The Popular Pirate-Themed Video Game Sails Onto Your Tabletop With ‘Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends’

In the spring of 2018, a new action-adventure multiplayer video game was released by Microsoft and Rare Games. Players would take on the role of pirates and could sail alone or form a crew with other players and explore a world of pirates, skeletons, and monsters. While I had played this some at its release, it was during the lockdown due to the pandemic in 2020 that my youngest son and I began playing Sea of Thieves together. We enjoyed working together as well as with other players to complete voyages and earn experience to level up and gold to buy things for our character. Now the very popular video game has made the transition from the screen to the table with Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends.

What Is Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends?

Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends is a pirate strategy game for 2–4 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 90–120 minutes to play. Players take on the role of pirate captains and sail their two ships around the Sea of Thieves, increasing their reputation by completing voyages and attacking other players. The game is currently available directly from Steamforged Games as well as from your local FLGS and online game retailers. Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends was designed by Mat Hart, James M. Hewitt, Steve Margetson, Sherwin Matthews, and Sophie Williams. It is published by Steamforged Games, with graphic design by Elliott Smith, Abigail Thornton, and Kelly Vizma.

Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends Components

Here is what you get in the box:

— 7 Game Board Tiles

— 1 Outpost Board

— 24 Standees

— 12 Ship Cards

— 52 Fortune Cards

— 52 Voyage Cards

— 20 Event Cards

— 18 Special Crew Cards

— 8 Enemy Cards

— 4 Rules Reference Cards

— 10 Dice

— 300+ Tokens

The central hub and six sea tiles. Photo by Michael Knight.
The game board consists of a central hub tile and six sea tiles that go around it. All six sea tiles are used for 3–4-player games, while only four of them are used for 2-player games. The sea tiles can be randomly placed around the central hub and each has two different sides with different marks and positioning of islands to make each game a unique experience.

The Outpost board helps keep the card decks organized. Photo by Michael Knight.
The outpost board not only has the reputation track where players keep track of their progress but also is where the decks of cards are kept organized. In the middle of the board is a list of actions that can be taken when a player’s ship is at the Outpost in the center of the map.

Some of the ship and enemy standees. Photo by Michael Knight.
The standees in the game represent the player’s ships as well as monsters and skeleton ships. There are 8 player sloops, 8 player brigantines, and 4 player galleons. In addition to a skeleton sloop and galleon, there is a kraken and a megalodon.

The ship cards keep track of the status of your ships and crew. Photo by Michael Knight.
Every player has two ships and each has a ship card. These ship cards keep track of the status of a specific ship including the crew, the cargo in the hold, the water level, and any damage the ship may have taken.

Be sure to play your Fortune cards. You get at least one per round and can only hold 3 in your hand at the end of your turn. Photo by Michael Knight.
Fortune cards represent good luck, quirks of fate, and even dirty tricks. Players each begin with 3 fortune cards. The cards contain directions on when they can be played and their effects. While players can have any number of fortune cards in their hand, they must discard down to only three during the clean-up phase at the end of their turn.

Completing voyages is a great way to earn reputation, as well as gold and treasure. Photo by Michael Knight.
Voyage cards represent the contracts players make with each of the three trading companies in the Sea of Thieves. Voyages come in three levels: meagre, valuable, and legendary. The requirements and length to completion increase in difficulty as you do valuable and legendary voyages, but the rewards are also greater as well. Gold Hoarder voyages require you to plunder specific locations to complete their voyages and earn treasure and reputation. The Merchant Alliance also requires you to plunder specific locations and then return to the Outpost or sell cargo at the outpost to earn gold and reputation. The Order of Souls’ voyages require you to defeat skeleton captains or damage skeleton ships to earn reputation.

Event cards keep players on their toes and add some randomness to the game. Photo by Michael Knight.
Event cards are drawn during the event phase by the Scurvy Knave, who is the player with the lowest reputation. Each event card has three sections which are resolved in order. The first spawns a specific enemy. The second part is an event that affects several players on the game board. The final part of the card is an event that usually benefits the Scurvy Knave.

Hire special crew to take advantage of their bonuses. Photo by Michael Knight.
While each ship comes with a complement of regular crew members, players can recruit special crew from the Outpost. Each of these special crew has a token as well as a card that lists the rules that are in effect while a special crew is on your ship. Players of the video game will recognize these characters.

