Get your first look at the Sea of Thieves board game (and yes, there's a Kraken)
Raise the anchor
We finally have our first good look at the Sea of Thieves board game after months of teases, and it's now officially dubbed Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends.
Developed by Steamforged Games (the team behind numerous adaptations, including an Elden Ring board game), this Sea of Thieves board game is a competitive experience designed for two to four players where you'll all compete to become Pirate Legend. However, sailors won't just be battling for bragging rights in Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends when it drops anchor to join other board games for adults this summer. They will also have to contend with the video game's (literal) skeleton crews that occupy ghost ships and Forts across the ocean. In addition, the dreaded Kraken and Megalodon are also on hand to cause chaos for players with their own massive standees on the board.
Speaking of which, the Kraken is getting its own special monster card with rules that trap ships just like the video game - you can't move out of contact with the monster unless you've damaged it enough to chase away its many tentacles. Still, there is an upside; defeating a tentacle leaves behind a wealth of treasure for you (or rival crews) to collect.
Other iconic Sea of Thieves elements are on their way too. Characters like Sudds (here labelled as 'Navigator') are represented by cards with unique abilities, and these offer powerups like being able to move through treacherous wave spaces as if they were the calm, open sea.
Similarly, the game's factions haven't been confirmed for Sea of Thieves: Voyage of Legends but the system behind them suggests they might be on their way (certainly Athena's Fortune at the least). More specifically, the press release says that you will be "completing various Quests and objectives to gain reputation" in your journey to become a Pirate Legend - just like the video game.
There's not much else we can glean about Voyage of Legends yet because we've only got one picture to go on so far, but the box's contents list suggests a fairly chunky product. While it might not be as massive as Steamforged's Dark Souls or Horizon adaptations, it still packs 24 standees, more than 300 tokens, and well over 100 cards in total.
Regarding the adaptation, Steamforged co-founder and CCO Mat Hart said that it is "a privilege to bring [Sea of Thieves developer] Rare’s vivid pirate world to life as a board game for the first time. From a creative perspective, Sea of Thieves’ distinctive art style has been a real pleasure to work with and looks just as evocative on tiles as it does on screen. Rare captured pirate magic with their compelling gameplay loop, and that’s something we’ve strived to bring to the board game too."
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As the site's Tabletop & Merch Editor, you'll find my grubby paws on everything from board game reviews to the latest Lego news. I've been writing about games in one form or another since 2012, and can normally be found cackling over some evil plan I've cooked up for my group's next Dungeons & Dragons campaign.