John was then able to join us for a first outing of Seerauber by Stefan Dorra and published by Queen games. Yet another pirate game, this sees players assembling a crew to attempt to raid various sized ships to plunder their treasure. However, treasure isn’t the main goal in the game, it’s money. This is because when a captain raids a ship, he has to pay wages to each of his crew. Players each have pirates that demand wages of up to 5 ducats. The raided ships have a certain amount of money but, if there isn’t enough to pay all the wages, the captain has to fork out the remainder from his own pocket. There are 5 rounds, during each of which 3 ships are boarded. After the last round, whoever has the most treasure of each type (candlesticks, cutlasses etc,) receives additional ducats but then, whoever has the most money wins.

In our game, Mark K got off to a very good start and was able to captain two raids that brought him treasure without paying out too much in wages. In the middle of the game, Nige “trapped” a goodly number of high-wage pirates that he declared he would hold onto and never board a ship (depriving those pirates of any future wages, as they only get paid when a ship is raided). Well, the rest of us thought otherwise and by covering Nige’s other pirates, forced him to board a ship and pay out about 10 more ducats than he gained. As this was going on, I became captain of a large crew, knowing that a lucrative ship was still to appear and gambling that it would come out on the penultimate round. I failed, as only modest ships appeared and John, who had three pirates on my crew, was able to mutiny and force me to board a ship, costing me a massive 16 ducats. I wasn’t pleased although everyone else found it to be highly amusing. By the end, Mark K was able to capitalise on his early fortune to run out a very easy winner.

Seerauber started off appearing a bit bland but, as time went on and the attempts at stuffing other players became more frequent, it got much more interesting. There is a memory element, which isn’t really my cup of tea, but it played pretty well and everyone was occupied throughout. A pity Mark K chalked up a second win but I guess it puts a bit more pressure on Steve in the Hall of Fame.