Volko Ruhnke is one of the great designers of historical wargames. He has designed some of our very favorite games, including Labyrinth: The War on Terror, 2001-?, Wilderness War, and of course the COIN Series games starting with Andean Abyss, A Distant Plain, Fire in the Lake and Falling Sky to name a few. He also is a wonderful mind and is always pushing the envelope with design and has now branched out to create a totally different type of game in Hunt for Blackbeard from Fort Circle Games. This game was originally on the P500 with GMT Games but was removed over a year ago as the numbers werent inclurese. Volko git with Kevin Bertram at Fort Circle and they have picked up the game and are ready to go to Kickstarter with it. We reached out to Volko to get the inside scoop on the design and of course he graciously accepted.

If you are interested in Hunt for Blackbeard, you can check out the project on the Kickstarter page at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fortcircle/hunt-for-blackbeard

Grant: Why have you changed your focus at this point in your designing career with a game like Hunt for Blackbeard?

Volko: As you may guess, my old job as an intelligence analyst inspired a number of my designs. I wanted here to focus on certain aspects of intelligence work itself—specifically, the cat and mouse contest over information—who knows what about their opponent, and who knows what their opponent knows or doesn’t know. In Hunt for Blackbeard, I tried to apply those principles to manhunting—the attempt to find and capture a well-prepared fugitive.

Grant: What led you to have an interest in designing a game on this subject?

Volko: On assignment as an analytic instructor, I co-designed a classroom game about the hunt for the drug lord “El Chapo” in modern Mexico. From that design experience, I thought I could make a fun little game about some older case, and the Royal Navy’s 1718 hunt for Blackbeard hiding out in North Carolina offered an ideal story. It included secret agendas, strategic and tactical intelligence collection, and the possibility that the target may be better prepared for an encounter than the hunters had bargained for.

Grant: What sources have you consulted for the history of Blackbeard?

Volko: There are many writers exploring the history of this particular pirate, from his murky origins to his last days in colonial North Carolina. Four historians proved most valuable to me regarding the details of 1718: Kevin Duffus, Baylus Brooks, Angus Konstam, and Colin Woodard. As scholars naturally disagree on how to fill in the huge gaps we have in Blackbeard’s story, I tried my best to weave together the views and details that these four writers give us. By the way, I also had the opportunity to along the way to take a historical road trip (and water trip) across the geography of the game board, to visit the sites of the action—including the likely site of Blackbeard’s pirate camp, famous “banyan” beach party, and final “Battle of Ocracoke” and the colonial old towns that his protectors and detractors inhabited.

Grant: How much of the history of this famous pirate is fantasy and how did you discern between fact and fiction? Or did it matter for your design?

Volko: History is deeply important to me, and I see the fun in games as first and foremost in their powerful ability to transport us into other times to see not just what happened but how things worked. So it was central to me that Hunt for Blackbeard stay away from the usual pirate adventure fantasies and get at reality, in particular, the true dynamics of his activity in North Carolina and of the Virginians’ and the Navy’s successful expedition to end Blackbeard’s career. But I did not myself repeat the hard work of uncovering and interpreting primary sources. I relied on the professionals for that, mainly the historians that I name above. That said, the game design has to decide among relevant differences in historians’ interpretation, such as where Blackbeard did or did not go during his last days, for example. The North Carolinian writer Kevin Duffus was the one whose knowledge of the affairs of 1718 most impressed me and proved most useful to the game’s particulars. As well, I had to fill in gaps in the details of the hunt itself as well as what might plausibly have happened but didn’t happen. What might the hunters have added to their forces that they did not choose to take the time and expense to acquire? What might Blackbeard have done to protect his freedom, more than he did? That is, I had to engage in the reasoned speculation of historical alternatives that is at the heart of every historical simulation game design. And my sense is that there were many such alternative possibilities, which I have tried to provide to players of the game, for example, in the various Piracy, Informant, Asset, and Defense tiles that can come up in play.

Grant: What has changed since your first effort at this design? What needed to be changed?

