I no longer think of Volko Ruhnke as a man, but as a machine purpose-built for stamping out novel conflict simulations. COIN, Levy & Campaign, that older one where the terrorists have the efficacy of ’90s movie baddies, and now Hunt for Blackbeard, an unexpected romp that’s as much about setting the record straight as it is about blasting pirates with grapeshot. I now know more about Blackbeard than at any point in my life. Which is to say, I know a lot less, given the man’s outsized legend.

Almost everything we know about Blackbeard is wrong, or at least embellished from later sources seeking to cash in on the pirate’s notoriety. That he learned his trade under the legendary Captain Hornigold — unconfirmed. That he braided his hair with smoking fuses — not exactly the sort of fire hazard a man who worked with gunpowder would accept. That he murdered a swath across three seas — well, there was some murder, that’s true. But not as much as previously reported. Not when a pirate’s work required most crews to throw down their arms.

If anything, the Edward Thatch we come to know in Hunt for Blackbeard is something of a sad sack, at least when placed alongside his outsized legend. His great vessel has been stripped. His plunder has been sold down to its last few barrels and crates. His crew has been reduced to a couple dozen hands. Even his most infamous companions are on the outs; Stede Bonnet’s surviving crewmen are likely informers rather than allies, and Israel Hands, Blackbeard’s long-time second in command, may soon be sent on a doomed mission to allow the captain to claim his portion of their remaining goods.

Some of these details are relegated to the historical notes, and this, being a production from Fort Circle Games, provides excellent timelines and essays. But the diminished status of the infamous captain is on display right there on the board as well. For one thing, there’s the scope of the hunt. Confined to the sounds, towns, and islands of North Carolina, this pursuit is leagues away from the Caribbean waters that usually dominate pirate yarns. And then there’s the scale. Blackbeard’s fleet has become one ship, the Adventure, ill-fitted and undercrewed. His pursuers have only two ships, both of them relatively small, plus a band of hunters who travel by land to check the colony’s towns and inlets. These are, in a sense, an invading force, commissioned and outfitted by the governor of Virginia. But as invading forces go, sending bounty hunters from one colony into another isn’t an excursion into foreign territory.

For his part, Thatch behaves more like a cornered rat than a pirate king. Hunt for Blackbeard opens with the pirate standing at an intersection. Rather than expend the resources to hunt down every last offender, the Crown has offered a pardon to all who will renounce the pirate’s life. Most in the colonies have already accepted. Thatch, too, has taken the offer, only to return to the sea to seize some easy plunder. Now the hunters are coming for him, and while he has relative shelter in North Carolina thanks to his largesse with colony officials, the ensuing game of cat and mouse has the mood of a deepening sunset rather than a crescendo.

There are two sides in Hunt for Blackbeard, hunter and hunted, but Ruhnke’s virtuosity at game design clutters and blurs those roles.

Both sides, for instance, are gluttonous for information. In the case of the Hunters, that means Blackbeard’s location — whether that of the famed captain, his lieutenant, or the camp he might periodically visit to resupply or lick his wounds. But for Blackbeard, word of his pursuers’ deeds is every bit as precious. The Hunters are always visible on the map, but how far their reach has extended, where their informants have told them to search, or whether they have a particular stretch of the sea under surveillance, those details may be concealed or laid bare depending on context and choice.

The same goes for the question of which side is hunting whom. Nominally, the Hunters are, well, the hunters. As soon as they’ve outfitted their vessels, they depart from Virginia and begin the chase. But all the while, Blackbeard is laying preparations of his own. Looting vessels, preparing the Adventure, buying off witnesses. When the time comes for the spark to touch powder, it’s entirely possible that Blackbeard will sink the competition.

