Aether Captains: Pirates and Traders, a solitaire game (20-30 min) in which you play the captain of the freeship Swiftwind. As a trader and mercenary, you will buy and sell goods, brave the natural elements, and skirmish with dread air pirates over the skies of Arkady’s Grand Compact, the city-states of the Empire.
To win you must manage your zeppelin resources: engine components, your loyal crew, your weapons,and your cache of gold while completing 3 game Scenarios involving buying and selling trade goods, fighting Air Pirates and visiting cities and waystations. If ever 2 kinds of your resources stored in the sections of your zeppelin (Gold, Weapons, Crew, and Engine) fall to zero you have lost the game.
During the setup you will create a 4 tile Zeppelin to carry your resources and provide defense against attack. Various captains may be chosen from as well to give you some bonuses during the game.
Scenarios are then turned over followed by cards from the action deck. Each action is resolved with a set of numbers contained on the cards. Some cards allow you to visit cities and buy and sell trade goods plus other resources, other cards involve storms which may damage your ship and its cargo, pirates who will attack you in battle and various helpful cards like trading posts and waystations.
In this Print and Play game, 4 pages of rules include a player reference sheet to the cards need to be printed along with 56 full color cards. Additional materials required: 1d12, 40 markers in 4 colors (10 markers to a color) and some way to keep track of gold.