Volko: A great deal has changed, as I have been working on Hunt for Blackbeard since before 2018 (the 300th anniversary of his demise). Most consequential is that, after taking the game off GMT’s P500 listings, I streamlined out an awkward system of record counters on screened mini-maps in favor of a new way to use standup blocks, as location information rather than as forces. The use of blocks (an obvious choice in retrospect!), together with an enhanced ability for the Hunters to keep some locations under surveillance, enabled players readily to see and remember what they needed to, without note taking or logging with chits. This improvement not only made gameplay a lot smoother and easier, it also got rid of a pile of now unneeded displays and markers.

Grant: What is the general sequence of play for Hunt for Blackbeard?

Volko: Over at most 4 turns, each player draws a random tile or two—secret Informants for the Hunters and secret Piracy objectives for Blackbeard. Then the Hunters get to interview their Informants to spy on Blackbeard without him knowing where they are looking or what they find out—unless they decide to Surveil any locations. Next, Blackbeard plans his Piracy—committing to this or that objective—moving into position to fulfill it, and perhaps preparing some Defenses. The Hunters in their main phase commandeer Assets to help them defeat the pirate and at some point sail or march for North Carolina, scouting for Blackbeard. If any of both sides pieces end up together, the players resolve an Encounter—typically, a decisive battle between sloops. If not, Blackbeard gets to conduct his Piracy, that player’s main route to victory, possibly exposing the pirate’s location if done in a flashy way.

Grant: What elements from history did you have to ensure were modeled in the game?

Volko: A key aspect of the situation in 1718 was that Edward “Blackbeard” Teach felt reasonably safe in North Carolina. He had obtained a pardon from the colony’s governor and even court adjudication of his recent contraband as lawful salvage. In a way, he was rejoining decent society while in fact continuing illegal activity. His choices between these two paths—and the fact that he had both powerful friends and powerful enemies around him—were key to the course and outcome of the hunt for Teach. In the game, the Blackbeard player gets to choose between living an expensive but less provocative “Pirate’s Life” and continuing the lucrative but necessarily daring and exposed “Acts of Piracy”. The sooner and more effectively that Hunters can discern which of these paths Blackbeard is pursuing, the better their shot at cornering the pirate. But the Hunters are based in Virginia, while Blackbeard enjoys a sanctuary of sorts in North Carolina. The Hunters must make maximum use of local informants there to zero in on their target—and must equip themselves to find and defeat the wily pirates—before they even launch their (by the way, technically illegal) manhunting expedition across the colonial border.

Grant: How did you approach the use of hidden information in this game?

Volko: There are two hidden information mechanics at work in the design. The first is more standard. Each player has a screen hiding a player mat where different purchases and other interactions with tiles are going on. The Hunters are interviewing Informants, and Blackbeard is planning and completing Piracy objectives, including earning or spending money. The second hidden information aspect of play is a new twist on an age-old wargame technology—the game’s standup blocks facing the Blackbeard player. Unlike classic Columbia-style block games, these blocks are not units that move across the map but rather locations that the Blackbeard player switches out to show where in North Carolina the pirate sloop, camp, and possibly Blackbeard or his first mate Israel Hands are hiding. To sail Sloop Adventure around the colony, for example, the Blackbeard player simply asks the Hunter opponent to close their eyes briefly while switching blocks to change the sloop’s secret location. This procedure enables fully secret search by the Hunters. When the Hunters interview their secret Informants, the Blackbeard player closes their eyes as the Hunters player peeks at individual blocks on the board. This way—unlike search game mechanics like calling out grid or hex numbers to your opponent or moving unit blocks or facedown task force counters around a map—one side can search anywhere and find targets without giving away where they have looked. Recesses in the gameboard keep all the blocks tidy, so there is no way to tell which blocks have been changed or inspected. As a result, the Blackbeard player for example will not know whether the secret pirate Camp—where a lot of Piracy objectives can be fulfilled outside the more obvious towns—remains secret at all!

Grant: What traces does Blackbeard leave as he moves around the map and how does the British player capitalize on that intel?

