as follows:
    • Luxury Goods: 8 Gemstones and 8 Silverware.
    • Special Goods: 10 Fine Fabrics and 10 Rum Barrels.
    • Common Goods: 12 Pistols and 12 Cutlasses.
  • 3 Threat cards: the Corsairs, the Ghost Ship and the Kraken.
  • 5 Doubloon chest cards, with brief rules.
• 1 Scoundrel Actions board.
• 21 Doubloon tokens.
• 1 Logbook, i.e. this Rulebook!

Setup

1. Shuffle the 60 Ship cards (without peeking, you scurvy buccaneers) and place them on the table with the Ship side visible. This is the Ship deck.

2. Draw the first 5 cards from the Ship deck and reveal them on their Goods side, laying them in a row in the centre of the table. These are the Goods available in the Convoy line.

3. Shuffle the 3 Threat cards (recognisable by the presence of a Spyglass on the Ship side). Draw one at random and place it beside the Ship deck (it may be peeked at later). Then insert the remaining two into the Ship deck as follows: one as the seventh card from the bottom, and one about halfway through the remaining cards. This re-forms a complete Ship deck with 2 Threats.

   Diagram labels: "Threat card placed beside", "Seventh from last", "About halfway".

4. Give 1 Doubloon to each Player as their starting resource. The others form the common supply.

5. The first player to obtain two consecutive skulls when tossing a Doubloon takes the role of "First Player".

What Are the Goods Cards?

Goods cards show the following elements:

• Good. This is the loot you are plundering.

  Note: Luxury Goods are less common than Special Goods, which are in turn less common than Common Goods.

• Location. Goods cards show four different settings, distinguishable by icon and colour: Inn, Tower, Pier and Beach.

  Note: each Location appears the same number of times in the deck.

• Reward. The player may get an extra reward: Doubloons and/or Ships and/or a Spyglass (see "Raiding a Good").

• Cannonball. Some cards show a cannonball. These increase your combat value when facing the Threat cards that come into play (see "Threat Cards").

• Ship. The Ship icon (whether it is a Reward or a consequence of a Scoundrel Action) lets you take the top Ship card of the deck and place it in your personal area. If it is later revealed, it becomes a Goods card to be placed in columns in your play area according to the rules. If it is never revealed, the Ship card scores Prestige Points at the end of the game.

  Note: players may never look at the Goods under Ship cards in their personal area unless they perform a Scoundrel Action (see "Scoundrel Actions").

How to Play

Play goes clockwise, starting with the First Player.

On their turn, a player must perform one of these two main actions:

1. Raid a Good.
2. Raid several Goods.

Optionally (before or after the Main Action, but no more than once per turn, and only if the player has enough Doubloons), a player may buy a Scoundrel Action (see "Scoundrel Actions").

At the end of the turn, the player must restore the Convoy.

1. Raid a Good

A player who takes a single Goods card immediately gets the Reward shown on the raided card.

Diagram labels: "Raided card", "Reward".

Rewards can be:

• 1 or 2 Doubloons. Taken from the common supply, which is considered unlimited. They may be spent during the current turn or later, or kept in the player's personal area to win a tie-break at the end of the game.
• Ships. See the Ship icon above.
• A Spyglass. See the Spyglass icon above.

2. Raid Several Goods

A player who takes more than one card from the Convoy may raid 2 or 3 Goods, but only while respecting all of the following:

• Only identical Goods, or Goods from the same Location, may be raided.
• The Goods cards raided must be adjacent.
• No Reward may be claimed.
• The third card raided costs 1 Doubloon. It follows that a player with no Doubloons cannot raid 3 cards.

Diagram labels: "Same location", "Same Good", "Same location or Good, paying 1".

Note: these restrictions can be avoided only by using the Letter of Marque (see "Scoundrel Actions").

Placing Goods

Raided cards must be placed in the player's own play area, in vertical columns, divided by type of Good, always extending the column downward. Place them so that the top part remains visible, so that everyone can count how many cards are stacked and how many Cannonballs are present.

Diagram labels: "Play area", "Type of Good", "Personal area".

Restoring the Convoy

At the end of their turn, the player must restore the Convoy line. First slide the Goods remaining in the line outward, then draw cards from the Ship deck until there are 5 visible Goods again.

Diagram labels: "Cards slide outward to take the place of the raided ones"; "From the Ship deck, add to the Convoy as many cards as were raided."

The turn then passes clockwise.