What Ruhnke produces, then, is a double-blind game of entrapment. First there’s the race. Blackbeard hurries to gain or spend his treasure, whether to reestablish himself as a great pirate captain or to secure another pardon. The Hunters hustle to outfit their vessels before the trail goes cold. But then, over the course of the ensuing rounds, the fierce dance between predators.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about Hunt for Blackbeard is its speed. The game only lasts four rounds. And these aren’t the drawn-out bullet-point-ridden rounds of something like Here I Stand. While there are still bullet points to tick off, the phases pass at a brisk pace, bouncing between sides so rapidly that there’s hardly a moment of downtime. First, the Hunters interview informants, giving them a glimpse at Blackbeard’s potential location — a step that requires Blackbeard to avert his gaze, lest he learn what the Hunters have gleaned. Second, Blackbeard spends his time preparing his ship, sailing, and planning any piratical activities. Again someone must close their eyes, although it’s the Hunter player this time. After that, the Hunters take their turn proper, moving their ships and perhaps picking up their quarry’s trail. Only then does Blackbeard actually accomplish any pirating, a step that may well have been interrupted by the arrival of the Hunters.

Playing through these steps, a few thoughts spring to mind.

First, there’s an essential tactility to Hunt for Blackbeard. The actions themselves are brief, but the need to physically turn the blocks gives every movement a sense of growing unease. When I played digitally, the entire session took perhaps a third of the duration, but in its haste lost its sense of place. It’s one thing to click an icon; another entirely to hover one’s fingertips over the block, stomach knotted into a fist as you try to deduce whether an earlier clatter had come from here or there, or was perhaps your opponent shifting a few components as a ruse. This process elongates the game, but is necessary: touching the pieces, straining your senses for clues, seeing the shadows cast by those monolithic blocks and wondering whether they conceal a trace of your foe’s passage or a flock of passing gulls, these are as much components in the game’s telling as the rules or the wooden ships.

As much as Ruhnke excels at designing macro-level systems, he still has yet to create a compelling method for resolving combat. Perhaps the game’s biggest disappointment is the moment of battle, when, after all those preparations, both sides roll a couple dice to see who hits the higher number. It’s fitting, I suppose, given the chanciness of naval combat. The historical Blackbeard managed to rake one of his pursuers with grapeshot, effectively removing their ship from the fight, before the trap was sprung and he was overwhelmed during a boarding action. But after all those steps and countersteps — after that dance! — it wouldn’t have gone amiss to put some showmanship into the last struggle. What could have been a wall of thunder instead comes across as a puff of smoke.

Lastly, however, the game leaves me in awe of the way board game excel at representing history. I’ve read about Blackbeard. Not a lot. Just enough to know we don’t know much. But it wasn’t until seeing it rendered this way that I understood some of the words on the page. The intimacy of the space. The smallness of a man whose legend has outgrown him and now nips at his heels. The small invasion of a neighboring colony, one governor determined to rid himself of a pest that his peer next door has decided to indulge. Piracy was always caught up in the history of empires, and nowhere is that clearer than here, with official pardons and corrupt commissioners in the balance, populated by enemies and victims, but also imperial troops crowding into spaces that were once open, with safe havens where an infamous pirate acted as a patron rather than a danger to be cut out with the point of a saber. To play this game is to grasp the history a little more tightly.

Is it disappointing that Hunt for Blackbeard operates better as history than as a plaything? Oh, maybe. A little bit. Especially when the game concludes with a wet fuse rather than a discharged cannon, I can’t help but feel some letdown.

But I’m impressed with the trappings that surround that climactic battle. Once again, Ruhnke has created a system that will hopefully earn emulation; once again, Fort Circle has crafted an enviable representation of American history, one that complicates and deepens its subject matter rather than frocking him in smoking fuses.

 

A complimentary copy of Hunt for Blackbeard was provided by the publisher.

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I would describe my feelings toward Regicide as “appreciation,” despite it finding dedicated fans all around me. For years it was in regular rotation on my wife’s phone; my sister-in-law bought the fancy custom deck rather than just using a generic deck of playing cards. My own interest had more to do with the game as an act of repurposement: the clever casting of face cards as mad royals who needed to be put down, the suits transformed into character classes for blocking attacks or repairing injuries.

Regicide Legacy, designed by the same trio as the original — Paul Abrahams, Luke Badger, and Andy Richdale — is very nearly the exact opposite of the original game, at least in terms of form factor. Where the previous Regicide could be played with any old deck scrounged from a vacation bag, this edition is something of a throwback. It’s a genuine legacy title, for one thing: torn cards, stickers, micro-expansions, all of it. Its cooperative/solitaire campaign is generous. Moreover, it’s hard, significantly harder than is the norm in our current obliging hobby. It isn’t uncommon for a chapter to take two, three, half a dozen tries before your band of mercenaries is permitted to move on to their next target.