Volko: If the pirate sloop sails more than 1 space in a turn, transit spaces get “Sighting” blocks that represent local witnesses of the ship’s passage that might report to the Hunters or to their Informants (as happened historically, by the way). Spotting a Sighting gives the Hunters the ability to Spot an adjacent block for free—they are following the information trail, if you will. That continues if they spot another Sighting, so that they could track the passage of the sloop all the way to Blackbeard.

Spotting in general, and following a trail of Sightings in particular, can happen secretly via Informants or openly, as the Hunter sloops Jane and Ranger Sail and Scout the waters of North Carolina (as happened historically) or the Navy’s Captain Brand Marches south from Virginia to search the towns on shore.

A key difference between Interviewing Informants and Scouting by Sloop is wired into the sequence of play: secret information from Informants is more dated than open Spotting and Scouting by Hunter forces right on the scene. Hunter Informants go first in the turn—before Blackbeard acts—then Hunter sloops and Brand move and Scout after the pirate sloop has Sailed, for example. In effect, the strategic intelligence that the Hunters gain regards the pirates’ activities last turn, not this turn. The Hunters player will need to anticipate where Blackbeard might have gone from there, if Jane, Ranger, or Brand are to catch up with him! A further twist on that is that the Hunters can ask their Informants to Surveil any locations they are reporting on. That places a marker at that spot and lays the block there face up for the rest of the turn. Now, if Blackbeard goes there, leaves there, or Sails through, the Hunters will know in time to react. However, Blackbeard too will know that the Hunters are watching (as the constant presence of surveillants gets noticed), and the Blackbeard player can then avoid the trap. And so on!

Grant: What are the Acts of Piracy tiles and the Pirates Life tiles?

Volko: Each turn, the Blackbeard player draws a pair of “Piracy” tiles behind a screen, forming 2 rows of up to 4 tiles each. The top row is “Acts of Piracy” like “Seize Prize at Sea”. This is actual piracy, the pursuit of illegal acts. The bottom row is “Pirate’s Life”. This is Blackbeard cashing in on his successful piracy career—things like enjoying entertainments in North Carolina’s colonial capital, hiring a doctor, or buying rum for your crew.

The key is that the Blackbeard player only has to fulfill a portion of one or the other, Acts of Piracy or Pirate’s Life, to win. Acts of Piracy happen mainly out at sea and earn money, while Pirate’s Life happens mainly on shore, especially in town, and tends to cost money. So, if the Hunters player figures out which type of Piracy Blackbeard is after, it helps anticipate where the pirate can be found.

Grant: How does Blackbeard take actions? How many actions per turn does he get?

Volko: Each player marks actions each turn with pawns, 5 for Blackbeard and 7 for the better resourced Royal Navy. All actions—Sailing a space, buying a tile, and so on—cost 1 pawn. Blackbeard is tracking those actions behind the screen, as all will be secret expect for movements at Surveilled locations and the possibility that a particular flashy activity will reveal the pirate’s location at the end of the turn. Blackbeard’s actions include planning Piracy, Sailing Adventure, and Preparing Defenses. Some Piracy and all Defenses also cost money—gold cubes from Blackbeard’s “Purse”. The tough choices for Blackbeard here are what Piracy to commit to—requiring Adventure, Blackbeard alone, or Israel Hands to end the turn at certain locations—and how to spend the pirate’s limited Purse. All that needs to account for how close the Hunters are, how much they know, and how well equipped they may be to Arrest or Battle the pirate.

Grant: How do the hunters close in on Blackbeard?

Volko: Like Blackbeard, the Hunters use actions to Sail (or March)—the question is to where? They might have seen via an Informant where Adventure was last turn. Or perhaps Surveillance has exposed exactly where the pirates are now. But typically, the Hunters will be trying to deduce where Blackbeard is likely to have gone, among North Carolina’s towns, sounds, anchorages, and inlets out to the ocean.

Fortunately, they can use their actions not only to move but first to Scout adjacent spaces. But that only amplifies a tradeoff inherent to all armed reconnaissance—spread out to cover more ground in search of your target, or keep concentrated to be ready to fight them when you do find them? That opens the opportunity for Blackbeard to arm up Adventure and lure the Hunters into engaging with either Jane or Ranger alone—which can go very badly for the Royal Navy!

