Dead Men Tell No Tales: Kraken expansion review
You’ve vanquished the skeleton crew, you’ve grabbed the loot, you’ve kept the deckhands in check, and you’re about to escape the burning ship to enjoy your spoils when it happens.
The ship starts to shake.
The floorboards start to rumble.
Then all of a sudden, tentacles start bursting through the boards all over the ship.
You and your fellow pirates stumble away from them the best you can when you notice the Kraken surface just off the bow of the ship and block your exit!
How will you survive?
Start loading the cannons and take him down!
You can in Dead Men Tells No Tales: The Kraken expansion.
As if the base game wasn’t challenging enough, now you’ve got a destructive sea monster to face!
The best part is that it’s just as fun!
How to play Dead Men Tell No Tales: The Kraken
The Kraken expansion fits perfectly with the theme and feel of the base game.
In the base game, players cooperate to loot a certain number of treasure from the burning ship — fighting off deckhands and skeleton crew to do so. If the deckhands overrun the ship, or if the full can’t be fully explored, or there are too many explosions, or too many pirates meet their demise, the players lose. If they get the needed loot off the ship, and all get out, they win.
With The Kraken expansion, players still must do all those things. But they must also kill the Kraken in order to win!
And if the Kraken destroys the ship or pulls it underwater, the players also lose the game.
For a rundown on the original Dead Men Tell No Tales cooperative board game, you can check out our video review. If you’re ready to dive into what’s different, scroll past the video and keep reading.
New things The Kraken expansion adds to the game
The Kraken, Tentacles, and Cannons
We’ll start with the most obvious addition to the game — The Kraken.
The Kraken first appears at the end of the first round. After the last player has taken their first turn, and after they’ve resolved a Skelit’s Revenge card, the Kraken is placed at the rear of the ship. Then the first Kraken card is revealed and resolved.
From this point on, at the end of every player’s turn, they also reveal and resolve a Kraken card.
There are only 4 Kraken cards in the Kraken deck. Three of the cards move the Kraken from column and one card is the Kraken attacking. When a Kraken moves card is drawn, the Kraken simply moves that many columns over. When the Kraken attack card is drawn, tentacles burst through every room tile in that column!
The good news is that this lowers the fire on each of those tile rooms by one. The bad news is that any pirate in an affected room gains 2 Fatigue.
The Kraken’s strength is also increased by one and all Kraken cards are reshuffled to form a new deck. That means that at least every 4 turns, the Kraken will attack!
If tentacles need to placed and there aren’t any left in the supply, the Kraken pulls the ship underwater and everyone loses.
But don’t worry, players can fight back!
Players can also battle the tentacles and the Kraken itself. As a new action, players can Chop Tentacles.
If their pirate’s in a room with tentacles, the player counts all tentacles in that column and that’s their total strength. The player rolls the Battle Die like a regular battle and compares strength. If the pirate’s strength is equal to or greater than the tentacles’ strength, all tentacles in that column are removed.
To attack the Kraken itself, the pirate must be in a room at the rear of the ship. Like other battles, players roll the Battle Die and compare it to the battle strength of the Kraken — which is tracked on the Kraken board. In addition, for every column the pirate is away from the Kraken head, that adds 1 more to the Kraken strength.
You’ll quickly notice that the Kraken strength is usually much higher than one Battle Die and modifiers can attain. Thus, pirates need the help of Cannons.
Another new action players can take is to Load a Cannon by placing a cannon at the front of the column they’re in.
To use a cannon in battle, at least one cannon must be in the same column as the attacking pirate. The cannon token is discarded and the player adds the Cannon Die with their Battle Die (plus any modifiers) to determine their battle strength.
If the total pirate battle strength is less than the Kraken, the pirate’s Fatigue level goes up by the difference.
If the total pirate battle strength is equal to or greater than the Kraken strength, the pirate has Hit the Kraken!
When Hit, the Kraken’s health and strength both go down by one. If the Kraken’s health is reduced to the last space, the Kraken is defeated. For the rest of the game, players don’t draw Kraken cards.
