Dead Men Tell No Tales board game review

Get ready to board a burning ship with your pirate crew and grab all the loot from the remaining skeleton crew before it’s too late. Because if you’re unable to search the whole ship, if there are too many explosions, if deckhands overrun the ship, or you if run out of pirate crew before you grab all the loot, you’re done for.

Dead Men Tell No Tales is a new cooperative board game from Minion Games and we’ve had a blast playing it!

We’ve played a bunch of times and have only managed to win once. But that doesn’t mean we haven’t had a great time trying. It only makes us more determined to do a better job next time storming onto the burning ship in search of loot.

There are plenty of things to love about Dead Men Tell No Tales. So many, that our video review of the board game is our longest review yet!

It’s not that the game is that complicated, but rather because I wanted to give a complete run down of how the game plays so you can witness all the elements that make it such a great game.

Since the full video review is over 17 minutes, here’s a run down of when each portion is covered in the video. So if you’d like to skip ahead to a certain part, go for it. Because true pirates set their own course anyway…

0:00 Overview
2:30 Search Ship (one way to lose)
4:10 Pirate Actions
6:40 Skelit’s Revenge (that’s the name of the ship)
7:30 Battles
11:00 Dead Pirates (another way to lose)
12:00 Deckhands (another way to lose)
13:40 Explosions (yet another way to lose)
15:40 Only Way to Win
16:40 Final Thoughts

Can the whole family enjoy Dead Men Tell No Tales?

Dead Men Tell No Tales incorporates the pirate theme very well. If your family includes anyone who’d love to siege a ship on the high seas for treasure, then Dead Men Tell No Tales is definitely for you.

Of course, it’s even better if you have a few of those people around because the game is a cooperative game where everyone works together as a team to win. As with most cooperative games, there are many ways to lose and only one way to win.

Since it’s a cooperative game, younger kids may also enjoy playing along with the older kids and adults even though the age recommendation is 13+.

What the published recommended age usually means is people at that age could figure out and play the game unassisted. So if your 8 year-old loves pirates and wants to join in the fun, we’d say, “pull up a chair”. Even though he/she may not understand all the methods to the game, as a cooperative game others can help suggest things to do on his/her turn and they’ll have just as much fun.

 

How to play Dead Men Tell No Tales

For a full picture of how to play, definitely watch the video review. But since it’s our longest video review to date, I understand you may not have time to watch it all. If that’s the case, then here’s the super-short version to read.

To start, each player takes on the role of a pirate with a unique ability and has 5 actions to use on their turn. In addition, they get an item that will give them an additional unique ability.

On a player’s turn they’ll complete 3 stages: Search the Ship, Do Pirate Actions, and then reveal and resolve Skelit’s Revenge.

To Search the Ship a player reveals a room tile and places it next to an existing room (doors must match up). They then place a colored die on the tile as indicated on the tile – which shows the fire level in that room. Then they draw a token from the bag to also add to that tile indicating the danger in the room (trapdoor, skeleton crew, or guard).

In the Pirate Action stage, a player takes as many actions as they have action tokens (typically 5). They can use actions to Walk, Run, Fight Fires, Eliminate a deckhand, Pick up a token, Rest, Increase Battle Strength, or Swap their Item Card. As players Walk or Run around the burning ship they’ll also take on more Fatigue. If they completely wear themselves out, they’re toast.

If a pirate enters a room with a skeleton crew or Guard, a battle commences (which doesn’t take an action). To Battle, the player rolls a die and compares the result with the crew or guard to see who wins. Bad things happen if you don’t win – namely suffering more Fatigue. Players can also pass unused action tokens to the next player.

In the Skelit’s Revenge stage, the player turns over the top card in the deck and resolves the effects. The first thing to resolve is the Fire Level check. The card will indicate a die color and number. Any room on the ship with that has a die that matches, will increase the fire level by 1 (turn the die up 1). If the Fire Level ever reaches 6, the room explodes. (And that’s never good.)

At the bottom of the card will also be a symbol that indicates whether deckhands appear, deckhands spread out, or skeleton crew move. If a skeleton crew enters a room with a pirate, that pirate must do battle with the crew (even if it’s not that player’s turn).

