Key Largo

From: Titanic Games

Reviewed by: Ron McClung

Key Largo is a new Board Game from Titanic Games.

Key Largo is a family game of salvage in the Caribbean. The game is set at the turn of the 20th Century and the players are dive companies attempting to salvage pirate wrecks off the coast of Key Largo. Once you salvage the treasure, you must sell it on the island.

The game has a board that is the map of Key Largo and on the map is the dock, the tavern, the equipment shop, the market and a turn tracker which tracks all 10 days. The wrecks are set up using wreck cards in three different depths (shallow, medium and deep) along the board “in the water” according to the number of players. The wrecks contain treasure or sometimes a monster. The players have 5 action cards used in play and a ship pawn. Each player also takes a diver token and places it in front of him. There are also equipment counters – hoses, tridents, and weights – that can be acquired during play. The game also includes paper money in denominations of $10s, $20s, 50s, $100s, and $500s.

From page # 1: “The year is 1899. A new century dawns and with it the promise of a rich future. This little Caribbean isle was once at the heart of the shipping lanes of old world ships that fell prey to the pirates of the seven seas.”

Play is conducted in Days, and a player can take two actions each day – one in the morning, and one in the afternoon. Each day starts at the docks. For each action for the day, the players lay out two of the five action cards face down, one on top of the other – one for the morning and one for the afternoon. Actions are revealed simultaneously.

Actions are:

• Shop for Equipment – Buy equipment like hoses, weights and tridents.
• Sell at the Market – Sell treasure.
• Go to the Tavern – Go to the tavern to either hire a diver, buy a round of drinks, or hire a thief (if optional rules are being used).
• Search a Wreck – Dive a wreck and search for treasure.
• Go Dolphin Watching – Collect money from the bank based on the day of the week.

From page #1: “During the next ten days, your small diving companies will all try desperately to find treasures and sell them at the highest possible prices.”

At the heart of the game is diving wrecks. In order to dive wrecks deeper than shallow waters, divers must have hoses – at least one for medium and two for deep. For each diver you send, you can draw one card from the particular wreck. If you have weights, you can sacrifice one and draw an additional card. Sometimes you run into monsters, and this is where the trident comes in.

The other actions that are available are fairly clear – ways to gain money, divers, and equipment. One interesting action is the Tavern action of buying a round of drinks. You pay $20 to listen to the old mariner’s tale. This allows you to pick two wrecks and look through the cards. After you look through them, you must shuffle them and place them back. This of course gives you a little foresight into what is out there.

There are four types of treasure one can find

• Goods – more valuable if you are the only one selling them.
• Artifacts – more valuable if more people are selling them.
• Gold – has a fixed price.
• Jewels – can not be sold but are worth their value at the end of the game.

In the end after the 10 days of diving, the winner is the richest player.

The game also includes optional rules for a Thief and for Encounter cards. If the Thievery option is used, the Thief can be hired in the Tavern, as mentioned above. The thief allows the player to steal a treasure card from a player. Encounter cards are drawn at the Dolphin Cove when the player collects the normal money there. These represent people players can meet and have a varied amount of effects.

In conclusion, this is an interesting little game of resource use and luck of the draw. It has a lot of the familiar mechanics that many games like it have and it plays fairly smoothly. The game does rely a lot on luck and some money management. A lot revolves around what cards you get when you dive, which are of course random, and other than the thief option, there is not much you can do to prevent your opponents from winning. It may be a little more random then most people would like, especially with the simultaneous action card flip and the treasure cards. However, it can be pretty fun with all optional runs in play.

For more details on Titanic Games and their new Board Game “Key Largo” check them out at their website http://www.paizo.com, and at all of your local game stores.

Key Largo

From: Titanic Games

Type of Game: Board Game

Game Design by: Paul Randles, Mike Selinker, Bruno Faidutti

Art by: Ben Huen, Andrew Hou, Drew Pocza

Number of Pages: 8 page rulebook

Game Components Included:

• Full-color board
• 5 wooden boats
• 1 diving helmet
• 130 cards
• 15 diver tokens
• 40 hoses, tridents, and weights
• Paper money
• Full-color rulebook

Retail Price: $ 39.99 (US)

Number of Players: 3-5

Player Ages: 10+

Play Time: 45 minutes

Website: www.paizo.com