The Treasure of Isla Tortuga Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Game Components
• Starting the Game
• First Game Turn
  • The Events
  • Putting Cards in Our Ship
  • Card Effects
  • Boarding
  • End of Turn and Next Player
• End of the Game
• Captains (optional)

Game Components

The game contains the following cards:

• 84 adventure cards
• 10 cards of initial decks (5 prows and 5 sterns)
• 5 reference cards
• 8 captain cards (optional, see the chapter Captains)

Starting the Game

Give one prow and one stern card to every player to form his initial ship.

Shuffle the adventure deck and put it accessible to every player.

The player who has been in a boat most recently will become the first player.

First Game Turn

The initial player should start drawing cards from the adventure deck and putting them in the middle of the table, for all players to see. He can draw as many as he wishes, one by one, and can stop to read them and think before deciding to draw more cards or not.

Every card shown gives the player some experience, referred to as resources. Those accumulated resources (by adding all the icons shown in all the cards) can be used to acquire one of those same cards (and only one).

There are 4 types of resources and they are used to pay for four different types of cards:

Coins are used to pay the cost of objects which give us different advantages in our following adventures.

Knifes are used to recruit crew for our ship, which give us extra victory points or will help us on boardings.

Compass are used to find treasures which give us victory points.

Hammers are used to build new decks which will increase our ship's capacity.

If we have enough icons among our experience to acquire one of the cards in the table and we wish to do it, we just announce it and put it on our ship (see 3.2 Putting Cards in Our Ship). In this moment, our turn is over and we pass the remaining cards to the next player, clockwise.

Example: this player has already shown 4 cards. Right now he has 2 coins, 3 knifes, 2 compasses and 4 hammers, so he can acquire The Hold, because it costs 3 hammers, and the Parrot, because it costs 2 compasses, but cannot acquire A Few Doubloons, because it costs 4 coins and he only has 2, and the Corsair, because it costs 4 knifes and he only has 3.

The Events

Most adventure cards are connected to an awful event for our ship. Those events can be:

• Storm.
• Famine.
• A Warship.

If, when you draw a new card from the adventure deck, you show the third card with the same event (you already have 2 cards with the same event of this card in the table), this event triggers and your adventure ends. Discard all adventure cards in the table and pass the turn to the next player. You lost your chance to acquire a card!

Putting Cards in Our Ship

Our initial ship has 2 decks, prow and stern. Every deck has a capacity (2 on the initials), that shows how many cards we can attach under it. When we acquire a card, we must put it under a deck with free space. If we don't have one, we must discard one card on one of our decks to leave space for the new one.

If the card we acquire is a new deck, we will accommodate it between our prow and stern, to keep the drawing of the ship. There is no limit to the number of decks you can have in your ship, the bigger the ship, the more space we will have to put cards on it. Some decks may restrict the type of cards you place on them.

Card Effects

Once acquired and placed on the ship, the card will give us advantages as shown in the effects box. These are some possibilities:

When we are drawing adventure cards, we may add the resources shown on the effect boxes of cards in our ship to the total of resources available.

These are the victory points. Treasure cards have fixed values while some crew may give variable points depending on what we have aboard our ship. It may be convenient that players state loudly how many points they have every time they earn some to ease the count for the other players, especially when they are near to winning (see chapter End of the Game).

We must add all our defense values on our ship to find our total defense value. This is important on boardings (see the chapter Boarding). Keep in mind that the ship has an initial defense already marked on the stern. All other defense bonuses you acquire are added to this initial defense.

If we plan on boarding another ship, we may count these icons as extra knifes. Keep in mind that these extra icons are only for boarding, but not to acquire a crew card.

Example: This ship is pretty full. Thanks to the cannon, we may count 1 extra knife every time we draw cards and, if we decide to discard the map, we may also have 3 knifes. Right now we have 7 victory points (5 for the spanish cargo and 2 for the thief, because there are two objects aboard, the map and the cannon) and 6 defense (4 on the stern and 2 granted by the artillerymen). If we decide to attempt a boarding, we may add 2 knifes, one granted by the cannon and another by the knife of the artillerymen.

In terms of space, the pantry is full (2 plus one other card, the thief) but there's still one space either on the prow and on the stern.

Boarding

Among the adventure cards are a few marked All Aboard! Those cards add resources the same as the others but also give us an extra option: to board another player's ship to steal an object or treasure for our ship. To achieve that, we must have enough knifes to match the opponent's ship defense. Remember that we can add all the knife and boarding icons we have in our ship. It is not necessary to declare the boarding right after we show the All Aboard! card, even if we are able to make use of it at the moment. We may keep showing cards for convenience or because we still don't have enough knifes.

