Raiding Parties: Brethren of the Coast
From: Nick Pace Entertainment
Reviewed by: Tony McRee

Raiding Parties: Brethren of the Coast (RP:BotC) is a pirate themed card game in which you are trying to beat your opponent by defeating his raiding party before he defeats your raiding party. Crews battle each other through either long range combat or melee encounters with the outcome based on the flip of a card from a standard deck of playing cards. Before beginning the game, players “hire” their crew by determine the amount of gold that is to be spent. In other words, this is how you build your deck of cards. Once that is determined, players select their crew and let the battle begin.

Need to stop at this point and say that Raiding Parties: Brethren of the Coast is considered to be the expansion to the original game. Therefore, in this review, while I did not have the original game it was still possible to get a flavor for the game as a whole. The expansion added more ships and lands and did not have as many crew members as the original Raiding Pirates game. The original was produced in 2012 and the expansion was done in 2014. Both games are very hard to find currently and it has been awhile since the website was updated. Now back to the review.

“Hit the Deck”
First thing that catches your eye will be the art, it is gorgeous. This will help add to the theme of the game. The game is very quick to play and easy to teach. But like all card games of this type, it comes down to the deck building and that is where time will need to be spent and might challenge players until they get familiar with the various cards.

Because the game is quick to play, it can easily be set back up and go again. Strategy is not only in the hiring of the crew, but as you play and go through the normal card deck to determine outcome, you must figure out what your chances are based on what is left in that deck. Example, you play the Pistol card that will hit on a Heart, Club, King or Queen. Well, we know that there are 13 cards in each suit, and there are 4 Kings and 4 Queens to the deck. So for the pistol to hit, there is 30 card chance if the deck were still at 52 cards. But as you play, these odds will either improve or get worse depending on what has been played previously. Players will need to keep track of this to determine their chances during the game. While this seems to be a simple idea, it is a great strategy mechanism for this game.

If you like pirates and quick playing card games where the strategy is deceptive and the luck of the draw plays a small part in the outcome, give Raiding Pirates a shot if you can find it.

Codex Rating: 15 – Fairly Good
Product Summary
Raiding Pirates: Brethren of the Coast
Type of Game: Deck Building
Game Design by: Nick Pace
Artist: Don Maitz
Game Components Included: 55 game cards, rules of play
Retail Price: $ 16.99 (US)
Number of Players: up to 4
Player Ages: 10 and up
Play Time: 30 minutes
Website: http://www.raidingparties.com

About the author

Tony McRee (damcree)

I have been playing board games for as long as I can remember. When the summer heat in North Carolina was too much to be outside, games would be broken out. One that was sure to be played was Stratego. Even in later years, games would continue to be a major part of my life, none more that APBA Baseball and card games. Outside of gaming, I enjoy playing all sports but the current favorite is disc golf. There are some incredible courses in the area and a ever growing disc golf community keeps them in great shape. Whenever time permits, I will break out a game and play with family and friends and gets great enjoyment out of teaching new games to others. My favorite style of games are those that promote a fairly fast style of play and can be done in under two hours. My favorite games are those that promote analysis paralysis by the players or promote large amounts of downtime waiting on other players. I go by the handle damcree on Board Game Geek