Castaways of Deadman’s Bay

by Katie

We played a new game, Castaway's of Deadman's Bay. It’s a battlers game about pushing people off the plank, striking them, or insulting their crew. The battlers are pirate captains! It’s awesome, AWE-some! Mom and I play “Kate” and daddy plays the one named “Jack”. Because the characters are named Kate and Jack like me and my brother that just makes the game so special!

How You Play: You play a card and try to trick your dad by playing a card and mindreading like I do. You pick a card and if it’s the right one KABOOM, BAM, and then BABABOOM to win! Power ups are the cards you can play to make your moves better so they do more damage.

What is easy: This game is easy, really easy. The reading parts are OK because I can show my mom since we’re on a team. My mom read me the cards and since I heard them a bunch of times I know what they say. I can tell them apart by the colors. The cards that, like, power up a move match the color of the move and that makes it easy to tell what they are.

What is hard: None of it was hard actually

Insult for the win!!

What I like best: My favorite part is that we are so good at pushing him off! I like that we got to knock him straight off the plank! We won by figuring out what daddy was going to do… he thought we were going to charge because we had the most charge power-ups but I knew he was going to think that so I just threw down an insult and that won the game! I love the thinky parts of the game where you try to guess what they are going to try to do!

What I like least: That Jack is too little to play, but I anyway had fun with it.

How much I like it: I like it two-hundred and forty-four. 2-4-4. That means I really like it and it’s one of my top favorites. I want to play it again and again!

This is what my mom wants to say:

"I really liked the fact that the emphasis on this game was on thinking through what your opponent might do and trying to outguess them. The game was simple, but provided a good skill building opportunity for the younger gamers in your family while still remaining interesting enough for parents to have fun playing. Plus, it’s pirates!

This is the first game of this type we’ve played with Katie in which I think she really got that element of trying to read your opponent and use deductive reasoning to figure out the best move. It’s a great gateway into a whole range of strategy games in which it is important to try to predict what your opponent is going to do… Race For The Galaxy, Yomi, and Agricola to name a few. It’s definitely a game I can see playing “again and again” with our little pirate captains."

This is what my dad wants to say about it:

"Let me start by  saying a big hearty "Thank you!" to Ian Volkwein, the designer of this game, for providing a review copy of this game. We really enjoyed this game, and Katie is excited to play it more. I like the bluffing mechanic. This game is a great introduction to games that include anticipating your opponents moves, and those that use "Rock-Paper-Scissors" mechanics. In this one, you want to match your opponent when defending and choose differently when attacking. The powerups and action cards keep it fun and exciting. I definitely recommend this for younger gamers. There is card text, so it's best for those kids who also read. You can read more about this one at Ponderzombie Games. Yarrr!"

 That's all...

I didn’t want my mom and dad to say anything on this blog post because it’s MY blog post and they can just write their own, but they really wanted to so I just let them do it. Then what they wrote was cool, so I’m kinda OK with it now. I just didn’t want you readers to think their words were my words. That’s all. Thanks for reading my blog!