Enemy cards let you keep track of the status of skeletons and monsters as well as direct their actions. Photo by Michael Knight.
The enemy cards list the behaviors of enemies including the kraken, megalodon, skeleton ships, and the skeleton fort as well as keep track of the status of each. These are a great way of reminding players how the enemies behave without having to look it up in the rule book.

Tokens and the two token bags. Photo by Michael Knight.
The game includes lots of tokens that are used to keep track of actions, enemies, gold, loot, and treasure. Some of these tokens are placed in the treasure and loot bags during the game.

The reference cards contain most of the info you will need while playing a game. Photo by Michael Knight.
Each player is provided a two-sided reference card. These contain lists of actions, tasks and action types, turn sequence, crew roll results, symbols, and other important information. These are great for new players and help limit the need to refer to the rule book frequently.

How to Play Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends

The Goal

The goal of the game is to become a Pirate Legend by having the highest reputation at the end of the game.

Setup

Start off by assembling the game board. Position the central hub tile in the middle of the play area and randomly place the six sea tiles around it. For 2-player games, only use four of the sea tiles and position them so they are contiguous around four sides of the hub. Place face-up skeleton tokens on each skeleton symbol on the game board and then place random treasure tokens face-up on the treasure symbols. Place the remaining treasure tokens in the treasure bag. Then place all of the loot tokens and remaining skeleton tokens in the loot bag, careful to keep the skeleton captain tokens separate and out of the bag. Place both bags and remaining tokens near the game board in reach of all players to create a supply for use during the game.

You now need to set up the outpost board. Place it near the game board and shuffle the special crew deck and place it face-down on the indicated spot. Take the top three cards and place them face-up in a row to the right of the deck. Shuffle the event and fortune decks and place them face-down in their positions along the right side of the board. Finally, shuffle each of the three voyage decks separately and place them in their spots along the left side of the outpost board.

Each player chooses a color and places their corresponding reputation token on the starting position on the outpost board. They then take their color’s three action tokens, reference card, and two sloop ship cards and place them in front of them. On each of these two ship cards, players place a crew token with the color side up on each crew slot, a water level token in the bottom space, and draw two resource tokens from the loot bag and place them face-down in the ship’s hold spot. Players then place their color’s brigantine and galleon standees and galleon card nearby for use later in the game. Now place the kraken card next to the board and shuffle the six kraken tokens and place them near the card with the tentacle side up.

After choosing a starting player, players take their staring gold from the supply. The first player takes 600 gold, the second player 700 gold, the third player 800 gold, and the fourth player 900 gold. Each player draws three fortune cards and three cards from the meagre voyage deck. Then starting with the first player, each player places their two sloop standees on one of the four island hexes around the Outpost on the central hub so that each island only has one player’s ships there. It is now time to start playing the game.

A two-player game all setup and ready to play. The smaller map for a two-player game helps foster more player interaction. Photo by Michael Knight.
Gameplay

Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends is played in a series of rounds. Each round is divided into four phases: the Fleets phase, the Ocean Hazards phase, the Event phase, and the Fortune phase. Let’s take a look at each phase in turn.

Fleets Phase

This is the phase when each player takes their turn, starting with the first player. This phase consists of four steps taken in order. During the first step, if one or both of a player’s ships were sunk, they respawn at an island on a random sea tile. All crew are restored and any damage is removed so you get a fresh start.

The Action step is where most of the gameplay takes place. Each player gets three actions represented by the three action tokens. An action is assigned to one of the player’s ships and one ship can only be assigned a maximum of two actions, meaning one ship will get two actions and the second ship only one action. When a ship is assigned an action, each crew member can perform one task. If a crew has been defeated, they must do the revive task. Otherwise, they can sail the ship into an adjacent hex, repair the ship by discarding a resource token to remove a damage token from the ship’s card, or bail and lower the ship’s water level by one. After each crew has completed its task, the ship can then perform one of five actions. Most actions require a crew roll. To do this, the player rolls one die for each of their active crew. Rolls of 1 or 2 are discarded. Rolls of 3, 4, or 5 count as one success, and a 6 is two successes. The successful dice are placed by the ship and then used for the action.

