I have a complicated relationship with Alexander Pfister games. And by complicated relationship, I mean I actively dislike most of his designs. Great Western Trail, Blackout Hong Kong, and Maracaibo all illicit feelings of frustration and hatred from my heart when I sit down to play. That’s not to say I hate everything he touches, Broom Service and Isle of Skye are some of my favourite games of all time. But that dichotomy, the love it or hate it reaction I have to his games always makes me pause whenever I approach a new Pfister game. I won’t bury the lede here, Pirates of Maracaibo is pretty good.

The turn structure is very simple. On your turn, you just move your ship from the left side of the card display 1 to 3 cards to the up, down, and right, then doing the thing on the card you land on. That “thing” might be buying the card and bringing it into your tableau, offering you a persistent benefit or triggering one of the various actions of the game (exploring, raiding, or upgrading your ship usually, but I’ll expand on those later), or building a building. None of these actions are complicated on their own, and they all largely feel detached from one another, meaning that in your game you’ll need to choose which path you’ll want to focus on, being the jack of all trades and the master of none doesn’t often translate to very many end game points.

Regardless, your turn is simply move your boat, do the card thing, and that’s your turn. Once a player reaches the harbour on the far right side of the board, they trigger the end of the round for all players. The harbour has a (usually) stronger version of the actions that you can get from the cards for the player who landed there to take, then all other players take their last turn for the round. When it’s the player who reached the harbour’s turn, they move into Maracaibo, where they get 6 points and get to upgrade their ship. Then all ships are moved to the far left side of the card tableau, everyone gets their income, and the next round starts. After the 3rd round, the game ends and the player with the most points is the winner.

Image Credit: @Palandis via BGG

None of the little activities I just mentioned above are particularly thematic. The exploration action, for example, is just moving your meeple along a track and taking the benefit of whatever space you land on. Sure, you’ll cross rivers for end game points, and the rewards generally get better the further you move, but there’s no hidden depth in the exploration track. Similarly for raiding, you just roll 3 dice, then choose one to be your raid. The colour of the die you pick will affect which treasure you can claim (pearls, emeralds, or gold), but you just take the pip value of the die, add any bonus strength you may have, and then take various rewards based on your total raid value. Upgrading your ship is simply placing a single cube on the hull of your ship, covering up either a persistent benefit or a one time bonus. As you place more cubes on your ship, you’ll unlock better upgrade spots, but you’re always just placing a cube on a menu of benefits.

What I really like about Pirates of Maracaibo is how easy it is to play. Every action and benefit is uncomplicated. Even if the decisions you’re making have some weight, you can always see the consequences of your choices. Moving your ship might force you to make some trade-offs. If there’s a specific card you want, or you placed your black market tile somewhere a little inconvenient, you might need to decide exactly where to park your ship for a round so you can reach your preferred destination next round. But very rarely will you ever do something and say “Oh, I didn’t realize that was going to happen.”

The cards that make up the main space of the game offer a fair amount of benefits too. In addition to the action or persist benefit they offer, each card also is worth some end game points, and many will give you money or points income between each round, making every movement the result of several micro-decisions.

Adding to your decision space are the quest cards. Each player starts the game with one, but you can earn several more as the game progresses. The quest card will nudge you towards specializing in a specific way, and hopefully you can acquire a couple that synergize well together to really rake in those end game points. The quest cards are semi-random, perhaps the specific one you were hoping for doesn’t show up, but at least there is a quest card market, letting you pick from two face up quests, or drawing one from the top of the deck. You even have the option of wiping the card market before choosing to take one or drawing from the top of the deck. I appreciate the options instead of being subjected to total randomness.

What I really love about Pirates of Maracaibo are when you can hit a good combo on a turn. You move your ship, spend some money, get an effect that lets you move your explorer, which gives you more money funding your next turn. The cascading, barely in your control efficiency is really satisfying when it manages to come together. Starting a round with only 4 coins and being able to make it all the way to Maracaibo without needing to spend a whole turn taking income makes me feel really clever and smart. Unlike a lot of Alexander Pfister games that make me feel handcuffed, where I often feel like I’m staring at a bunch of things I *could* do, if only I had the exact three prerequisites lined up perfectly, Pirates of Maracaibo is much more forgiving. If I do run out of money I can just spend a turn putting my ship into a better position, and take 5 coins. It’s refreshing.

Image Credit: Capstone Games via their website

One thing that caught me off-guard was just how much of the game’s scoring lives at the end. During play, your points can feel modest. I think in my best game I managed to hit 60 points before the final scoring. Then the final scoring happens, and suddenly I’m sitting at 200 after everything tallies up. So if you’re mid-game and feeling behind because someone has 40 points, and you’re stuck at 20, it’s honestly not worth worrying about. Once you internalize how big that final scoring swing is, the whole experience relaxes. I don’t get that creeping sense of doom when I’m behind; I just keep playing and see how it all shakes out. And more often than not, it shakes out better than I expected.

Interaction is… there, but only just. You can land your ship on a card that has another players ship, and you’ll need to pay them a dollar for the privilege. On the exploration track, you can’t share spaces, but hopping over someone is free, so it’s actually more of a speed boost than a blockade. You can technically drain islands of their treasure, but that would just leave you holding less valuable loot yourself, so it’s not exactly a cutthroat strategy. There’s a small bonus for being the first to build certain buildings, but beyond that, everyone’s mostly doing their own thing. I think the most interactive element here is when someone rushes to Maracaibo and brings the round to an end while everyone else is playing around the middle islands.

And honestly, that’s fine. This isn’t the kind of game I come to for tense player interaction. Instead, it excels at being a good euro game, one where I feel clever in my efficiencies. If I win, it’s because I built the best point scoring engine, not because I managed to beat my opponents down more than others.

So where does that leave Pirates of Maracaibo for me? I’m happy to report that it totally subverted my expectations. It’s one of the few Alexander Pfister euro games I actively want to keep playing. Unlike Maracaibo, Great Western Trail, or Blackout: Hong Kong, Pirates of Maracaibo never makes me feel trapped beneath its own complexity. Instead, it feels loose, approachable, and surprisingly forgiving.

I think that’s why Pirates of Maracaibo works for me when so many of Pfister’s heavier games don’t. It doesn’t constantly punish me for not planning six turns ahead, nor does it make me feel like I’ve accidentally ruined my game because I missed one prerequisite thirty minutes ago. It just lets me play. Move the ship, take a card, build a little engine, chase a few quests, and hopefully stumble into a satisfying combo or two along the way. And when those combos hit, when all the tiny efficiencies start cascading into one another, the game feels fantastic.

Is it the most thematic pirate game? Not even close. Is it particularly interactive? Also, no. But as a breezy midweight euro where I can quietly optimize my little East India Trading company while feeling clever the entire time, it absolutely succeeds. More importantly, it succeeds at making me enjoy an Alexander Pfister design, which for me, was the biggest surprise of all.