Libertalia - Variant without monkey

[Nereid]

Hey everybody,

this is not the first post concerning the balancing issues of the different colored decks. In my opinion, those issues strike heaviest when it comes to the monkey. If you sit left to the black player (which has the highest ranked monkey), there is simply nothing you can do to avoid getting all of the black player's (and possibly of a few other players) cursed relics on the last round. A good black player can basically take you out of the game. I recently had a play where I got -21 points because of this.

The only options to limit the damage are the Preacher (where you can discard all booty tiles but one) and the Merchant (you can get rid of 3 cursed relics, if you got more, they stick with you). But you have to be lucky to get one of those cards before the monkey strikes, so oftentimes there's really nothing you can do, because those 2 cards are not (yet) in play.

Long story short, the simplest solution would be to add a variant where the monkey is taken out of the decks.
Any thoughts?

Greets,
Nereid

[pejsek]

Hi Nereid, thanks for the good post and insight!

I'm afraid this is inherent problem of the game and so BGA will not be able to change things like this, but I agree that Black Monkey is overpowered right now. Maybe another solution apart from it's elimination could be to make all the Monkeys the same rank? The Monkeys would not create chain of relics and instead each relic would ended up in pocket of next player and will not go any further (until next round that is).

But at the same time, you could say Black Governor is too strong since it's the highest ranking character in game and without Brute you can't do anything about it. The game is not perfect, it is unbalanced and we probably should just endure it... I wonder if the creator even thought of the repercussions of Beggar and Monkey chains.