The red sloop has fired upon the blue sloop. Since it has two crew, they roll 2 dice and score 3 successes. The blue sloop receives 3 damage tokens to place on its card. If its crew does not repair the damage during their next turn, the blue sloop will sink. Photo by Michael Knight.
The player can choose the full sail action to move the ship one hex for each success. The movement must be in a straight line. If the ship is in the same hex as an enemy ship or another player’s ship, for each success in the crew roll, place one damage token on the target’s card. The plunder action lets players fight to discard a skeleton from the ship’s hex, loot an island and pull a token from the look bag, or haul to remove a cargo token from the ship’s hex and place it face down in the ship’s hold. A player can perform as many plunder actions as they have successes. When a ship is at the Outpost in the center of the map, they can trade which allows them to sell cargo, repair their ship, spend gold to upgrade their ship to a larger ship, hire special crew, and seek new voyages. A player can also play a special action on one of their fortune cards instead of performing one of the other four actions. The fortune card is then discarded afterward.

During the third step of the phase, players raise the water level token one space for each damage token on their ship. If the token reaches the top space, the ship sinks. When a ship sinks, the player removes their ship standee from the map, leaving any cargo tokens from the hold in the hex where it sunk.

The fourth step is clean up. The current player removes all of the action tokens from their ships. If they have more than three fortune cards or three voyage cards, they discard down to three of each type. Any empty special crew slots at the Outpost are filled with cards drawn from the deck. Then the next player takes their turn for the phase.

Ocean Hazard Phase

After all players have completed their turn during the Fleets phase, monsters and skeleton ships take their turn. The enemy with the lowest number on their reference card goes first. Each of these has enemy cards describing their behavior for this phase.

Event Phase

During this phase, the Scurvy Knave (the player with the lowest reputation) draws an even card and then resolves each of the three sections in order. First enemies spawn on the map. These can be a megalodon, the kraken, a skeleton ship, or the skeleton fort. The second part of the event card usually has something that will affect all players. This could include placing treasure or skeletons on certain islands. Finally, the last part of the event card usually provides some type of benefit for the Scurvy Knave.

Fortune Phase

This is the final phase of the round. Each player draws one fortune card. In addition, players draw an additional fortune card for each fortune symbol between their token on the reputation track and the token of the player in the lead. Therefore, the player in the lead will only get one fortune card while the other players may be able to draw two or more cards.

Game End

The end of the game is triggered the first time a player reaches 25 reputation. Play continues to the end of the current round, then players calculate their final reputation score. Players gain 1 reputation for every full 500 gold they have in their possession. They suffer the penalty for any voyages their ships have started but not completed. Voyage cards still in their hands are ignored. Special crew cards as well as brigantines and galleons each have a reputation value which is added to the player’s score. After calculating the final scores, the player with the highest reputation is the winner and becomes a Pirate Legend. In case of a tie, the player with the most treasure is the winner, and if there is still a tie, the player with the most loot.

Why You Should Play Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends

As I mentioned earlier, my son and I enjoy playing the video game Sea of Thieves. We even enjoyed exploring the storyline and lore of the game in books and comic books. Therefore, when we learned there was a tabletop game based on the video game, we were excited to try it out. I have played several different pirate-themed games. Some are good and some are not so good. I was a bit apprehensive about whether the tabletop game could live up to the video game. After playing it, I feel like Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends is a good interpretation of the video game. It has the same feel as the video game but lets you play at a more strategic level. Instead of playing as a single character, you are a captain of two ships and decide how best to use your crew members to complete voyages, keep your ships afloat, and earn gold and reputation.

I like the way the gameplay is organized, though with phases, turns, actions, tasks, and so forth it can be a bit confusing at first. However, after a couple of rounds, players figure it out and the reference cards really help. Crew members become very important because, not only is each crew able to do a task during an action, but they also provide a die for crew rolls. Special crew provide additional bonuses so they are worth spending gold to hire them at the Outpost. I found that the fortune cards really provide a lot of flavor and fun, bringing in a lot from the video game. Since you can only keep three in your hand during the clean-up step, as you gain them, be sure to use them or you may lose them. Another mechanic I found that worked well was damaged. While you can take damage during other players’ turns or form enemies, that damage does not cause the water to rise and sink your ship until after you have had an opportunity to use actions to repair the damage.

The blue sloop with two crew performed a plunder action and rolled two successes.