Advert: This prototype was loaned from Pink Hawk Games via the UK Board Game Review Circle. Components and rules are subject to change. All opinions are ours and our reviews are always honest.

Y’arrr me hearties! There be fancy teas and snacks aboard this ‘ere vessel, and the Cap’n is getting hangry! Ye best serve ‘em some first rate afternoon tea afore ye find yerself walkin the plank!

(Don’t worry, the pirate-speak ends here!)

👥 1 to 4 players
⌛ 30 to 45 minutes
🧠 10 years+

Gameplay overview:

Players are pirates, collecting and perfectly pairing food dishes with teas, hoping to please the Captain’s taste buds and be rewarded with dubloons. 

A round has two phases:

1. Placing worker pirates on the actions you want to do. This could be collecting tea cards, collecting dish cards, or serving the Captain. Each player has one pirate (2 in a 2-player game), and only one pirate meeple can occupy each space – fortunately there’s more than one space for each action, although each space gives slightly different rewards (e.g. 1 or 2 tea cards).
   
2. Perform those chosen actions. All player’s actions are completed in the order they appear on the ship, from front to back: tea actions at the front, dish actions in the middle, and the Captain’s quarters for serving afternoon tea at the back. When someone has completed an action, they move their pirate and place it on the next available space of the turn track; therefore the actions you choose this round determine the order for pirate-placing in the next round.

Each tea card has 2 different set collection requirements, one for dish colour (3 dishes to be the same colour, or all 3 different colours) and one for dish flavour (all 3 dishes need to include a specific flavour, or all 3 different flavours, or each dish needs at least 2 flavours). To give that tea to the Captain for afternoon tea, the tea must be presented alongside 3 dishes that meet at least one of those requirements. Meet both the colour AND flavour requirements, and you get more doubloons!

Obviously getting those perfect dishes is tricky. Fortunately, you can SMASH different dishes together using more dish cards from your hand, adding more flavour profiles into the 3 main dishes and meeting those flavour requirements!

Some action spaces let you collect ‘gear’ tokens, which you can use on your turn whenever you like. Cannons blast and refresh the current tea or dish cards on show, Monkeys draw the next tea/dish card from the deck, and Parrots can sneak single items to the captain in exchange for doubloons.

The game ends after 9 rounds, and the person with the most doubloons wins!

Solo mode

There is a solo mode, although we didn’t play it. Similar to the multiplayer mode, you’re collecting afternoon tea sets to serve to the Captain – serve at least 5 afternoon teas to win! But you have to match BOTH requirements on the tea cards, and rather than collecting the tea, you serve it straight from the tea track. Take too long, and the tea ‘cools down’, losing points and is eventually poured overboard. There’s also a couple of ‘scallywag’ pirates running around stealing dishes from the dish track. 

Our first impressions:

• Pirates of the High Teas is the most delicious looking game to have crossed our table in a while – so much so we decided to have afternoon tea while playing! (we skipped savouries and went straight for the cake!) There’s a brilliant variety of dishes, and we loved coming across the piratey puns. We would have loved to have seen some Welsh dishes – maybe there’s a call for a British mini expansion in the future.

• When it came to serving afternoon tea to the Captain, we had so much fun announcing our afternoon teas to one another. Especially when they involved smashing ridiculous food combinations together, which was a great mechanic to complete both set requirements.

• We liked the worker placement mechanics. There are limited actions to choose from, so the decision of WHAT to do is less intimidating – reducing the risk of analysis paralysis. BUT the placement you choose determines your turn order for the next round, which is really a cool twist and does have an influence on your choice. Do you go for a more appealing option and risk going last? Or do you pick something less useful, with more chance you get first pick next time?

When it came to serving afternoon tea to the Captain, we had so much fun announcing our afternoon teas – especially when they involved smashing ridiculous food combinations together!

• The gear is a handy way to mitigate your options, especially when you aren’t the 1st person taking a tea/dish action. The cannon blasts away a tea or dish row and refills it with new cards – particularly useful if someone else has already taken cards from the row, because they don’t refresh until the end of the round. Using parrots to discard cards for dubloons is also useful when you hand is getting full (especially if you’d have to discard them at the end of the round anyway)

• We played 2-player games, where each player gets 2 workers each (instead of the usual 1 worker each), which helped maintain that tension of blocking action from each other. I’m interested to see how more players change the dynamic, because you only get one action each round, and there’s also more competition for actions. I feel like you’ll get fewer afternoon teas completed.

• There are a good variety of tea requirements, but we weren’t sure how the value of the afternoon tea combos related to the difficulty in achieving it. Ones worth 5-7 doubloons didn’t necessarily feel much easier to complete than ones worth 8+.

• We would have liked to read a bit more story/lore for the game – it would have been great to learn about crews behind the different coloured flags! We named them ourselves for a bit of fun. The Macaron Marauders, The Pie Privateers, The Cupcake Crusaders, The Tea-raiders of Tortuga.

• We didn’t really play with the advanced captains – we tried with one game, but kept forgetting they were there! On face value, their requirements seemed quite difficult to achieve and possibly not worth the effort, but maybe it’s just something that comes with more plays.

Final thoughts:

Pirates of the High Teas has fun, easy-going gameplay – with a little friendly pirate competition  – and art that’s good enough to eat!

Pirates of the High Teas has fun, easy-going gameplay – with a little friendly pirate competition  – and art that’s good enough to eat! It’s nice to have a  worker placement game that doesn’t feel too crunchy, making it a great way to introduce the mechanic to newer/younger players. And you can really have fun with the theme, we had a blast! 

Pirates of the High Teas was successfully funded earlier this year and is now available for preorder.