Sail Board Game Review

After digging a little deeper, I learned that Sail began its life under a different name: Hameln Cave, first released in Japan in 2021. In that version, players attempted to escape a cursed cave while avoiding ghosts rather than sea monsters.

Later, when the game was picked up by the American publisher Allplay, the theme was reimagined as a pirate adventure filled with clashes against the Kraken. The static board and fixed obstacles were replaced with scenario tokens and modular challenges, giving this board game greater variety and replayability.

So what is this board game actually about?

Your goal as a pair of players is to sail your ship safely to the finish. To do that, you must keep moving forward while constantly fending off the insatiable Kraken, which damages your ship along the way. 

And where does the trick-taking mechanic come into play? Quite simply, every action in the game is resolved through tricks. Movement, defense, and survival all depend on how you play your cards.

The deck consists of three suits (colors), each numbered from 1 to 9. But the numbers alone aren’t what matter most—the symbols beneath them are just as important, because only the right combinations allow you to perform specific actions during the game. The challenge is heightened by the fact that players are not allowed to communicate. You must rely entirely on intuition, timing, and your understanding of your partner’s playstyle to succeed.

The game begins with choosing a scenario. Each one changes the layout of islands, Kraken tentacles, storm clouds, and even the length of the route you must travel. Regardless of the route length, you have five rounds to survive the journey. This variety adds excellent replayability and ensures that every session feels different.

After placing the obstacles and setting the ship token at the starting point, you prepare the Kraken deck. This small deck represents the ship’s durability. Cards numbered 1 and 2 are added to the pile, shuffled, and placed face up on a special Kraken card to track how much damage your ship can endure. Next, the remaining deck is shuffled and each player is dealt nine cards. The final step of setup is choosing a pirate character card, each with a unique ability that slightly bends the rules in your favor.

The round counter indicates who will lead first. Before the round begins, players study their hands and secretly exchange one card with each other—one of the few ways to coordinate in a game where communication is otherwise forbidden.

The trick-taking rules themselves are familiar and easy to grasp. One player leads a suit, and the other must follow that suit if possible. The higher number wins the trick. If you cannot follow suit, you may play any card—but since there are no trump suits, this automatically means losing the trick

However, the real heart of the game lies in the symbol combinations on the cards. Only specific pairings allow you to perform meaningful actions.

Helm symbols control movement. After a trick is resolved, the ship moves toward the player who won it. But if one or two Kraken tentacles appear beneath the helms, the monster attacks. For each tentacle shown, one or two cards are removed from the Kraken deck, reducing the ship’s durability. Those discarded cards do not disappear—they are shuffled into the players’ deck in the next round.

You can fight back and effectively “repair” the ship using combinations such as a helm–tentacle symbol together with a cannon symbol. In these cases, the ship does not move, but the card is placed at the bottom of the Kraken deck, restoring some resilience.

If two cannons appear in a trick, the crew gets a small push-your-luck moment—though always with a positive outcome. One remaining card from the deck is revealed and, depending on its symbol, either moves the ship forward or replenishes the Kraken deck.

The most powerful combination is two mermaids. This allows you to move the ship straight ahead, effectively replacing two normal movements and granting a crucial advantage.

Any other symbol combination does nothing and results in a wasted trick. The trick still counts, however, and must be marked on the winner’s counter

Another clever detail is that a round ends as soon as one player has won four tricks. Because of this, a round can last anywhere from four to seven tricks—and sometimes a short four-trick round can be more effective than a longer one.

At the end of each round, the Kraken attacks with special fury. This is tracked by a marker on a circular track that shows how enraged the monster has become. The fury level increases whenever a special monster card appears during play. If that card ever becomes the only one left in the Kraken deck, the scenario is immediately lost.

There are several other ways to fail. You lose if the Kraken marker reaches the skull icon, if five rounds pass without reaching the destination, or if—at the end of rounds two and four—the ship has not sailed past the storm cloud markers.