Scoundrel Actions

As seen above, before or after the Main Action (but no more than once per turn, and only if the player has enough Doubloons), the player may pay to perform the following Scoundrel Actions (also summarised on the Scoundrel Actions board):

• Secret Chest. Pay 2 Doubloons to take the top Ship card of the deck. Reveal it on its Goods side and add it to your play area according to the placement rules.

• Parrot Pact. Pay 3 Doubloons to draw 2 Ship cards from the Ship deck. You may then look at all your Ship cards and reveal up to 2 of your choice, adding them to your play area according to the placement rules. Any Ship cards left over are returned, face down, to your personal area.

• Letter of Marque. Pay 4 Doubloons to take the top Ship card of the deck and, in addition, take 2 cards of your choice from the Convoy (without respecting the restrictions described above), then add all of them to your play area according to the placement rules.

  Strategy note: if this action is performed before raiding, the cards remaining in the Convoy may have different neighbours and so may be raided under the new adjacencies.

Note: all Doubloons paid go to the common supply.

Threat Cards

Threat cards show the icon of a Spyglass on the Ship side.

• If a player draws a Threat card during their turn before that turn has concluded, the card is temporarily frozen and revealed (and thus will attack) only at the end of their turn.
• If a Threat card is drawn while restoring the Convoy, reveal it immediately: it attacks all players at once.

Once the Threat is revealed, count how many Cannonballs are visible in the play areas of the players. The player with the fewest Cannonballs is defeated (there may be one or more such players), and the penalty for that Threat is applied:

• Ghost Ship: the defeated player loses one Good of which they have the greatest number (in case of a tie, they may choose which to discard).
• Corsairs: the defeated player loses all their Doubloons. If they have none, they lose 3 Prestige Points from their total score! Keep the Corsairs card as a pleasant reminder.
• Kraken: the defeated player loses up to 2 Ship cards, drawn at random from their personal area. If they have none, they lose nothing.

Note: if all players have the same number of Cannonballs, the Threat is considered foiled by everyone.

End of the Game and Counting Prestige

When the second Threat card has been resolved and all players have completed the same number of turns, the competition ends.

Players earn Prestige Points according to the instructions at the start of the Logbook (the "How to Win" section of this Rulebook).

The player with the most Prestige Points has pulled off the Big Score and earned the Hat!

Ties may be resolved by checking who saved more Doubloons. If these are also tied, compare who has fewer Goods cards in their play area ("a light ship travels fast"). If you are still tied, then, by the Seven Seas, celebrate the shared victory by toasting with a shot of Rum! Aarrhh!

Solo Mode

Solo of the Cariddean.

Goal: Beat the Corsairs (a ghost player) in a duel to the last assault!

Setup: Compared with the multiplayer setup, remove 10 random Goods cards from the Ship deck, do not give out starting Doubloons, and leave enough space on the table to create the Corsairs' play area.

Play: Play alternates between you and the Corsairs. You perform your Main Action (and optionally a Scoundrel Action), then the Corsairs respond in kind, following three simple rules:

• Ignoring adjacency in the Convoy, the Corsairs raid all Goods of the most present Location. On a tie, the Location of the outermost line card is chosen. The Goods taken are placed in the Corsairs' play area.
• If the Goods cards raided are all adjacent (whatever the number taken), the Corsairs gain one additional Ship card.
• The Corsairs never take Rewards or Scoundrel Actions.

Example: If the following Locations are on the Convoy line cards, in order: Beach, Inn, Inn, Beach and Tower, the Corsairs will take the 1st through the 4th card. If the first position had been a Pier, then the Corsairs would have taken the 2nd and 3rd cards, plus a bonus Ship (thanks to the adjacency of the two cards).

Threat cards (solo): if the Corsairs have fewer Cannonballs, nothing happens to them. Otherwise, if you have fewer Cannonballs, the variant for the Threat drawn applies: all Doubloons (claimed by the Corsairs card) or all cards lost (Goods recovered from the Ghost Ship, or Ships sunk by the Kraken) are not returned to the supply but are instead assigned to the Corsairs.

Final score:

• Each majority of Goods is worth 1 Prestige Point.
• Each group of 3 Ship cards is worth 1 Prestige Point.

You win the duel if you have a majority of Prestige Points. You lose if you have fewer than, or the same Prestige as, the Corsairs.

Variants: to challenge your abilities at different difficulty levels, try the scenarios suggested below.

• The Empty Purse (Easy): the Player starts with 1 Doubloon.
• They Are Savvy (Medium): the Player starts with 1 Doubloon, and the Corsairs start with 2 Ship cards.
• The Captain's Nightmare (Hard): the Player starts with 3 Doubloons, but at the end of the game the Corsairs count 1 Prestige Point also for Goods that are tied in the majorities.