[Note: I received a free copy of this game in exchange for a fair, unbiased review. Due diligence, full disclosure, and all that. Yada yada disclaimer.]

Most of ThinkFun‘s coding-based puzzle games are either solo endeavors or head-to-head races to complete tasks. Potato Pirates adds a marvelous new wrinkle, since 3 to 6 players are required to take to the high seas for some swashbuckling spudly fun!

Potato Pirates is a tactical game where players compete to outlast their opponents and become the most dominant potato pirate the world has ever known, a Dread Pirate Roberts of starchy goodness. You do so by either collecting all seven Potato King cards, or by eliminating every other player at the table.

Each player starts with two ships and twenty potato crew members, along with a hand of five cards. There are control cards, action cards, and surprise cards (along with the aforementioned Potato King cards).

The coding aspect of the game allows you to battle your fellow players. The control and action cards can be combined into commands that you program one round and activate the next in order to attack the other players.

Action cards indicate damage dealt to the potato crew of your target, while control cards indicate conditions for that action, like multipliers to cause more damage or how many ships you can target with one command. (Surprise cards can be played at any time, even when it’s not your turn.)

And that coding structure makes Potato Pirates more strategic and tactical than a lot of other card games where you can play any card at any time. Since you can code a command or modify a command on one turn, and have to wait for the next to activate it, you may leave yourself open to attack during that turn you spend coding.

An important thing to remember is that you code and deploy each ship separately, so since you have two ships to start, you can take the tactic of coding one ship while attacking with the other, and then switching during the next round, so you’re never totally on defense. (My fellow players and I immediately adopted this tactic, which lengthened the gameplay and made things slightly more frantic. That’s two big bonuses for this game.)

[Two commands in progress. The first is ready to go next round, the second is currently attacking this round.]

Since players burn through the coding cards so quickly, reshuffling the deck can slow things down from time to time, but otherwise, the game is nicely designed, and once you’ve read and played around with the control cards for a little while, the concepts become second nature to you and you can really start plotting some devious attacks on the other potato buccaneers at the table.

Oh, and speaking of, making the little potato pirates balls of fuzz is both an adorable aesthetic choice and a kid-friendly way to make the game approachable for young players. Leading off with cards and coding can be a bit daunting, but once they’re divvying up their potato pirates across different ships (with delightful punny names), younger players are hooked.

Although the coding aspect of the game isn’t as predominant here as it is in games like Robot Turtles, Hacker, or On the Brink, the fun gameplay offered here — and the desperate need you feel to play again if your ships sink! — ensures that these basic coding commands and ideas will become familiar through sheer repetition.

And getting saluted each time you find a Potato King card is pretty great as well.

One of these days, fellow PuzzleNationers, I shall be the Potato King. I promise you that.

Potato Pirates is available from ThinkFun and other participating retailers.

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