Grant: Tell us about the map. The early version seems to have lots of colored boxes with connected lines as well as a series of numbers in boxes and letters. What does this all mean for the game play?

Volko: Sure! The colored boxes and connecting lines are really just a typical point-to-point map. The box colors (and matching symbols) show 4 types of spaces—Town and Anchorage (land), Sound and Ocean (water). The connections are either water or land, guiding where sloops can Sail or Brand can March. Numbers and letters were a playtest feature that dropped off the final version of the map—they were advisories of the relative importance of the spaces that proved unneeded. The final art does include little tile icons at each space and at a holding box for the hidden pirate Camp. The tile icons don’t affect play directly, they just help remind players visually of how much Piracy of what types Blackbeard can potentially achieve at each location.

Grant: Also I noticed that there were several spots that say “No Blackbeard”. Why is this the case and what from history makes this the case?

Volko: The “No Blackbeard” text also dropped off the final art as unnecessary. It referred to the fact that the pirates preferred to stay on board or close to their ship and near the sea. So there are no Piracy objectives that call upon Blackbeard to go inland. But the map includes a couple such inland spaces that the Hunter Captain Brand might use as he presses south from Virginia through North Carolina.

Grant: I know that tiles are at the heart of the game. Why did you feel this was the best medium to tell the narrative?

Volko: Good question. I am used to using decks of cards as a ready way to bring a great variety of events, assets, or other variable possibilities of life into a historical simulation. Here, I went with tiles instead for a quite practical, physical reason: both sides’ tiles need to fit on a player mat hidden behind a screen. The tiles are smaller than standard playing cards, and their thickness makes them easier to handle despite being small enough to layout behind a screen that—to hide all the cards that would be needed—would have been awkwardly large and take up too much space on the table.

Grant: Can you share with us some specific rules of each type of tile and how they work?

Volko: Hunter Informant tiles show where a particular Informant might be able to report on the pirates. The Hunters behind their screen simply commit pawns to the tiles, 1 pawn per location investigated. You get just 1 meeting with each Informant, so at the end of the turn, you turn any Informant tiles with pawns on them face down for the rest of the game. Piracy tiles similarly receive pawns on them as Blackbeard plans end-of-turn Piracy there. If the pirates are at the right locations when that time comes, the player replaces those pawns with cubes, logging partial or full achievement of that objective—with 2 big twists. First, some objectives cost money—the gold squares on the tiles—and those cubes must come from Blackbeard’s Purse. Other tiles—the gray squares—are free and might even earn money by taking Loot; those squares get black cubes from a free pool. Second, many Piracy tiles have their own effects. These effects—maybe good, maybe bad for the pirates—only come into play if the pirates fill that tile completely with cubes. For example, for “Seize Prize at Sea”, adding just 1 cube is Blackbeard sailing around looking for victims but not actually pulling the trigger on committing the crime. That helps show his men that they still are pirates and will eventually take some loot—but it does not actually “Take Loot”, earn any money for his Purse. That requires filling the 2nd cube in as well. But then, Blackbeard must “Show” where his sloop just took that prize—word of the atrocity gets around!—which means flipping the Adventure block face up so the Hunters know what and where Piracy just occurred and can chase the pirate sloop down next turn. There are many more nuances, but that’s an example of how the different Piracy tiles have a lot of “personality” and introduce highly variable opportunities and challenges for the pirate.

Grant: What are defenses, what do they represent and how are they used? Some of these defenses have a gold cube shown on the tiles. What does this mean?

