Lying Pirates takes its roots from the historical bluffing game “Liar’s Dice” dating back to the 15th century. It bundles this up in a swashbuckling pirate package which includes player vs player duels, special events which can add modifiers to dice, player movements and more, and finally a race around the board with the winner ultimately taking the title of the Pirate Lord.

OUR OVERALL THOUGHTS - Lying pirates is a Kickstarter that we’ve been looking forward to receiving for quite a while and now it’s here, it certainly lives up to our expectations!

We love games with strong theme and this game perfectly fits the bill!

We especially love that Lying Pirates includes the historical game Liar’s dice (which gained popularity and fame when featured in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest). It feels authentically “piratical” and makes the game feel really thematic.

The bluffing stage is a lot of fun, there is a large tension that builds as the bids around the table get higher and higher, followed by the suspense when someone inevitably calls out another player as a liar, it’s all a big chef’s kiss here.

This has got to be our favourite part of the game (even though Ben is self admittedly a little rubbish at calling out the liars 🤭).

ART, COMPONENTS & TABLE PRESCENCE - The art is perfectly pirate themed and has icons illustrated in a way that conjure images of an old weathered pirate treasure map or chart.

We have the Deluxe version of the game which includes the stunning, logo engraved bamboo cups, gorgeous metal coins which look like pirate treasure and plastic miniature pirate ships.

The board main board is a pirate map surrounded by interchangeable magnetised tiles which offer a lot of variance in gameplay and add great replay-ability to the game (the Deluxe version also includes a map extension which allows you to extend the game length if you wish).

Lying Pirates has a wonderfully tactile feel about it; it sounds silly but the act of rolling the dice in the cup and hearing the delightful rattling sound of the dice shaking around in the cup is so satisfying.

FINAL ROUNDUP - We are so enthusiastic about Lying Pirates and are so excited about this game, I’d go as far as to say it’s probably our favourite game of the year so far (and we played 31 new to us games in January so that's out of a substantial pool so far). It’ll certainly be getting a lot of play with us the future!