Adrenaline
Every time players successfully chop tentacles or hit the Kraken, they get to draw 2 random face-down Adrenaline tokens, keep one and put the other back.
These tokens are super helpful.
They include things such as reducing the fire level in any rooms of their choice, removing deckhands, moving pirates for free, loading extra cannon, extra strength when attacking the Kraken, and not taking Fatigue.
They are one-use abilities, but they can be used during any player’s action phase. They don’t cost an action to use but must be discarded from the game once used.
Red Deckhand Leaders and Closed Trapdoors
If deckhands weren’t a menace to you before, they sure will be now with the addition of Deckhand Leaders!
The expansion comes with 7 red deckhand leader and 5 more white deckhand tokens. All deckhand tokens are now placed in a bag. When deckhands enter or spread out, deckhand tokens are drawn one at a time from the bag.
If a white deckhand is drawn, it’s placed in the room as normal. If a red deckhand leader token is drawn, it’s placed in the room and the player must draw another deckhand token for that same room!
Red deckhand leaders are defeated the same way as regular deckhands — taking a player action to remove one.
The good news is that The Kraken expansion also includes new trapdoor tokens to replace those in the base game. These trapdoor tokens have one side that shows them closed.
For an action, players can now close a trapdoor in the room they’re in. When a trapdoor is closed and deckhands appear or spread out, that door is simply flipped over to the open side and no deckhands come out. It’s a great way to slow the flow of deckhands.
One more Action
With more going on in the game and more possible actions to take, players now also get one additional action each turn!
(Sure, we always wish for one more even on top of that, but at least this is a good thing to try to stay on top of all that must be done.)
New Character and an Axe
There’s also a new pirate on hand to play during the game — Swivel Gun Sandy.
The great benefit Swivel Gun Sandy adds is that she can use a cannon from any column when attacking the Kraken. Plus, she can re-roll the cannon die once per attack.
Black Gus Garrett also has a new character card to replace the original. He can now re-roll the battle die once in any battle.
In addition, there’s a new item card — Axe. The Axe adds two strength when attacking the Kraken.
Get an Axe in Swivel Gun Sandy’s hand and attack away!
Can the whole family enjoy Dead Men Tell No Tales: The Kraken?
It was just over 3 years ago that we reviewed Dead Men Tell No Tales. And from the length of our video review, you can tell it quickly became one of dad’s favorite cooperative board games.
The Kraken expansion just adds to the fun!
That being said, this is a game best suited for teens and adults. It’s not because there’s any objectionable material in it. But rather it’s because there’s a lot going on and it’s challenging. Plus it lasts longer than the original.
Dead Men Tell No Tales offers plenty of decisions throughout the game that all come with tradeoffs. Adding the Kraken expansion means more tradeoffs to consider.
But since you’re all pirates working together, it makes for a fun effort to get your loot and make it out alive.
The unfortunate thing is that we more often than not don’t make it out.
But that doesn’t mean we don’t love trying!
We find the Kraken board itself to be very helpful as well. Not only does it track the health and strength of the Kraken, it also includes reminders of what to do at certain stages of the game — such as successful attacks and captured loot.
The Kraken expansion also comes with a miniature figure for Swivel Gun Sandy. Which means that she’ll look a little funny among all the wooden figures of the base game. That is, unless you also get the miniatures figures for the rest of the pirates.
The miniature figures can be purchased separately in a Dead Men Tell No Tales Miniatures Set.
We like the detail of each of the miniatures – even down to the flooring and items they’re standing on.
How does Dead Men Tell No Tales: The Kraken score on our “Let’s Play Again” game meter?
Dead Men Tell No Tales is a cooperative game I’m always willing to play. And going forward, I don’t imagine playing it without The Kraken expansion.
But that doesn’t mean it’s a game to play back to back. The mere length of the game means it’s a a single play each time we play.
However, it has a prominent spot in our game closet and is frequently requested by friends who have played it.
If you like cooperative games with many choices to consider and a fun theme that ties in well to the game play, Dead Men Tell No Tales with the Kraken expansion may be just what you’re looking for!
