Splitting the booty after a successful pirate venture is no casual matter, and things can get really tense if not everyone knows what booty has been retrieved. Brigand’s Bluff is a game about sharing (and hiding) the booty the crew finds with their captain.
You can think of Brigand’s Bluff as sort of the opposite of the classic pirate game Liar’s Dice. The game comes with six custom wooden dice, with each face holding an image: a monkey, a ship, a flag, a barrel of rum, a parrot, and a skull-and-crossbones. After the players have split the dice between them, one player is elected to be the first captain (everyone gets a turn as captain) and the captain turns their back on the table so they can’t see what’s rolled. The rest of the players roll their dice and place them in front of themselves where everyone but the captain can see them. Each player must then tell the captain something true about what was rolled. They can refer to other player’s dice or all the dice combined. The clue given must be true, useful, and not repeating the same information another player gave, even if worded a different way.
After all the clues have been given to the captain, the crew hide their dice and the captain rolls their two dice, and keeps rolling until the two dice do not match. The captain then picks one of the two faces they rolled, and every player who rolled one of those must give their die to the captain. The captain scores 1 point for each die collected this way. Each member of the crew then scores a point for every die they personally rolled that came up with the same face as the captain’s other die.
The captain than picks a dice-face that hasn’t been used yet. Every die that came up that face rolled by a crew member is handed over to the captain, who scores 1 point for each, while each crew member scores 1 point for every die they still have in their hands. Another player gets to be captain, and the game continues until every player has been captain. Once all the players have been captain, the player with the most points wins.
This game challenges players both as captain and as a crew member. For the captain, they have to use logic and deduction to figure out how many of each face of the dice came up. For the players, they have to confuse the captain by giving clues that are honest but potentially misleading. Tell the captain that nine eyeballs have been rolled is a sneaky clue because the monkey has two eyeballs but the parrot only one; nine eyeballs says that at least one roll came up as a parrot, but how are the other eight divided between parrots and moneys?
The competitive aspect also plays a role. If one player is getting ahead in points, the other players might give the captain lots of clues about that one player’s rolls in order to make sure that player doesn’t get many points this round.
Brigand’s Bluff is a game for four to six players and a full game usually takes less than a half-hour to play. Since it’s just dice and a scorepad, it travels extremely well and doesn’t need much room to play. This makes it a great game for traveling with as well as bringing over to a friend’s home or your friendly neighborhood Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy®. Talk to our completely scurvy-free crew today about getting your share of the Brigand’s Bluff loot.
All Dragon’s Lair Comics & Fantasy® locations are independently owned and operated by local folks. Not all stores will carry all games but will be willing to attempt to special order any that they do not carry. (And they’ll carry most.)
