Dead Reckoning is a role-play game where you power-up sailor cards to command a pirate ship, trade, hunt treasure and take control of islands. Unlike other card games, you're not trading cards but levelling them up by applying upgrades and advancements. This, along with how ship battles are resolved by dropping cubes on the board, makes it a unique and joyously complex experience.

Play involves setting up your ship and picking a set of 12 sailor cards. Get to know your crew as you keep them for the entirety of the game. Each turn you set sail in your ship to visit and seize control of the islands. The islands let you collect advancements and fortify them against other players. You can also go after other ships and islands in cannon battles that use a block-dropping mechanic. The game ends when one of the players has completed four of the various achievements: Exploring the ocean, Completely levelling up sailors, Sinking enemy ships and so on.

Along with the drive to build up your stock of barrels and coins, there are longer-term aims of advancement and powering up your crew and ship:

• Upgrade your ship with guns, speed and cargo space, before using it to load cargo and treasure.
• Upgrade your crew by adding advancements and level-ups with transparent overlay cards that make them unique to you. Do you focus on production, attack, bosun or finances?
• Upgrade and fortify islands to defend them and produce treasure and buy advancements for your crew.

Finally, there are also live-action battles where you take on other player ships, non-player ships and buildings in your current location. Each player gets cubes from their cannons and drops them into the (not so) miniature cardboard ship. Where they land determines whether your shots explode (resulting in more cubes). Your crew abilities can also let you drop more cubes. At the end of the action, you count up what goods you landed on and who took damage.

The result is a game where you become attached to the cards in your hand because you spend time and effort to upgrade them into the ultimate pirate crew. It feels like a combination between a deck-building game and a board game, taking the best elements from these games and creating a coherent whole.