Quest for the Cursed Gold

a Merchants and Marauders-variant (for cooperative play)

by BGG-user meyberg – Version 1.0. Print one copy of this document for use – nothing else needed!

Set up:
Place one coin in every port. These are Cursed Coins.
Place a brown frigate without a nationality marker in the Carribean Sea.

Your mission:
Somewhere, deep in the Carribean Sea, exists the Island of Lost Souls. On this island lurk the
souls of those who died during centuries of colonization. A terror from the depths of the sea is
risen: Cursed pirates try to collect coins which are marked by the innocent blood of those poor
souls. Once brought to the Island of Lost Souls these coins will free the souls. It is clear as
carribean water: This wouldn't be a benefit neither for merchants nor marauders!

The players need to cooperate to bring their achieved Glory to the Island of Lost Souls which
represents their struggle to calm the souls...

Island of Lost Souls

When you are in the Caribbean Sea you may take a scout action to find the Island of Lost Souls. If
successful, you may do one or both of the following:
• Deeds of fame and glory: Lower your Glory-Track as many spaces as you wish. Rise the
"Calm the Souls"-track that many spaces.
• Old debts repaid: Discard as many gold coins as you wish. You may discard one Cursed
Coin from the Cursed Coins-Track for every 10 gold coins you discarded.
You may use gold from your stash as well, but you have to pay the fee (5 gold) for the
Dutch East India Trading Company (see below).

The souls are calm: You win the game when the "Calm the Souls"-track reaches or supercedes
five points per player.

The Cursed Coins-track

The Cursed Coins-track shows how much the Cursed pirates have achieved in their struggle to free
the damned souls. As this track rises the power of the Cursed rises as well.
Whenever a Cursed Ship enters a sea area with a Cursed Coin in the port you remove this coin
from the port and place it on the Cursed Coins-track.
Whenever you remove a Cursed Coin from this track, place it in a port without a Cursed Coin. If
there is no such port, discard the Cursed Coin. The ability triggered by the removed coin
immediately ends: Disregard any changes of the rules caused by the coin and remove any related
tokens (for example ships) from the board.

The Dutch East India Trading Company:

You may use gold from your stash in every port (and on the Island of Lost Souls). To be able to do
so you have to pay a fee of 5 gold coins for the Gold courier of DEITC.

Needless Glory Cards

Several Glory Cards only work against enemy players. Whenever you draw such a glory card you
may immediately discard it to gain 5 gold coins.

Dying and retirement

If your captain dies you restart as usual with a new captain excepts that your glory points are set
back to 0.
If your captain retires however you may keep your glory points as your new captain is imagined to
have advanced as far as your previous one.
NPC-Combat
As you will not play against each other NPC-combats have to be automatized to keep a challenge:
• No mercy with pirates: Naval ships always choose shoot as their combat action. They try to
flee if their cannons are 1 or 0.
• Easy prey: Pirate NPC try to board if their Leadership skill is higher than or equal to the
player's Leadership skill and if they have got more Crew than their opponent or if they have
no more cannons left. They will try to flee if their crew and their cannons are both 1 or 0.
• Hit locations: Each "skulls and bones" rolled on a to-hit die is assigned to cargo first, then to
the location with the most hit-location cubes left (In case of a tie, choose Masts – Crew –
Cannons in this order). "Skulls and bones" will never be assigned to hull if any other target
is possible.

Cursed Ships

Hunting priority of NPC-Cursed ships

Cursed ships move according to the noted symbol on the event card. (the leftmost symbol for the
frigate, the rightmost for the Man o'War). Following hunting priorities effect this movement just as
they do for every other NPC ship:
1.) Wealthy Ships A ship with 10 or more gold aboard.
2.) Cursed Coin: If there is a Cursed Coin in the sea zone in the direction indicated by the event
card the cursed ship will move into this sea zone. If there is no Cursed Coin, check the next
sea zone clockwise from the indicated one for a Cursed coin etc. If a Cursed ship moves into
a sea zone with a Cursed Coin immediately place it on the Cursed Coin-track.
If none of the adjacing sea zones contain a Cursed Coin the Cursed ship will hunt for ...
3.) Glorious Ships: The captain of this ship has acquired glory points.

NSC-CS-Verhalten
• The scouting skill of Cursed ships is 2 or 1 die per 5 gold aboard the ship they are scouting
for. (Compare the scouting skill of naval ships!)
• After the first round of combat roll a die. If the result is a success the Cursed ship tries to
board her opponent, otherwise she will shoot. A Cursed ship without cannons will always
try to board, a Cursed ship will never try to board with 0 Crew. Cursed will never flee.
• Hit locations for cursed: Each "skulls and bones" rolled on a to-hit die is assigned to cargo
first. If cargo is destroyed it is assigned to crew instead. If both are destroyed it is assigned
to the location with the most hit-location cubes left (In case of a tie, choose Masts –
Cannons in this order). "Skulls and bones" will never be assigned to hull if any other target
is possible.
• If you defeat a Cursed ship you may remove one Cursed Coin (frigate) or two Cursed Coins
(Man o'War) from the Cursed Coins-track. You gain a glory point and a glory card as usual.
If you plunder a Cursed ship you may choose to keep it as usual, but there is no cargo or
gold aboard.
Defeated Cursed ships which should still be in play according to the Cursed Coins-track are
placed in the Carribean sea at the end of the turn.
• If you are defeated by a Cursed ship place one Cursed Coin on the Cursed Coins-Track per
every 10 gold coins aboard your ship.