Volko: The other types of tiles are “Prepared Defenses” for the pirates and “Commandeered Assets” for the Hunters. Informant and Piracy tiles are randomly drawn, but players may select and purchase Defenses and Assets as they like (“Lookouts”, “Swivel Guns”, “Partisans”, “Chain Shot”, and so on) to help them move and fight—again with a different twist for each side. The Royal Navy’s pirate hunt is bankrolled by the wealthy Lieutenant Governor of Virginia, so money is no object. Only time is precious—the Caribbean hurricane season is over, and Blackbeard any day may quit North Carolina and sail south, robbing the Governor and the Navy of their trophy. So Commandeering Assets only costs pawns. But Blackbeard is funding his own operation. In addition to pawns, the Blackbeard player has to commit gold cubes from the Purse to Prepare Defenses—and those cubes might instead be needed for Piracy tiles. On the other hand, North Carolina’s Governor is largely welcoming of Blackbeard, so the pirates are on friendly ground. Blackbeard can Prepare Defenses wherever he is (as long as he can pay). In contrast, as the Navy expedition from the royal colony of Virginia into the proprietary colony of North Carolina is technically illegal, North Carolina is effectively hostile territory. The Hunters have to make almost all their preparations while still back in Virginia.

Grant: When the hunters find Blackbeard Combat occurs. How does this process work? How is this combat modified? What are the results and effects of hits in combat?

Volko: After both sides act on a turn, Encounters occur if any Hunters and any pirates are together at a location. Typically, that will be one or both Hunter Sloops arriving at Blackbeard’s Sloop Adventure. In that case, we have a Battle. Both sides get to declare tiles to enhance combat. The Sloops exchange Fire, rolling some number of dice, each roll possibly Hitting enemy Rigging or Crew. Then the sides roll for “Escape”—Rigging Hits reduce the number of dice, and highest single roll wins the right to either move off or Board. If Boarding, Crew Hits reduce dice, and the higher roll wins that.

Grant: Captain Brand moves across the land and can attempt to arrest Blackbeard if he is in the same space. How does an arrest attempt work? How is this attempt roll modified?

Volko: For any encounter involving a figure piece on either side—Brand, Blackbeard alone, or Israel Hands—the Encounter resolves Arrest instead of (or before) Battle. Arrest works like Battle, but there is no Fire or Boarding decision. Unless the pirates Escape, they are Arrested. So that makes hanging around in Town rather dangerous for Blackbeard if Captain Brand has headed south!

Grant: How is an attempt an escape carried out? Also how can this be modified?

Volko: Escape from Battle, Arrest, and Boarding all resolve by determining number of dice, then winning by highest single roll—again with twists.

Each pirate piece starts with 2 dice, while each Hunter starts with 1 die. (The Hunter sloops were commandeered commercial vessels and smaller than Blackbeard’s fully armed pirate ship.) So the Hunters are hoping to Encounter Blackbeard’s Adventure with both Jane and Ranger together. Tiles can add dice, while Hits (from Fire in a Battle) remove dice. For example, “Lookouts” add 1 die to any pirate Escape roll, while “Captain Gordon” takes Brand’s base of 1 die to 4 dice, representing a larger overland force that Brand had historically. If a sloop on either side Escapes, it moves to an adjacent space. So the Hunters can disrupt Blackbeard’s Piracy by chasing him off, since Adventure has to end the turn at a designated location for each Piracy tile. Another twist is that the Hunters have the advantage of strategic surprise. Historically, it seems that Blackbeard was not ready for the Royal Navy’s approach. So the Hunters win tie rolls for Escape, Arrest, and Boarding. But if an Escape does occur and Hunters and pirates meet up again, now Blackbeard wins ties, as he has seen first hand that the Royal Navy is in North Carolina and after him!

Grant: How is the game won?

Volko: Recall that Blackbeard is putting cubes on various Piracy tiles. Filling individual tiles matters for tile effects but not directly for victory. To win, Blackbeard must fill at least half of the total number of cube spots (the squares on the tiles) across 1 entire row (“Acts of Piracy” or “Pirate’s Life—both is not necessary). So there is some flexibility for the Blackbeard player not only which type of Piracy to pursue, but also which specific tiles and locations. A hitch is that these tiles come out only 1 per turn. So Blackbeard does not know early on what the full tasks will be by the end. The other side of that is that, if cubes fill half the spots on neither Piracy row, Blackbeard loses—even if the Hunters never catch him. He is a failed pirate. So the Hunters can win by just disrupting the pirate, and Blackbeard needs to be careful not to get himself in a situation at the end where fulfilling enough Piracy becomes impossible, either geographically or because of an empty Purse. That might mean taking some risks of exposure to the Hunters! Finally, Encounters often decide the game. An Arrest of Blackbeard’s lieutenant Israel Hands (as Brand achieved historically) merely removes that piece. But Arrest of Blackbeard ashore is a victory for the Hunters. If it comes to a sloop Battle (as often the case) that ends in Boarding, whoever wins that wins the game—regardless of the progress in Blackbeard’s Piracy. That means that the Hunters might succeed in cornering the pirate ship, only to lose the fight! Blackbeard in that case has bested the Royal Navy and taken one or more of their ships as prizes, a pirate triumph. And the Blackbeard player may find that Piracy will not work and only luring the Hunters into such a Battle against a well-prepared Sloop Adventure offers a chance for the pirates. But if play follows history, something like the Battle of Ocracoke in November 1718 will decide Blackbeard’s fate and win the day for the Hunters.

