Jeremiah, Z and I played Haba's "The Black Pirate" board game a few times before gifting it to an eight-year-old cousin, and enjoyed it thorougly. The game features little wooden ships with cloth sails that you blow around with a "bellows" (i.e. nasal bulb syringe) to collect gold and, if you're lucky, to steal other players' gold with the pirate ship. Arrr!

While Jeremiah, Z and I had a great time playing the game, you should have seen the ruckus that commenced the day after Christmas. The scene at my grandfather's house saw my father, my uncle, his 8 year old son, a 14-year-old, my 18-year-old brother and his girlfriend playing a game that got louder and more riotous as the stakes grew, with another half-dozen family members wandering in and out to see what all the whooping and hollering was about. Once Jeremiah taught them how to play the game, they were off - and I've seriously never seen a game draw such a diverse crowd and have everyone either playing or enjoying watching the play. It was the hit of the party.



Unfortunately, we were so caught up in our own enjoyment of this spectacle we forgot that we are on call for a little blogging prep work at all times, and it was only in the last turn that we thought to pull out our Flip to record the action. It would have been the best way by far to show you how much fin this game is, or at least how much fun it will be for the 6- to 10-year-olds in your life. We only caught the tail end of the excitement so it's not a very impressive video. Instead, here are a few shots we took at home during our family play with The Black Pirate.


Islands are stocked with gold based on die rolls, so the quantity of gold in various locations around the board is always changing. The bellows really do blow these ships around, but it's best to blow at the base of the ship, not the sail, unless you're trying to jump over one of the islands (a nifty trick any experienced buccaneer should be familiar with).


The full game board.


The light blue area is where you have to successfully blow your ship, in a die-roll determined number of puffs, to claim the gold.

One clever element of game play is engaged when the pirate comes calling. The victim of the pirate attack takes three of their collected coins and places them in some arrangement in their two hands - in other words, all three in one hand, or two in one and one in the other - and then holds out their hands for the attacker to pick from. It would have been easy to assess a simple penalty for being attacked - "victim pays three dubloons" - but instead it becomes an element of strategy, suspense, and flair for a young player - will they minimize their losses, or go for the gold, so to speak? Our favorite children's games are filled with little details like this.

You can pick up The Black Pirate for about $35 on Amazon.com. As with most Haba games, it isn't cheap, but it's more fun than your average "board game" and it will last - we'd never seen cardboard this fat until we bought our first Haba games.