About Scuttle!
Scuttle! is a small pirate card game by Peter C. Hayward with art by Kelly Jo, the earliest game in the Jellybean Games catalogue and the start of its Treasure Hunters series (Ninjitsu! and Brains! share the same core rules). You are a pirate captain racing the others to 21 doubloons. Every card can be laid down as treasure for its number or played for its text: steal a treasure chest, draw two cards, wipe the board, or set a monkey, a parrot or a rodent-powered cannon to guard your loot.
It plays in five to ten minutes, the rules fit on a few small pages, and the box age is 6+, which makes it a good first card game for children who can read. Four players form two teams, five players add the Davy Jones role, and a solo mode pits you against a “Robot Pirate” that plays from a face-up display. Jellybean Games offers the English files free on its site, plus full decks translated into French, German, Spanish and Slovenian from 2016. The files carry a plain copyright notice, so the download button goes to the publisher’s page.
How to play in one minute
- Remove the blank cards, set aside the Robot Pirate and Davy Jones cards, shuffle the rest and deal four cards to each player. The deck goes in the middle.
- On your turn do one thing: draw the top card of the deck, or play a card from your hand.
- A card played as treasure stays in front of you and its doubloons count towards your total. A card played for its ability is followed and then discarded; “Permanent” cards stay in play sideways with an ongoing effect.
- Protected cards cannot be stolen or destroyed. If the deck runs out, shuffle the discard pile into a new one.
- As soon as a player has treasures worth 21 doubloons in play (30 for a team), they win. The rulebook adds an “exactly 21” variant and a ten-game War of the Pirates campaign.
What’s in the PDF
- Rulebook: 10 small pages in colour, including the 4-player team rules, the 5-player Davy Jones rule and the solo Robot Pirate variant.
- Cards: 6 Letter sheets in colour; print on card stock and cut.
- Translated print-and-play files in French, German, Spanish and Slovenian (10 A4 pages each, dated September 2016) contain both cards and rules.
In the PDF
- Rulebook (10 pages) with team, solo and campaign variants
- Card sheets in English (6 pages, Letter)
- Complete decks with rules in French, German, Slovenian and Spanish (10 pages A4 each, 2016 versions)