Grant: What has been the reaction of your play testers? What do they like most about the game?

Volko: With just 4 turns maximum, small board, and limited number of pieces, players were finishing games in under 45 minutes—maybe in as little as 10-15 minutes if things go very badly for Blackbeard! So there is lots of opportunity to try out different strategies, switch sides, and play again in the same sitting. But the deduction puzzles and ability to show your opponent just what you want them to see mean that the decisions across those 4 turns can be quite difficult. With many of those decisions occurring in secret, such as behind each players screens, play testers always immediately after a game would share each other’s stories—what they were thinking, or what they were trying to get their opponent to think.

Grant: What was the greatest challenge to overcome and how did you fix it?

Volko: Two related challenges stand out to me. The first is that any games involving secret information and secret decisions inevitably introduce barriers to interaction. I can’t really participate in everything you are doing, if you are acting behind a screen or via hidden components. Hunt for Blackbeard features a lot of secrets. So I had to ensure in development that we had enough options and incentives for players to end up revealing some information to the other—to ensure a rewarding level of player engagement with each other throughout, not just in a final Encounter. Development changes to solve this issue included Hunter Surveillance, which shows Blackbeard where the Hunters are looking, and Blackbeard Showing his location to the Hunters when completing the more lucrative Piracy tiles—both mechanics that grew in their roles during testing. The second related challenge is that an asymmetrical game with so much happening in secret is harder to learn and teach. You really can’t play the game with full skill until you understand what your opponent is able to do behind that screen. And you can’t learn that until you have watched both sides play. This issue, in candor, remains my main worry about how players will receive the game. The solution that I have attempted is to provide an entire separate “Learn to Play” booklet that includes a “teaching guide” for how to help others learn once you know the game. That’s a new step for me—we shall see how well it works.

Grant: What are you most proud of in the design?

Volko: Thematically, I expect that players will get a much more historical idea of pirate-hunting in general and of Blackbeard’s last days in particular than any other game offers. Happily for that objective, Kevin Bertram of Fort Circle Games absolutely loves to load up a game box with historical materials—and I promise you that Hunt for Blackbeard will be no exception. While I have relied on published histories in the game’s design, Hunt for Blackbeard will feature substantial historical supplements created to back up play of the game. Mechanically, Hunt for Blackbeard handles secret search and observation in a more realistic way than more traditional boardgames have. That dynamic of not just my hidden information but your hidden knowledge of my hidden information comes up throughout intelligence work and military reconnaissance. Think of law enforcement versus organized crime, or pre-industrial cavalry scouting, or modern submarine warfare—it matters a lot what I know about you that you don’t realize that I know. I find the location block mechanics in Hunt for Blackbeard so promising for other historical situations that I intend a new series of designs to build on them, starting with my design Coast Watchers, currently on GMT Games P500. Thank you for this opportunity to reveal these details of Hunt for Blackbeard!

As always, a big thank you to Volko for his time in sharing information about the game. I will be honest, as I wrote the questions for the interview, I was really struggling with what to ask and how to frame up the questions to allow for a good feel about the game. Volko did a fantastic job in sharing enough information to get me more interested in the game and I am now fully looking forward to it.

If you are interested in Hunt for Blackbeard, you can check out the project on the Kickstarter page at the following link: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fortcircle/hunt-for-blackbeard

-Grant