Hatoup

From the box:

Full sail ahead! The importance of the sea was considerable in 19th century Brittany, form the Royal and Merchant Navies to the fishing fleets. The ports are as diverse as they are numerous, from the Orient to Ponant, Lorient, a port of the Royal India Company, Nantes with its international trade, Saint Malo the port-town of buccaneers, Paimpol with its Terre-Neuve breed of life-saving dogs and last but not least that high-point of fishing and maritime history, Douarnenez. At a time when the wind, the currents and the tides were master, commercial shipping and fishing was assured by 'bisquines', 'chasse-marees', 'lougres', 'goemoniers' laden with sea-weed and other ships.

Hatoup will take you on a series of original regattas with simple rules to follow, allowing you to discover the maritime feeling of the Breton ports.

Overview of the game:

Two teams of two players each compete to be the first to deliver the 4 trade goods (gold, wine, linen and timber) to the right port. There are 5 major ports: Douarnenez, Nantes, Saint-Malo, Lorient and Paimpol. Each player is native to one of the ports and their mission is to deliver all 4 commodities to the port that buys them. Each port accepts only one type of goods (for instance Nantes is the port for wine). But you cannot deliver to your own port, but to the free port of Paimpol instead (thus the Nantes player must take the wine to Paimpol). The movement of each ship is driven by the play of one card from your hand each round. There are 52 movement cards in four suits (sextant, telescope, knife and cosh) numbered 1 to 10 plus M, I, K (this is a customised poker-like deck). After playing a card you follow the instructions of how to move your ship. The goal is to deliver your cargo and bring your ship back to port. The winner is the team who docks all eight ships first.