If the die is lowered to below one pip, the fire is extinguished and the die is removed from that room. To win the game, players must find all the treasure tokens and remove them from the ship and escape. This game brings back a similar feeling to playing Pandemic, which for myself and my partner, was a thoroughly enjoyable co-operative experience that was for us, the first well done co=operative we mechanic we had seen in a board game.

These ideas are evocative and generally come across quite well, with just a bit of abstractness along the way. While it doesn’t feature any ground breaking mechanics, it does a lot of things right and is worth a spot on your gaming shelf. The aim of the pirates is to loot and escape with a number of treasures chests from the burning ship before all pirates are either killed, overwhelmed, cut off and trapped on the ship by the fire, the gold is destroyed, or the ship explodes. That’s not all, even more challenging is that the ghost ship is roaring a fiery blaze that grows with each turn the pirates take. Today we are going to be looking at Dead Men Tell No Tales, a cooperative board game published by Minion Games.

However there is still dice rolling involved in the battles but there are ways to boost your results so even the most unlucky players can try to mitigate against bad rolls! They might also lose if a tile can't be placed, too many treasures are lost, too many pirates are killed over the course of the game, or a pirate is killed after all the treasure has been looted. The Kraken expansion also has a new character to add to those from the base game, this character comes with a wooden meeple as well as a plastic miniature. Some of the mechanics are solid and the artwork is fantastic, but it simply didn’t wow us enough to stay in our game rotation. Then I saw it: a tentacle the size of a ship’s mast crashed through the room, obliterating everything in sight.

While we did have a pretty good time playing Dead Men Tell No Tales, it was noticeable right away that this game felt very similar to other co-op board games we’ve played. Each player will control a unique pirate, each with their own special ability and shared group of items.Fatigue in turn can prevent a pirate from entering the most fiery locations (and can eventually kill them). A player can use an action to give up his item and take one from another player or the middle of the table. Do you and your crew have what it takes to make off with all of the treasure and live to tell the story?

The game is turn based and on each players turn they start by revealing a new tile to add to the ship, a token such as guarded treasure or trapdoor is added to each new tile. On their turn, players can spend an action token to swap the item in their possession with one of the face-up cards in the supply. This is because Minion Games released a set of character mini’s for the base game alongside The Kraken expansion, these are included in my photos but are an additional upgrade. DMTNT is an exciting co-operative adventure that has a lot of strategic choices and possible knock on effects that seem tricky at first, but after one or two play-through’s, combine together to make an intriguing and deep thematic experience with a ton of re-playability.

If ever there aren’t any pirates remaining to choose from, the crew is too exhausted to continue and fails. Since the Kraken’s powerful tentacles can easily devastate the players’ crew, it’s only natural they get a few additional tools fight back. Eliminate a Deckhand- Similar to fighting fires, the active player can remove a Deckhand token from their current room for each action point they spend. The art in DMTNT is wonderful and The Kraken expansion (and miniature upgrade kit) truly elevates the game and creates a much more immersive experience. During a Walk movement, Pirates gain Fatigue equal to the difference of the fire dice values when moving into a room with a higher number.