Islebound (2-4 players) has you sailing around a pleasant little sea, visiting islands and trying to build up your renown as a captain.
Here’s the boardgamegeek.com description:
In Islebound, you take command of a ship and crew. You sail to island towns, collecting resources, hiring crew, and commissioning buildings for your capital city. Each building has a unique ability, and your combination of buildings can greatly enhance your strength as a trader, builder, or invader. You also recruit pirates and sea monsters to conquer towns, which, once conquered, allow you to complete the town action for free, and charge a fee to opponents if they want to use it. Alternatively, you can complete events that give influence, which can be used to befriend towns.
On your turn, you move your ship to an island, pay its cost and take the action. This often means using crew, who will have to rest before you can use them again. Each crew member specializes in certain kinds of actions, so assembling the right crew for the kind of actions you want to take is important.
Ryan Laukat, the creator of the game, is also the artist. All his games have a very unique look to them that I really dig. While this game is a Euro at heart, meaning you convert resources and must be efficient in your moves, there’s a lot of theme and world-building that adds a little bit of feeling like you’re on an adventure. Other games he’s made (which I’ll post more of this week) really push that even more, but Islebound is a great game with lots of good choices to make. Definitely check it out!
