Pirate's Plunder

Pirate's Plunder is a board game popular on some skylands. Similar to Schellen only in that it uses cards, it has Old World and New World variants.

Equipment
To begin a game of Pirate's Plunder, the following are needed:


 * A set of 16 bowls, with covers. These form the main play area. While sets are often specially manufactured for gameplay, skyrates often make do with mugs from their local tavern.


 * An additional dish or mug for each player's stash.


 * Several decks of playing cards, as well as a pair of dice for each player and a token to represent themselves on the board.


 * An ante from each of the players, preferably in coinage.

Setup
The board is set up in the following fashion:


 * Everyone rolls their dice. The highest roll takes the collected ante and secretly divides it into each of the gameplay dishes as they see fit, making sure that no-one else is watching and puts the covers back on when he's done. The lowest roll takes the covered dishes, randomly arranging them into a 4x4 grid without looking at the contents.


 * A second roll of the dice sets up play order as proceeding clockwise from the player who rolled the highest. Each player then takes their turn placing their token on one of the bowls at the edges of the gameplay area.


 * The decks of cards are combined together and shuffled, then five cards are dealt to each player.


 * The player who rolled the highest takes the top card from the deck and places it face-up on the discard.

At this point, turns proceed as normal.

Gameplay

 * 1) Draw: If the player has fewer than five cards, they draw one card from the deck and add it to their hand.
 * 2) Move: The player takes a card from his hand, placing it on the discard. The player's card must match the top discard in either suit or number. Once this is done, the player is allowed to move his token a number of dishes away equivalent to the numerical value of his card, moving from dish to dish in the cardinal directions only; no diagonals!
 * 3) Plunder: Should the player land on an unoccupied dish, they are free to plunder the treasure under that dish. During this phase, a player may do the following:


 * Take some or all of the treasure from the dish and place it in his private stash.
 * Take some or all of his private stash and rebury it under the dish.


 * Both actions are performed in secret.


 * Should the player land on a dish occupied by another player, combat is initiated unless both parties agree to truce. Combat is resolved in the following fashion:
 * Each player rolls their pair of dice as many times as they choose, adding the totals of their rolls for a single sum. The player with the highest total that does not exceed 24 is considered the winner of combat, and takes all of the plunder from the other player's stash, adding it to his own.

Endgame
The game ends when the deck of cards is exhausted. At that point, each player's stash is revealed, and the individual with the most in their stash is proclaimed the winner.