Merchants & Marauders and all associated properties are copyright Z-Man Games, Inc. and their respective
rights holders.
BoardGameGeek.com and the creator(s) of this variant rulebook are in no way associated with Z-Man
Games, Inc.

The Combat rules are inspired by the Solo Variant for Merchants & Marauders v0.3 (Beta)
by Shacky22, which themselves are Based on the solo variant by BGG user GreyLord
 Cursed Coins-Track:
The Revenant: Place a brown Frigate (cursed) without a nationality token in the
0 Carribean Sea. She has Seamanship 2, Scout 2 / 5Gold, Leadership 2 and moves
according to the leftmost move-symbol on every event card.

2 Desperate search: The brown frigate has Leadership 3.

See our real nature! After each round of combat (crew combat or naval combat) against
3 the Cursed roll a die for each Cursed crew already lost. If you roll a success, restore
that crew.

4 The winds will guide us! The brown frigate has Seamanship 4.

Lurking souls: After a successful scouting check to find the island of souls and before
5 taking any action there you must succeed a crew combat against some Cursed:
Leadership 1, Crew 2. See our real nature! influences this combat.
The flying Dutchman: Place a brown Man o'War (cursed) without a nationality token in
6 the Carribean Sea. She has Seamanship 2, Scout 2 / 5Gold, Leadership 3 and moves
according to the rightmost move-symbol on every event card.

Harvester of Souls: Place an additional Cursed Coin on the Cursed Coin Track
7 whenever a non-cursed ship (PC / NPC) is sunken or defeated in crew combat.

Rising souls: After a successful scouting check to find the island of souls and before
8 taking any action there you must succeed a crew combat against Cursed: Leadership 2,
Crew 3. See our real nature! influences this combat.

Davy Jones is in command: The brown Man o'War has Seamanship 3 and Leadership
9 4.

Find the last coins! The hunt priority for cursed ships is now 1.) Cursed Coin, 2.)
10 wealthy ship, 3.) glorious ship

11 Something's wrong, Sir! NPC will never scout for PC ships.

Storm of souls: Storm: PC who aren't in a port at the end of their turn, take 2 random
12 hits to their ship, minus one for every success made in a Seamanship roll.

Revenge, at last! The souls of too many victims of colonization are unleashed and wipe
13 out any sign of their oppressors. The game is lost.
 Calm the Souls

1 2 3 4 5
(1 Player wins)

6 7 8 9 10
(2 Player win)

11 12 13 14 15
(3 Player win)

16 17 18 19 20
(4 Player win)

My intentions:
At first I beg your pardon for my poor english – I'm no native speaker!

As my wife and I aren't especially good in playing competitive games I wanted to design a variant
of this really great game which keeps the tension of merchant raids and pirate assaults. Probably
with a little bit more naval combat and greater emphasis on missions and rumors (those seemed to
be a little bit too unattractive in later games)... If this variant would be thematic – great!

I couldn't believe nobody has taken the "Cursed Coins"-theme into consideration so far (or, at least,
I didn't read about that at BGG), so I gave it a try.

This variant as is has its roots in the great pirates of the carribean-movies (as you might have
guessed already ;-P ). The combat rules were inspired by the Solo Variant for Merchants &
Marauders v0.3 (Beta) by Shacky22, which are based on the solo variant by BGG user GreyLord.
As I find more time I might optimize the layout of the tracks – it's a plain functional variant so far.

I've playtested this variant two times with two ships so far. Both games resulted in a narrow victory,
but each of them needed a lot of risk taking (for example attacking Davy Jones with a half-
destroyed galleon to clear the path for my comrade or scouting for the Island of Lost Souls with
only one scouting die). The stories which were told by both games were really climatic.

My experiences: Cursed ships are really nasty foes, but it is worth attacking them sometimes to
open a gap for other players. Especially their "regeneration"-ability per the "See our real nature!"-
Event on the Cursed-Coins-track is tough...
On the other hand this is an other option for merchants, who might opt to go for a heavily armed
ship later in the game to choose a "Ghostbusters"-carreer; a great opportunity for those who (in our
games) kept usually browsing cargo decks.
As you can not gain glory points from stashed gold in this variant missions and rumors get an
additional thrill as well – in the second game I managed to complete a total of 10 of them! This as
well as the Cursed Coins-track adds a lot toward the narrative elements, I think.

Please feel free to tweak my ideas and tinker with the rules - I would appreciate your comments and
input very much!