Jolly Roger: The Game of Piracy & Mutiny

About this board game

Jolly Roger: The Game of Piracy & Mutiny is a card game for 4–10 players that takes about 30 minutes to play. As pirate crew members aboard a ship, you have elected a captain who will guide the voyage toward either fortune or disaster.

Each turn, the captain chooses the ship’s destination and the target it will attack. Once the assault begins, the crew must cooperate—at least to some extent—to defeat the victim before dividing the treasure among themselves.

Gold is valuable, but it is not truly safe until you bury it on Treasure Island. This makes every raid a contest between immediate rewards, personal ambition, and the need to protect what you have already collected.

At every decision, unrest may spread through the crew. Another player can call “Mutiny” and attempt to overthrow the captain, taking command of the ship themselves. When a mutiny begins, you must decide how to use your cards during the struggle and the battle that may follow.

The central challenge is knowing when to cooperate and when to hold something back. How much help should you offer during an attack, and what should you save for the next mutiny? In Jolly Roger, the crew’s goals may align for one moment and collide the next.

Every pirate ultimately wants the same thing: gold. When the game ends, the player who has collected the most becomes the richest pirate in Tortuga.