VIDEO GAMES: Dread Pirate
Dread Pirate takes a cutlass to any console's A/V cables and makes you set sail for boardgaming aplenty. Wait me jaded hardies! It's not played on anything so lame as a cheese-eating fold-in-the-middle Parcheesi-type gameboard like ye grew up with -- it's an actual cloth treasure map!
This heirloom quality & award winning boardgame from Front Porch Classics comes in a real wood treasure chest anyone would be tempted to open up. Antique style wooden "bones" (dice) compliment that. Old school uncoated square-cut event cards each contain "Lore & More" -- a factoid either about pirates or the world in which Dread Pirate is set. Everyone gets a posh & different coloured drawstring velvet bag for their booty. There are even 55 shiney golden (okay, brass) doubloons. Yes, the whole thing's tactile to the point of pleasure, with substantially weighty metal ships that resound with authority when you put 'em down. It all so just makes you really want to play it. Remember what that felt like?
And though you would suspect such ornateness might be equally weighed down by complex rules, there are simply elegant & fun mechanics that can be garnished with options for wind, or even alternate scenarios if you so choose, giving the game beaucoup replay value. For two to four players, the standard object is to obtain a ruby, diamond, emerald, & saphire, be the first to get to Dread Island to become "dread pirate", then try & sink eveyone else before they can wrest the title away for themselves. Strategy, hard sailin', skullduggery, and cannonades abound. Lose your leg! Get scurvy! Drink too much grog! No monitor or batteries required, mateys!
Of course, such quality costs: $100 is the retail price (and there is a bookshelf edition for $50 -- but no chest & smaller pieces, so why settle?), but with something so astoundingly far above & beyond your puerile plastic pawns in a paper box you're really getting more than you pay for. And if you at all like pirates (hey, who doesn't?) you'll truly appreciate how wonderful making someone else "open the bag!" and taking their spoils before sinking them to eat seaweed with Davy Jones can really be. Now put down the controllers viddy-lubbers & prepare to be boarded! Ahrrrrr!
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