Pirates of the Spanish Main
| Players | 2–9 |
|---|---|
| Age range | 8 and up |
| Setup time | Depends on how much time it takes to build ships the first time, otherwise 10 minutes |
| Playing time | 30–180 minutes |
| Random chance | Considerable |
| Skill(s) required | Strategy, Dice rolling, Collecting |
The Pirates Constructible Strategy Game is a tabletop game manufactured by WizKids, Inc., with aspects of both miniatures game and collectible card game genres. "Pirates of the Spanish Main" (the initial release of the Pirates line) is the world's first "constructible strategy game," referring to the mechanics of creating game pieces from components that punch out of styrene cards. The game was created by Jordan Weisman and designed by Mike Mulvihill, Ethan Pasternack, James Ernest, and Mike Selinker. It was released in early July 2004. There was also an online computer game based on Pirates of the Spanish Main by Sony Online Entertainment called Pirates CSG Online, which ended on 1/31/2011.
The game won the Origins Vanguard Award 2005.
On September 14, 2009, collectible maker National Entertainment Collectibles Association announced the purchase of the Wizkids name and properties from Topps, specifically including the Pirates line, which was canceled. Several third-party companies have picked up second-hand packages for resale at Target stores.
On March 9, 2012, Wizkids announced that they plan to release a card-only version of the game, called "Pirates of the Spanish Main: Shuffling the Deck." Other games have since followed in their "Shuffling the Deck" line of card games.
The general goal of Pirates is to collect more gold than your opponents, or with variants, to achieve a given objective or destroy all enemy ships (numerous scenarios written by WizKids and others have vastly extended the playability of the game). The game's pieces include ships, forts, sea monsters, crew, islands and other terrain markers, events, gold and other treasure tokens.
An innovative feature of Pirates is the 'constructible' element of the game; each game piece (except for terrain) is created by popping out the small polystyrene pieces from placeholder cards and assembling them. As the ship, fort or sea monster is damaged by enemies during the course of game play, pieces of it are removed to record how much damage it has sustained, giving the game piece itself the appearance of slowly being destroyed. The elements removed from the piece - for example, a ship's masts - can no longer be used in the game unless another game element allows it to be replaced later.
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