Once all those bad things happen, it’s the next player’s turn.

Play continues until either:

• The pirates WIN: Get the target number of loot off the ship (adjust the difficulty by changing the target amount)
• The pirates LOSE by one of 4 ways: Not being able to search the whole ship, being overrun with deckhands, losing too many pirates (to death), or having too many explosions occur.

That’s the game in a nutshell.

But since that was the super-short version, the condensed description may not deliver the total feeling of fun at each of those stages. You really ought to at least take a look at a few parts of the video review to get a better feel.

 

Why I Love Dead Men Tell No Tales

When I first heard of Dead Men Tell No Tales, I was immediately intrigued. First of all, I really enjoy cooperative board games. I love working together with family or buddies to puzzle our way through beating the game. And I like the pirate genre.

So putting both “cooperative” and “pirate” together, I hoped it would be a good game. At the same time, I was a bit cautious because I wanted to be sure to judge the game based on it’s own merits and actual play rather than wishes and hopes.

Now that I’ve played it a bunch of times, I can confirm that it’s a great game and one I enjoy a lot.

There are a number of reasons why I enjoy the game so much and I talk about them in my video review. But I’d also like to highlight a couple of them here.

First, I like the multiple elements of randomness.

In most cooperative board games, there are a couple elements of randomness. For example, in Pandemic there are two card decks where the random card draw impacts the game. One of the decks determines which city will be infected next and the other deck of city and effect cards allows players different options on their turn – like finding a cure or traveling to or from certain cities.

In Castle Panic, there are random card draws to the players’ hands but there’s also a random die roll that determines which section of the board the monsters enter from. In Forbidden Desert, there are random card draws for sand storms as well as random tile and subsequent treasure movement.

But in Dead Men Tell No Tales, there are random tile draws, different tile placement possibilities, and random token draws all just during the Search the Ship stage. There are also random card draws for the bad things to happen which includes fire levels jumping, deckhands storming out, and explosions. As if that weren’t enough, there are also random results from die rolls during battles.

The combination of these random elements means the game isn’t a puzzle that can be “solved” with one dominant player telling everyone else what to do. Instead every game plays out differently than the one before. It also requires a lot of teamwork to truly combat everything going on in the game.

Having all of these random elements may sound like players don’t have a lot of control in the game. But that’s not all there is to the game. Players still have plenty of control because of the actions they can take.

Which leads me to the second thing I really like about Dead Men Tell No Tales…
Sharing actions with other pirates.

In many cooperative games we’ve played, there are times when available actions are wasted. For example, we’ve had plenty of moments in Forbidden Island when we use 3 of our 4 available actions and there’s nothing advantageous to do with our remaining action. So we do nothing and it feels wasted.

The same thing can be said in games of Pandemic or Defenders of the Realm.

But in Dead Men Tell No Tales, any actions unused can be passed to the next pirate/player. So if I only use 3 actions, based on what might happen in the game, it may be better for us if I pass my remaining 2 actions to the next player so he can take 7 actions on his turn – allowing him to garner even more strength before charging in to battle a Guard.

There are a number of other things I really enjoy about Dead Men Tell No Tales, but those are my top two. Once you play it, I’m sure you’ll find some reasons of your own.

 

How does Dead Men Tell No Tales score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?

I bet you can guess the answer to this question. Dead Men Tell No Tales definitely scores high on our “let’s play again” game meter.

Just when we think we’ve got the upper hand and are going to pull out a win, something pops up to totally switch our fate. Whether it be too many deckhands going unchecked or a chain of explosions that rip the ship to shreds, winning the game slips away from our grasp.

And in those moments, we laugh, talk about the fun we had, and raise our hopes for the next time when we’ll win.

(Note: We have yet to lose by not being able to search the whole ship or too many dead pirates. Of course, it may just be a matter of time.)

With as much fun as we’ve had, Dead Men Tell No Tales was an obvious choice to be on our 2015 Board Game Gift Guide.

Thanks Minion Games for a fantastic cooperative board game!

Pick up a copy of Dead Men Tell No Tales