What’s a pirate’s favourite letter? Arrrrr! Arrrrr for RUM, which is a neat little set collecting game that you can take anywhere. Will it be a hidden treasure or have us struggling to raise the main sail?
Introduction
First off, despite the high likelihood of piratical puns ahead of us, the theme could reasonably be anything and pirates drinking rum is just where they landed. So if you’re worried about the theme being a deal-breaker, it really isn’t that deep.
It is bright and colourful and works for 2-4 players in 10-15 minutes. I can also say from first-hand experience that you can comfortably play this in a café/restaurant while you’re waiting for the bill or for your cuppa to cool down.
Setup
This has a slightly more chaotic approach to setup compared to other Pack O Games titles, but it’s fun and loosely thematic so we’re not worried about that.
Firstly we’ll be placing the seven Captain Cards (score cards) so that they all have their “1” at the top and the parrot on the Castaway Clock is also at the top. We’ll put the Parrot card on one side and then mix the remaining Rum cards face-down into a bit of a higgledy-piggledy pile. They all have a wooden board look on their reverse and this messy pile is called the Shipwreck which I think is a nice thematic tie-in.
Next flip three of the shipwreck cards over and place them in a row (the Beach) with all the single bottles at the top. Each Rum card has a single bottle in one orientation and two bottles at the bottom as you can see in the picture). The Beach always has single bottles available.
Finally, everyone draws a Rum card to be their starting hand and the Parrot card is added to the Shipwreck and this is mixed again so nobody knows where it might be.
What do us landlubbers do?
It’s a quick game where you’ll either draw a card or play a set. Cards can be drawn blind from the Shipwreck and added to your hand, or you can take a card from the Beach and add it to your hand. If you choose a Beach card you replace it with a face-down card from the Shipwreck which we’ll see is important in a moment.
Playing a set means you’re trying to play a group of cards (in either a single or double bottle orientation) to claim or steal a Captain card. All the Captain cards start on “1” as per the setup, but go up to 8. To claim or steal a Captain card, you must play a set that contains a number of bottles that is greater than the current value of the card you’re claiming.
You then place the Captain card in front of you with the number of bottles you’ve played showing as the number on its top edge.
For example, If my opponent has the red Captain card and it’s currently showing 3 on its top edge, I must play at least 4 red bottles in a set to claim it from them. If I play 6 red bottles, I take the captain card, rotate it so the 6 is at the top edge and then mix all the cards in my set back into the Shipwreck.
This is where the Beach cards can sneakily come into play. Whilst they’re available to be drawn into your hand, any face-up cards are considered communal to everyone so you can include them in any sets you want to play without picking them up. These are not shuffled back into the Shipwreck if you use them when they’re communal – but taking only the single bottle orientation into account.
If all the Beach cards would ever be face-down, they’re all immediately flipped face-up.
That sounds like a RUM deal…
Well sort of, but there’s a sneaky rule to know about. If you every play a set of three single bottles of the same colour, this allows you to claim that Captain card and increase its value by two which can be an effective way of stealing a card without doing a lot of collection.
The downside to this rule is that there are only 3 single bottles of each colour so you have to have them all to be able to pull off that manoeuvre. But it’s definitely possible!
In addition, we should talk about the pesky Parrot. If a player ever draws said Parrot from the Shipwreck (or the Beach if you take a gamble on a face-down card there) it’s revealed to all players and the player who drew it discards either 2 or 3 cards from their hand (depending on the symbol shown in the middle of the Castaway Clock card). If the Shipwreck is ever empty, the player with the most cards discards them all to create a new mess of cards to sort through, so keep an eye on that.
If either of these things happen, the Castaway Card is rotated to its next position.
Game end
The game finishes when either the Castaway Clock is at position 7 and the Parrot is revealed, or if a player has Captain cards where the point value is equal to 21/18/15 in a 2/3/4 player game. I’ve played games where the clock is the deciding factor, but more often than not it seemed to be players meeting the threshold that triggered the end.
Final thoughts
I like this one (is the short answer). I think it delivers what it promises with a fast=-paced game and it has enough rules to make it interesting without feeling crammed with unnecessary stuff that just bamboozles you.
The theme is a little contrived but not massively so – the Shipwreck is a really nice way to describe the draw pile and the Parrot and Captain cards are a nice touch, but you could conceivably retheme it and it’d be no worse for it.
Normally I’d compare this to another title in the same series, but here I’m mostly reminded of Trio which is set collection game with a mix of hidden and public information and certain limits on how you can manage your cards. If you’ve played that, I suspect you’d get along with this as a travel-sized alternative really well.
As I mentioned earlier, it definitely doesn’t need a large amount of table space to play and it’s worked well for us at a variety of player counts too.
