Evade Customs, Outwit your opponents and secure your fortune in this strategic board game for 2-4 players set in 18th Century Cornwall.

Cornish company Grublin Games, is seeking funding for Cornish Smuggler: a strategic board game that challenges you to build the most successful smuggling network you can. You do this by buying and selling goods for gold while employing a network of local characters, secret knowledge, hidden locations, bribes, dirty tricks and a healthy dose of cunning to evade the attentions of the customs officers and the other players.

Cornish Smuggler doesn't have any dice and in fact there is very little that is left to random chance in this game.


Play in Cornish Smuggler happens in turns.During each turn, a player spends their resources to perform Actions, so the number of Actions that a player gets depends on the number of resources they choose to spend.

Working in a clockwise manner, each player gets to take one Action continuing around the table until it returns to them where they can take another.This continues until all players have either spent all resources or have passed, meaning that Cornish Smuggler plays fairly quickly and all players remain totally involved with the game.

Actions are all the things you can do in the game.Whether it's buying goods, bribing customs, utilising secrets, reorganising your network or simply passing- stockpiling resources this turn so you can do more Actions next turn.

There are a lots of different actions that you can choose in Cornish Smuggler. For more information, please have a look at our rules:


There are three different resource types in Cornish Smuggler, which have different value in the game:

GOLD: which you need to win the game, but also to pay for things like Goods and Characters.

REPUTATION: which is more valuable at the start of the game as it generates Influence for you each turn, but also adds to your final score.

INFLUENCE: which is the most cost effective way to facilitate your smuggling.

With most Actions, you can choose how you would like to make this happen.You don't have to pay all bribes in Gold and you don't have to move your goods around based just on Influence.You have a choice about how to do everything.

All the while you are playing Cornish Smuggler you have to think about the Customs Officers.The movement of the Customs is dictated entirely by the actions of the players.Whenever contraband is landed or sold, the nearest Customs Counters will start moving towards the location of the landing or sale, and if they catch you, then your goods will be immediately seized...although if you've employed the right people you can always try and seize them back.


When selling goods, players can choose how much to sell them for; making a choice to either increase their Reputation and Influence in the community by selling cheaply, or maximising their profit by getting the best price possible. An increased reputation allows a player to transport their contraband more easily and evade customs, but to win the game they must have the most gold out of all the other players. However, the strength of the Customs forces is directly linked to how much Gold is made, - so timing is everything!


Each copy of Cornish Smuggler will come with the following components:

Big Board!!!
Wooden Components

40 wooden player counters
10 wooden Customs counters
16 x unique wooden Goods Shapes
4 wooden ship counters
60 x wooden Influence Counters
4 x wooden Goods Counters

Cards

40 x Character Cards
40 x Secrets Cards
12 x Storehouse Cards
Cardboard Tokens

6 x Ship Cards
36 x Gold Counters (of varying values)
45 Reputation Counters
4 x player mats

Characters:

Smuggling was rarely about just one person, and often whole communities were involved.Each Character in Cornish Smuggler not only affects your Reputation and increases your network, but comes with a special ability- and a cost.You will have to choose carefully who to employ.

For more information on the characters click here.

Goods Shapes:

Each game of Cornish Smuggler contains 16 Good Shapes of different shapes and sizes.When buying goods, players must be able to fit them on their ships -so choosing the right shapes is key.

Larger goods sell for more Gold, which you can sell in larger towns more Gold also.However, if Customs is on your tail you might think it's better to offload you contraband quickly by selling in a smaller town for a lower profit.

Storehouses:

Each player starts the game with a secret storehouse where they can hide their goods from interested parties.Each storehouse is a different size so make sure you buy goods that can fit in them.You can buy more as the game progresses and some Characters will give you some for free.

Bribing:

Every Customs officer has his price and will ignore your goods for the rest of the game if bribed.Bribe costs will increase as more Gold is made though- and there's always the possibility that someone else might bribe your man.

Playing Time:

A two player game will take approximately 90 minutes, three players 120 and 4 players 150.


When we started creating Cornish Smuggler, we wanted to make a game that wasn't just interesting mechanics, it was imperative for us to create a game that lets the players feel that they were actually smuggling!For this reason, we have chosen not to compromise on the range of strategies that players can employ, meaning that this game isn't suitable for players under 13 years and works best for ages 16+.

