📖 How to play Pastry Pirates

🎯 The goal

Collect every ingredient on yer recipe map, then sail home and dock at the Isle of Tortuga. That fires up yer ovens — and the bake-off begins!

⚓ Setting sail

Each captain gets a recipe map (5 ingredients), 3 gold coins, and a ship docked at the Isle of Tortuga. Each island holds only a few crates — and the fewer that are left, the dearer they get.

Yer turn: sail → act

🌬️ Wind. Each day the wind picks a direction and holds it for the whole table. Look at the compass: the big needle is this day's wind, and the ghost needle behind it is next day's. That forecast is never wrong, so ye can plan around it — save for a storm, which the compass warns ye of a day ahead but won't say which way it'll blow.

⛵ Sail. Sailing is free. Move up to 4 squares in any mix of directions — but the moment yer route bites into the wind, even for one square, the whole move is capped at 2. Across the wind doesn't count against ye. Sail past other ships, but don't end on one.

⚓ Act — choose one:

Dock — tie up at an island's dock (one ship at a time!) and flip for yer fortune: heads ye strike buried treasure and take 3🌕; tails ye spend the turn workin' the docks for 1🌕. Either way ye may then buy a crate, with the coin ye just earned. Stay as long as ye like and keep flipping.

💰 Crate prices rise. A crate costs 6🌕 minus however many are left on that island — so the first off a full island is 3🌕, the next 4🌕, and the last one 5🌕. Get there first, or pay for dawdling. Ye may buy crates that aren't on yer recipe — they make excellent trade bait...

🕯️ The black market. A sold-out island always has ONE more crate under the counter — a flat 10🌕, forever. Steep, but no recipe is ever truly dead. Skint? The black market'll also take any two crates from yer hold in trade for it — even two of the same.

Attack — fight an adjacent ship! Pay 2🌕 for powder, then one broadside each. Heads beats tails. Both heads? The captain firing downwind lands the shot — a crosswind clash and the cannonballs collide. Both tails and the defender may slip away, free. If the shot doesn't tell, the attacker may pay 2🌕 to load another broadside and fire alone — heads and it lands — as often as they can pay. Break off and the battle ends with nobody gaining a thing. The winner takes one crate of their choosing. Nobody changes squares. Every dock is raidable — a berth protects nobody. But once a captain's ovens are lit they're beyond yer reach — rob 'em on the way home, or not at all. Ye can't attack a ship with an empty hold; there's nothing to take.

🔭 Callin' the fight. Any captain not in it may call the winner from the crow's nest. It's free, it costs ye nothing to be wrong, and ye get 2🌕 from the bank if yer right. Nobody's paid on a battle that ends with no winner.

Trade — hail the whole table at once. Say what ye want and what ye'll give — crates, coins, or both. Every captain holding it answers: accept, deny, or name their price. Ye see every answer together, then take one or walk away. One round of haggling, and no bonus for shaking hands.

Muse — do none of it. Sit back, dream o' pastry, and pocket 1🌕 for yer patience.

The trade winds

The sea around the rim of the world flows in a mighty clockwise current, in arcs of varying length each game. Sail (or get blown) into it and yer instantly swept to the far corner of that stretch — a daring shortcut for captains in a hurry!

⛈️ Storms

The compass warns ye a full day ahead, so a storm is never a surprise. At the top of the day it blows every ship at once, 3 squares, all the same direction, before anyone acts. Land and other ships stop ye short — that's the whole of it. Nobody loses a turn, and a dock is just water the storm can push ye onto or off. Mind the rim, though: blown into the trade winds and yer swept clean across the sea.

The bake-off

Dock at Tortuga holdin' yer whole recipe and yer ovens light that very turn. Yer recipe's revealed, yer ingredient crates get shuffled before yer eyes — and ye must name them back in the recipe's own order, from memory. Pay 1🌕 to watch the shuffle again, as often as yer purse allows.

Crates ye place right lock in; the rest get shuffled again tomorrow, and ye bake again — yer attempt IS yer turn. The whole table watches every bake, so make it a show. Get every crate in its place and ye've baked it!

Winning

First captain to bake their full recipe wins the voyage. Two captains bakin' it on the same day? No contest — they bake together. Best Baker goes to whoever brought the most to the bench: most crates in the hold, then most coin, then whoever got home first.

May yer flips be heads and yer rivals be broke.