Now that I’ve wrapped it up, I can squarely say that the ordeal was thrilling, brilliant, and exhausting.

If you haven’t played the original Regicide… first, maybe give it a try. The rules are freely available, and as noted earlier you can play with a deck of cards that costs five bucks at the supermarket. That’s if you don’t have one handy already.

Regicide Legacy begins with Regicide. As in, its first chapter is the base game with only the slightest of modifications. Your crew, a band of adventurers, comprises the forty non-face cards of an ordinary playing deck, plus perhaps one or two goblins depending on player count. Their strength ranges from one (for an ace) to ten, across four classes that have been given their own iconography rather than repeating the regular French suits.

The face cards, meanwhile, become a deck of targets. First you’ll face the jacks, then the queens, then the kings, ideally lining them up for the guillotine. This is no easy feat. Each royal has a sturdy pool of health points, and punches back after each attack, requiring you to spend cards from your hand to absorb the blow.

The cardplay is impressive. Depending on your chosen attacker, your crew avails themselves of an ability. Warriors deal double damage to your target. Paladins block return damage. Clerics cycle discards back into your deck, which Bards then use to refill everybody’s hands. There’s a life cycle to this process. Some cards can be paired, such as aces, here styled as animal companions, or duplicate ranks whose strength would sum to ten or less. Success demands a delicate balance, between offense and defense, between healing and aggression, between risk and caution.

It’s pretty much inevitable that you will lose.

That inaugural failure, though, demonstrates the ways that Regicide Legacy intends to depart from its predecessor. Rather than shuffling the cards and giving it another try, you’re invited to open the first of the set’s many boxes. Within, you discover mercenaries: multi-rank cards that can be readily paired with more of their peers than usual, heavy hitters, maybe an extra goblin or two. Each merc has a cost in its corner. One loss means you have one gold to spend.

So you buy a card, add it to your deck, and take another stab at toppling the divine right of kings.

Again, failure is largely inevitable. It’s just a little less inevitable than before. Second loss, two gold. You grab a couple new fighters. Shuffle. Again.

Another loss. That’s three more gold. Now your company is becoming noticeably tougher. Maybe you were struggling with damage output; some extra Warriors will make up the difference. Or perhaps you found it difficult to manage your hand; that’s where Clerics and Bards come in. Whatever your particular weakness, there’s a patch for it.

At some point, the odds turn in your favor. Inside the first chapter box there is a sealed booster pack with its own instructions. Your mercenaries depart. New cards are introduced. Another chapter presents a new set of bosses, each tougher than the last.

Along the way, a few things become apparent.

First, Regicide Legacy wants you to succeed. Even if only belatedly, after spending heaps of gold on up-powered mercenaries who round out your company’s deficiencies. Where the original game bordered on the misanthropic, booting you back to the beginning at even the slightest trip, the ability to pad your deck with repeat failures is a wonderful tool. Some make it easier to pair cards, or add wild aces, or, eventually, strip even the toughest bosses of their natural immunities to your character abilities.

Next, Regicide Legacy earns that second ligature. This is a legacy game through and through. In its earlier stages, this means variable card sleeves. To offer only the lightest of spoilers, the members of your company can become corrupted, adorning themselves in the thorn-framed sleeves usually reserved for royals, and incurring a penalty when played. Not long after that, you’ll encounter more transformative effects. Stickers that dual-class cards, minigames for randomly determining which character succumbs to a story beat, and, yes, eventually the dreaded moment that was so transgressive back in Risk Legacy, the command to rid yourself a card for good.

Go ahead. Tear it up. Don’t let your squeamishness show. Don’t let your fingers tremble. Don’t check how much the reset box costs. Uh oh. You looked. That’s as much as, like, fifteen decks of playing cards. But who would buy that many playing cards? You’re here for the drama, baby, and there’s no drama quite like drama that inflicts lasting damage.

The main highlight is the procession of new character classes that are added to your ever-expanding band. To the original four — the original six if you count animal companions and goblin jesters — there’s enough to more than double the roster. I won’t spoil the surprise, but the way your deck morphs from one thing into something else entirely is quite the sight to behold. There’s wild magic to be uncovered, risky operators who might help or hinder your goals, heroes who always seem to show up in the nick of time, and complicated figures who require constant reminders.

