An Introduction to and Review of the Pirates Constructible Strategy Game

The Pirates Constructible Strategy Game is a tabletop game from (the now defunct) Wiz Kids where the players each build a fleet consisting of ships, sea monsters, crew, and equipment and then battle for treasure spread across the islands in the ocean.

Introduction
The game materials are purchased in packs containing a collection of cards.
Ship cards and sea monster cards contain the parts of a ship or sea monster to punch out and assemble.
Treasure, crew, terrain, and equipment cards contain the related tokens to punch out.
Each ship has a number of masts and a number of cannons. Each mast is a cannon, though some ships also have a cannon on deck as well. Each cannon has a range (short or long) and the dice roll needed to hit with that cannon.
Sea monsters also have a number of short and long range attacks and the rolls needed for them to hit.
Each ship and sea monster also has a defined movement "speed". The two basic speeds are short and long.
A ship or sea monster may have a combination of short and long speeds for its movement.
Each ship has a number of cargo spaces which may be used to carry crew, equipment, and treasure.
The goal of the game is to collect the most treasure from the islands scattered through the game.
Like most similar games, Pirates has had a number of different set releases. Each set generally introduces new material such as a new nationality/faction, new ship or monster types, etc. Generally the new material is available only in the particular set that introduces it.

Basic Game Play
First the players determine the size of their playing area and the point value limit of their fleets.
Each ship, sea monster, crew, and equipment has an associated point value.
The players build their fleet and add crew and equipment as desired up to the game point limit.
The players set their home island and then take turns placing islands throughout the playing area and then scatter treasure tokens on the islands.
Now the players take turns moving their fleets.
Players take various actions during a turn like moving, attacking, etc.
I won't cover all the various actions and rules here for sake of brevity.
You can get the full rules from a pack of Pirates.
If a player wishes to attack, he measures the distance between the desired cannon to fire and the desired enemy mast to fire at.
If the cannon is in range, he rolls a die to see if the shot hits.
If the shot hits, the target mast is removed from the ship.
When a ship has no masts left, it is derelict and cannot move (unless it has oars or other special rules apply).

Gameplay
I have only been able to play a couple matches of Pirates so far.
The game is very enjoyable to play. There is quite a bit of strategy involved in building your fleet and playing the game.
You have determine what kind of strategy your are going to play with.
Are you going to try to outrun your opponents to the treasure? Are you going to simply try to blow them all out of the water?
The gameplay can be fairly fast paced as each player generally only has a few ships in their fleet (unless you are playing a high-point game).
There is obviously also quite a bit of chance involved as all your attack actions are based on dice rolls.
You may have the best fleet in the game, but that won't matter if you never roll high enough to hit your target. :P

Collecting and Assembling
I find the collecting and assembling aspect of the game to be quite enjoyable.
It is always exciting to open a pack and find a new ship, creature, treasure, or crew that you did not previously have in your collection.
Those who enjoy assembling things like I do will most likely enjoy assembling their ships and creatures.

The downsides to assembling and collecting are:
1. You will most likely end up with multiple identical items (I don't assemble duplicate ships and such). However you can always give away or trade some of your duplicate items.
2. The slots in the parts to assemble are not always cut quite right and need to be trimmed so the parts will fit together.
3. Some parts such as masts can be broken fairly easily if you are not careful during assembly and will then need to be repaired (I have several masts awaiting some superglue...).
4. A collection of assembled ships and monsters can take up quite a bit of space. I think they do make quite nice decorations though. My personal collection currently fills a small wall shelf in my room.
5. As will all collectible games it requires an investment in materials.

Summary/Conclusion
Except for the minor assembling and collecting drawbacks, which would apply to most similar games, I find the collecting and assembling aspect of the game to be quite enjoyable.
I find the gameplay to be quite engaging and enjoyable.
Unfortunately Wiz Kids is currently shut down so the future of Pirates does not look promising.
However, there is still stock available for purchase if you are interested in playing the game.
A nice aspect is that once you have a decent collection, you could hold games with friends without them needing to purchase anything themselves.
I could easily host a game with several players using my personal collection.

Resources
Wikipedia Page
The Admiral Pirates collection and fleet manager