Card Games: Loot, a Game that Should Be Simple to Play but Isn't

Loot is a card game by Reiner Knizia for two to eight players with a pirate theme. As anyone that has read my reviews knows, I am a big fan of games by Knizia. Unfortunately this game left me disappointed and you will find out why below. The theme of the game is that of being a pirate and attacking merchant ships to get the gold they are carrying. I was really excited when I found a game by Knizia for only $5 at the store.

The game's contents are rather simple. It is a deck of cards consisting of merchant ships that each have a number of gold doubloons associated with it; pirate ship cards of four different colors each with a power number associated with them; pirate cards of four colors, and admiral cards of four colors. On your turn, you either draw a card from the deck and keep it in your hand, or you play a card from your hand. The mechanics of capturing merchant ships with the basic cards is rather simple and has the makings of a fun game.

When it is your turn, there are several ways to collect gold: one is if you played a merchant ship on your last turn and nobody has played pirate ships to attack it; the other is if on your previous turn you had the highest value attack from your pirate ship cards, admiral, or pirate card and nobody has played a card on that ship since your last turn. These sound simple. Part of the trick though is when someone plays a pirate ship card on a merchant ship it can not be the same color of any pirate ship card their opponents have played on that merchant ship, it also most have a higher value than the current highest pirate ship value. You can add to your pirate ship cards attacking the ship on your turn, but they must be the same color you played to that merchant ship previously.

Here is where some of the confusion comes in, it is with the admiral and pirate cards. The rules are a little ambiguous here. They state that if you play an admiral card on your merchant ship no pirate ships can defeat it, but a pirate card can. The confusion I see though is that it doesn't indicate if the first pirate card played wins the ship, or if people can continue playing them and the last pirate card played on the merchant ship wins it. We have made a house rule that the last pirate card played get the ship to aid in strategy. Of course if you played a pirate card on a merchant ship on your last turn and nobody has played a pirate card on that ship since your turn , then you win the ship. In the end, the person with most gold when the game is over wins.

This little big of vagueness in the rules was one of the disappointing parts of the game. Another part was that I discovered when playing the game that while it says it is for two to eight players, playing with two players is really pointless. Way too often you play a merchant ship card and it slips by without being attacked. It never really develops the interesting point strategies and use of admirals and pirates that the game does with more players. Honestly I think you must have five to eight players to make the game worth playing. Even with five players it has it's flaws, but it is playable. If I had listed the number of players for this game I would have put it as six to eight players.

In the end because of this, I can not recommend this game very highly. It is one of the more disappointing Reiner Knizia games I have played. The only thing it really has going for it is that at $5-6 it is a very cheap price for a Knizia game. Also, if you have six players playing the game then it moves up from a disappointing rank to an average rank. Still, there are better options out there.