Because Regicide Legacy, already a tangled, difficult game, only grows more tangled and more difficult as additional chapters are unlocked. More complicated, too. Sequencing matters. The subtle distinctions between two defensive classes matter. Whether cards are discarded or banished, which abilities a boss blocks, how cards are shifted across the board in this particular scenario — everything matters.

In our case, we played nearly the entire campaign four-handed. There was me, of course, plus my wife and sister-in-law. I doubt I would have survived by excluding the fanatics. We were also joined by my mother-in-law, a veteran of countless trick-takers. Her inclusion highlighted both the game’s strengths and its weaknesses.

Strengths first. Across the duration of the campaign, Regicide Legacy held our interest. Even my mother-in-law’s interest. Even when we were tired from battering ourselves against a particularly difficult chapter. (The worst offender, we discovered, had been nerfed post-release.) At our weekly dinner, the group was eager to see what came next. Not so much in the story, which is the usual fantasy muddle of proper nouns. But in the interplay of cards and abilities. In the composition of our deck. In which sticker would be appended to which character. In the developing shape of the thing.

But these strengths are attended by problems. Foremost, that Regicide Legacy soon gets too big for its britches. My mother-in-law spent the back half of the campaign showing her hand to whichever daughter was seated beside her, effectively requiring someone to play two hands simultaneously. She recalled the starting classes well enough, and even remembered a few of the later outliers. But as for the distinction between a Mage and a Reaver or between a Druid and a Chanter, no player aid was sufficient to fill every gap.

Perhaps this sounds like an issue of age. To some degree, it was, as my mother-in-law would freely admit. But even those of us inured to modern hobby games and RPG classes and this particular brand of cardplay sometimes found our minds snowed in by the game’s avalanche of intersecting triggers. It isn’t only the character classes; there are also the bosses to consider, plus the special rules that govern this chapter, plus, often, the lingering rules from last week’s session, finally cemented in time to be discarded with the previous tuckbox. Most of the time, I had to run the turn-by-turn action, and even then it wasn’t uncommon for someone to stab back that my reminder necessitated a counter-reminder because of such-and-such character or some lingering effect from the scenario instructions.

Is it too much? We finished the campaign. We survived. We succeeded. But we also stumbled along the way. Sometimes we realized two rounds later that we’d flubbed a rule earlier. More than once, we restarted a session altogether, the rules suddenly clear where previously they had been opaque.

Personally, this process was many things. Frustrating at times; exhausting at others.

But it was exciting, too, and exciting in a way that very few games have been before. We developed favorites — dual-classed Elashor, Vegarian the Vegetarian, my crush Lierin — and groaned at the appearance of others — Dinky, may you be damned to the underworld for eternity for how often you have betrayed us. We laughed a lot, especially when a new boss crushed us to powder, or when somebody stared at the problem before them, eyes glazed over, only for someone to recall the exact rule that would save us from a doomed situation.

The remaining question is whether we’ll return. Some of us already have; my sister-in-law has launched her second campaign with another group, spreading the good word to unwitting converts. There’s an entire post-game to tackle, justification for the potential waste of a discarded core box, and I can confirm that it’s a smart system, randomly doling out enemies and modifiers and boons that will test the hardy company that was forged over the previous thirty battles.

So. Will we? Return, that is?

I don’t know. Maybe someday. I plan to keep the box, despite my doubts that we’ll remember the class abilities if we go more than a month without a session. Even if we don’t, I can’t help but regard Regicide Legacy with fondness. I can’t remember a single story beat from the narrative. But the stories it told above the table — the way our deck transformed along with our aptitude as players, the inside jokes we developed, the characters whose named we pronounced five different ways — those are worth keeping around. That’s the real legacy here. That’s what makes me consider Regicide Legacy such an unlikely success. Torn cards? Stickers? Psh. I’m only interested in the stickers of the soul. The torn cards of our feelings.

And with those strained metaphors, I think that’s enough Regicide Legacy for one sitting.

 

A complimentary copy of Regicide Legacy was provided by the publisher.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can read my first-quarter update of 2026: the best board games, movies, books, and more!)