We've found that Cornish Smuggler works brilliantly as a game that promotes conversation during play.This is partly due to the sheer weight of historical texture that surrounds smuggling and partly because of the level of interaction between players.It's not just the Customs that you have to watch out for!

Design Goals

Our original goal for Cornish Smuggler was to create a game that:-

Gives players a series of choices to make - they choose how to play the game.

Has a nail biting finish - where the endgame is very, very close and hard to predict.

Is balanced - no one player is able to charge off into an early and unassailable lead.

Works - all elements of the game work perfectly together and there is no one card, or bit of text that causes confusion.

Has a good rulebook - properly cross-referenced and has plenty of illustrations and examples.

Blind Playtesting:

We've been designing Cornish Smuggler for over a year now and we're very confident that we've made a really good game, but we didn't see that as enough.

At the beginning of April we put out an open call for people to playtest our game, inviting them to do everything they can to break the game.Putting the game in front of people that we didn't know, of all different levels of experience, has meant that we've been able to be very proactive with the game design in light of the feedback that we've received - transforming Cornish Smuggler into a game which most definitely fulfils all of these goals.

Level Of Production:

As you can see, Cornish Smuggler is not a finished game...but it is very, very nearly finished.This game will be in live development all the way until the end of this Kickstarter.

What this means is that we will continue to respond to feedback from our playtesters, improving and updating the layout of the rulebook and of the cards right up until we hit that Big Red production button.We might even get lucky and find one last bug in the game.Everything we find wrong at this stage is something we can fix and improve.Once we've started production it's much harder to make any changes!

We're a very small team, but we are extremely dedicated to Cornish Smuggler and will continue to pull as many all nighters and call in as many favours as we can to make sure this game is the best that it possibly can be.

Our commitment to you is quite simply to provide the best game that we possibly can.

Artwork:

There are 40 different Character cards in Cornish Smuggler and each one will have a unique character illustration on it. All of these illustrations are being created by Sam Brookes, an immensely talented artist from Falmouth University.To see more of his work, please click here.

The perfect box art for Cornish Smuggler has been created by St Ives based artist Donald McLeod. It's not just us who thinks that Donald's paintings are perfect for boardgames.Another of Donald's paintings was used for the hugely successful Sails Of Glory game.

Fulfilment:

We've researched a huge variety of fulfilment solutions for Cornish Smuggler and have selected only established companies with good credentials.

Timing:

We are confident that we will be able to get Cornish Smuggler dispatched by the second week of October, so depending on where your copy is being posted to, you should definitely receive it by the end of October.

As with any project, the main risk that exists is that we will experience delays in getting Cornish Smuggler to you when we plan to.Packages occasionally 'disappear' and events outside of our control are always a possibility.However, our team has proven experience of not only dealing with such events, but overcoming them.

We will do everything that we can to mitigate any problems and we will keep you informed every step of the way. Communication is a key component of any Kickstarter, so we will be posting regular updates throughout the campaign and will notify you immediately if any problems arise.

We will try everything that we can to produce the best game we can, as quickly as we can.

If you have any questions about any aspect of this project then please post in the FAQ section and we will get back to you as soon as possible.

 Ouze wrote:
The art is lovely.

 Alpharius wrote:
When I get it, I will challenge MGS to a game and, hopefully, defeat him with ease!

 notprop wrote:
As an perfidious Englishman I will be seeking the Authorities to tax this game then to send soldiers to get me a copy for free.

.......or I'll take a look.

Edit: My computers struggling with KS this morning, what sort of timescale are they showing for delivery (my big bugbear with KS projects).

 CURNOW wrote:

 notprop wrote:
As an perfidious Englishman I will be seeking the Authorities to tax this game then to send soldiers to get me a copy for free.

.......or I'll take a look.

Edit: My computers struggling with KS this morning, what sort of timescale are they showing for delivery (my big bugbear with KS projects).

oct13

 Alfndrate wrote:

That's not bad at all, seems like the game is finished and they're simply ensuring they have production costs covered. 37.5 days left (or so), so the project is going to finish in July. Take 2 to 3 weeks to sort out the cash, and then get everything produced in August and September (and probably the first half of October), and then ship it out.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Yeah, I'd be in for the metal ships if done right. And expansion maps to include different parts of Cornwall.

 Alfndrate wrote:

MGS, have you gotten a chance to play it?