Dead Reckoning Review: A Brilliant Pirate Adventure Far Greater Than The Sum Of Its Parts

Dead Reckoning (1-4 Players) is a 4x pirate card crafting adventure you shouldn't miss. All players start with the same deck, but are given the opportunity to buy upgrades for and level up these cards, allowing them to create their own playstyle driven by a unique deck of actions! Maybe you'll become the stereotypical pirate attacking everything in sight, or perhaps being a humble merchant is more your thing? All routes are worth exploring...but just make sure you end up with the most treasure at the end of the game! This has been one of the best board games we've played in 2022 so far, so check out our review to see what makes it so special to us.

0:00 - Intro
1:24 - Brief Overview
3:57 - Bad Cardboard
5:02 - Not Enough Components
8:13 - Dead Turns
9:17 - Why This Game Is Brilliant
11:06 - Great For New Players
11:56 - Different Playstyles
13:01 - Battleship Fun
14:00 - How Will You Play?
14:41 - Player Count
15:25 - Doggos & Final Thoughts

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[ClemFandango]

I can’t tell you how refreshing it is to watch board game reviews that are sometimes critical of games (whether it be mechanics or quality or theme etc). I appreciate those reviews, like this one, that show the good and the bad of a game.
Thank you for the balanced review. :)

[wbaccus]

12:34 - When you sink another player's ship, you don't get everything that was on it, you get 5 coins from that player. If there are 5 on the ship, they come from there, if there are not, all 5 coins come from their treasure box.

[dougradcliffe]

I can't believe they skimped on tokens after the disaster of skimping on tokens in Edge of Darkness was. Unreal.

[inoutsoccer]

Thanks for the overview! I had not heard of this one until it hit the bgg hotlist. Definitely will have to keep my eyes open for it at the FLGS.

[St_M_]

I really like this one as well and am kicking myself for only backing the base game. Super looking forward to the upcoming KS later this year.

[andrewww]

This is my favorite game to come out in the past year or so. I'm a huge pirate fan and this is already my favorite pirate game. I agree with the ship quality. I would love to be able to get some sort of deluxe wooden ship in the future. But other than that the components are fantastic. I've played this several times and have never come close to running out of barrels, that's odd. Everything in the game is purchased with barrels so no one in our games had a chance to carry over many from previous turns.

[olebrommm]

The 30 cubes are there to keep a game balance of sorts.so not 1 person can controll all islands.it was discussed in bgg.but the barrels i agree.good i got the painted barrels but you could count the dark once as 5 abd not 3 as it say

[guymccann]

I have played 2 two player games and a 4 player game thus far. I agree that having more lower denominations would be fantastic, I don't really see the point of the 30's outside of physically counting out at the end, we just tally and calculate. The cubes, I feel was designed to provide a counterpoint to island control: If you want to control all the islands, you're gonna be subpar on the cannons. In each of our games, we never even came close to using all the cubes and barrels. Probably just a different style of play between us. As for the dead turns, I think that's a feature you'll have in any deck builder where you can't cull your deck.

For me, the lack of upgrading your ship until late game unless you focus early on the Bosun was a wee frustrating.

Agree with all your positives and this game is fantastic!

Okay I’ve never heard the phrase Ameritrash before but I’m ready to throw hands.

[tah]

The box to store your Battle ship tower isnt too small. There's a piece of cardboard in the storage box to keep the box from being destroyed during shipping. You have to take that out and the ship fits fine.

[darling]

A shame the Kickstarter doesn't ship to Thailand, seems like such a fun game...

[SecretlyTV]

hi, do you know if any of the problems and issues were fixed with expansions or the deluxe stuff?

[spaztekwarrior]

I had to watch this three times before coming to the conclusion that the negatives regarding dead turns and the components is enough to prevent me from getting the game… despite your otherwise glowing review. :)
Thanks for the review though!
I am sure it is otherwise a pretty decent game.

[deborahpate]

Wow, seems like another one I need to save up for. Thanks for reviewing some lesser known games so thoroughly, it's really helpful, and I'm sick of hearing about Ark Nova :)

[windyhillbomber]

The pitiful production quality puts me off. It’s just not good enough in the current market of quality board game production. Imagine how great this game would be if made by Eagle Gryphon, for example