If we finally opt to make the boarding, we just move the chosen card from the opponent's ship to ours, discard all adventure cards on the table and pass the turn to the next player.

Example: Player A is playing his turn when he reveals an All Aboard! card. Adding knifes, he has 6 (4 revealed on the adventure cards, 1 granted by the card cannon and another 1 by the artillerymen). Player B's ship has a total defense of 7 (4 on the stern, 2 on the Gun Ports and 1 from his Cabin Boy). If player A wants to steal the Aztec Treasure or the Map from player B, he has to draw and reveal more adventure cards to get the knifes he lacks.

End of Turn and Next Player

Our turn ends on any of those situations:

• We choose a revealed adventure card, pay the cost and place it in our ship.
• We reveal the third card with the same banner. In this case we end our adventure empty handed!
• We board another ship to steal an object or treasure.

On the last two cases, all adventure cards on the table are discarded and the next player starts his turn by drawing new cards from the adventure deck.

On the first case, if we acquire an adventure card, we should pass the remaining adventure cards to the next player, except the All Aboard! cards, that always get discarded.

If we start the turn with cards "inherited" from the previous player, we may discard one of those cards before starting to draw cards from the adventure deck. It's also possible that we may acquire one of those "inherited" cards right away. In that case, we may just do that and forfeit the chance to draw cards from the adventure deck. In other words, drawing cards is always optional.

As long as players end their turns acquiring adventure cards, the remaining cards pass from one player to the next until an event or a boarding happens, at which point all cards are discarded.

End of the Game

By adding treasures and certain types of crew to our ship, we earn victory points. If a player ends his turn with 15 victory points aboard his ship, the game ends and he is declared the winner.

In games with fewer players (2 or 3) or if a more strategic game is favored, you may opt to raise the level required to win to 18 victory points instead. If you prefer shorter games (especially with five players), you may reduce the number required to 12.

Captains (optional)

Once you have played a couple of games of The Treasure of Isla Tortuga, you may introduce the captains to give every player a different edge. Just shuffle the pile of captain cards and give one to every player to place near his ship, so every player can see and read it.

Every captain has a different ability:

• Blackbeard: Blackbeard adds two boarding icons every time you try to attempt a boarding. One of the most infamous and successful pirates of the era, he was one of the most feared. He was of big and strong build and chronicles say he added lit fuses to his beard to be more fearsome.

• Anne Bonny: Anne adds 2 defense to your ship. Adventure partner of John Rackham and Mary Reade, she stole the ship William in Nassau and ransacked Jamaica for months.

• Mary Reade: Mary allows you, once per adventure, to immediately discard the third card you draw with the same banner. You can keep playing after that, but if you show another one you will lose your turn as normal. Adventure partner of Anne Bonny and John Rackham, histories say nobody knew she was a woman until much after she enrolled.

• John Roberts: Pirate Roberts gives you a hammer and a compass icon permanently. Mostly known as Bartholomew Roberts, he sailed all across the Atlantic, from Brasil to Africa, where he was killed in action by the English. His crew threw his body, wrapped in his banner, to the sea so it couldn't be found and defiled.

• Henry Every: Every gives you a knife icon permanently. Henry Every is known as the Arch Pirate or King of the Pirates because he made the most profitable boarding ever in all pirate history, against an Indian Company ship full of precious metals and jewels.

• Henry Morgan: Morgan allows you, once per adventure, to immediately discard the third card you draw with the same banner. You can keep playing after that, but if you show another one you will lose your turn as normal. This Welsh corsair was one of the most successful of his era. He attacked and captured many Spanish cities among the Spanish Main. He ended his days discredited by his political adversaries and returned to England.

• François l'Olonnais: L'Olonnais allows you, once per adventure, to immediately discard the third card you draw with the same banner. You can keep playing after that, but if you show another one you will lose your turn as normal. L'Olonnais was one of the bloodiest pirates of the Spanish Main. He earned the nickname "Scourge of the Spaniards." He ended his days tortured and murdered by some natives.

• William Kidd: Kidd allows you to keep a treasure card under him. This treasure cannot be moved or stolen by other players. Kidd wouldn't have been so famous if not for the scandal he was in in England and, above all, the legend that says he buried a huge treasure somewhere.