Hey, gang!

We’re exactly one month away from our Kickstarter! We’ve got lots and lots of exciting news to share, but for today I’m going to give a sneak peek at the last of the artwork for Osprey Adrift’s Action cards! (Well… that’s not entirely true… we’ve got plans for a few more! …But cards are expensive, so we may be offering them as stretch goals during the Kickstarter!)

These four Action cards represent the rubbish and refuse that’s cluttering up the Osprey. Now that the crew has found itself lost at sea, they’ve got to be resourceful. When you’ve been months and months on a drifting pirate ship, even the simplest object becomes valuable!

Whittled Shiv

Action card text: “Pick any player. They choose 1 card in their hand to keep and show you the rest. Pick 1 of those cards to take. Discard this. OR Discard a Gag card on the table. Discard this.”

Strategy: The Whittled Shiv has two very different uses. First, it’s a way to steal a card from someone else’s hand – use it to grab some extra Food, a Resource you might need, or a useful Action card. The caveat is that the player from whom you’re stealing gets to hold onto one of their cards. This was added to make the Whittled Shiv a bit more balanced; if a player has a Human Flesh card in their hand, they can keep it a secret if they want, or they can keep a piece of Fish. The Whittled Shiv’s second use is for getting rid of the Gag card (see below). It’s no fun being the person who gets gagged, so this is a way to free the poor sod who loses their say in discussions. You’ve got to be careful with who you Shiv though if you want to steal a card; no one likes being stolen from… especially Cannibals. There are two Whittled Shiv cards in the deck – one of them is added starting at 4-player games, and the other is added starting at 6-player games. The Shiv is a great interactive card that’s fun in smaller games, because it can be used to snatch high value Coins from someone else. Small games don’t have a lot of rounds to them, so it’s important to build your hand of Coins quickly.

Theme: There’s nothing like a good makeshift weapon to pit a bunch of starving pirates against one another. I avoided including a knife card in the game because that could lead players to wonder why it’s not just a kill card. The shiv is pointy enough to do some damage, but it’s got more bark than bite (pun intended).

Artwork: I especially love the bark texture that Fiona gave to the un-whittled part. We’ll be sharing some of our graphic artist, Von Serrot’s work really soon, but you’ll see that the wood motif carries through a lot of the graphic design of Osprey Adrift.

Gag

Action card text: “Requires 1 Rope. Pick any player and place this in front of them. Until it’s removed by a Whittled Shiv, they cannot speak. Return the Rope to the box.”

Strategy: This is a great card that affects the game’s meta – preventing a particularly mouthy or disruptive player from talking is always a play that’s sure to get people riled up, for better or for worse. At the very least, it’s a lot of fun. Just be careful about who you use it on… you don’t want to piss off the wrong person, especially if the Gag is removed later! The Gag is added to the deck starting at 4-player games because it’s another great interactive card that adds a lot of fun to smaller games where some of the headier and more strategic mechanics don’t really come into play.

Theme: I wanted to include a card that mimics the more meta-game affecting mechanics used in other team-based social deduction games, like the Teenage Werewolf in Werewolf or the Town Drunk in Mafia. The idea of a group of pirates slowly losing their social code really allows for the more direct conflict that the Gag card adds.

Artwork: The simple illustration is an example of how something seemingly innocuous can be extremely powerful. Like the A Single Bullet card, I like how the art’s simplicity belies the card’s power.

Iron Nails

Action card text: “Requires 1 Bottle & 1 Gunpowder. Take 2 Fish cards from the Fish deck and give them to any player(s) you wish. Return this, the Bottle, and the Gunpowder to the box.”

Strategy: The Iron Nails are a huge boon to the Pure team, who have a disadvantage in that they need to search or fight for Food cards each round, lest they starve to death (whereas the Cannibals are guaranteed a Human Flesh card each round).  A Pure player can give themself both the Fish, or they can dole them out to players they believe to be trustworthy and form an alliance. On the other hand, a Cannibal player can use this to give some Fish to their teammates, but they’ll need to be careful with this bluff. Pleading for Food is a common occurance during games of Osprey Adrift, and falsely pleading for it when you know full well you’re stocked with arms and legs to eat can be risky business. The Iron Nails are added to the deck starting at 10-player games, because I wanted Food to be a bit somewhat scarce in mid-sized games where the kill and revive cards hold a lot of sway; and I didn’t want to include it in small games where Food really isn’t an issue. There are plans to include more ‘Food-gathering’ Action cards in the deck, but they’ll likely be included as stretch goals in our Kickstarter campaign.

Theme: I had a lot of fun coming up with creative ways to use the game’s four different Resources (Bottles, Rope, Seaweed, and Gunpowder). The Iron Nails are essentially dropped into a Bottle with some Gunpowder to create a shrapnel bomb underwater. Through whatever curse or bad juju has befallen the One Winged Osprey, the fish swimming around it don’t seem to fall for a standard fishing line. It takes brute force to get them out of the water.

Artwork: Like the Tiny Bells card, I love how Fiona drew disparate looking nails to give this piece a lot of character. The nails truly look like they were scrapped together from wherever the crew could find them – likely pulled out of boards no longer needed on the derelict pirate ship.

Old Net

Action card text: “Shuffle the discard pile, then look through it and pick 1 card to add to your hand. Discard this, then shuffle the discard pile again. This may also be used as a Rope Resource card.”

Strategy: The Old Net is a useful dual-purpose card that gets a lot of play in games of any size. On the one hand, it can be used later during the Day phase to hopefully pull out a useful card that someone else cast off into the discard pile, such as Food, a needed Resource, or a high-value Coin. Whereas on the other hand, it can be used as Rope (there are fewer Rope cards in the deck overall). The Old Net is added to the deck starting at 5-player games because it doesn’t offset the game’s team balance too much, but it’s useful nonetheless.

Theme: It came to mind that there should be some use for all the rigging and netting lying about the pirate ship, so I decided that it could be fashioned into a dredging device, pulling up something that a member of the crew tossed overboard. The secondary use as a Rope card was an obvious choice thematically. This also allowed us to remove a Rope card from the overall deck to make room for another card.

Artwork: I love that the net has a gaping hole in it. Fiona included this detail, which I think is important to point out, because I didn’t want the Old Net to be used by players to pull Fish out of the water. As I mentioned, there’s a curse over the Osprey, and no matter how hard the crew tries to stay alive, something always seems to get in the way – the giant hole in the Old Net is just one examlpe of this.

 

Well, gang, thanks for checking out the latest developments! Stay tuned for more updates – we’ve some exciting news to share soon! Until next time, ya salty sea dogs. Keep it plucky,

Nick