Dead Man's Draw and Captain Carcass, Game Review

Pirates like to collect treasure. The more treasure they get, the happier they are. But, how do you go about collecting your booty? Do you collect a piece or two at a time, or push on to see if you can get a bigger haul at one time? If you try to get too much, you might lose everything you had lined up to put in your hull.

I first time I heard about Dead Man's Draw a friend mentioning how his kids loved to play it—an electronic game. I recently received a copy of the tabletop version of Dead Man's Draw along with Captain Carcass. So I sat down with three friends and we played a few games.

The strategy of these games is easy to learn. On your turn, turn over a card from the deck and place it in the play area. After the first card you have to decide to either collect the treasure, or draw another card. If the card is the same suit as a previous draw, you bust, and all the cards are moved to the discard pile. If there is no matching suit, you have to decide to continue or stop and collect.

The deck has ten suits. Each suit has a play-affecting aspect that must be followed before deciding if you are going to stop or continue. This allows for strategy as you might have to place a card you collected previously, relieve an opponent of one of their cards, or add cards to the play area, which could bust you. Along with the playing deck there are additional trait and situational cards.

The additional cards allow for variations from one game to the next. The Trait cards allow the player a specified ability during play. The variant cards (only in Dead Man's Draw) change an aspect of the game: how the cards bust, are banked, scoring, or another end game aspect.

The only other difference between the two games is Dead Man's Draw is listed for ages 13+, while Captain Carcass is listed for ages 8+. The reasoning is the artwork and the strategy changes introduced when using the variants. Both games are close to the popular electronic version of the game.

Playing Dead Man's draw reminded me of Pina Pirata (Guild Master Gaming review) These two games gave me the same feel, making them great games to have around for younger players.

Dead Man's Drawand Captain Carcass, from Mayday Games, were designed by Derek Paxton, Leo Li, and Chris Bray for 2–4 players. A game last for about 15 minutes.

I would like to thank Mayday Games for the review copies.

If you have any comments, questions, or critiques please leave a comment here, or send an email to guildmastergaming@gmail.com.

You can join Guild Master Gaming on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter (@GuildMstrGmng).