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Pirate board game sees players shooting cannonballs into a pop-up ship

A different kind of pop-up pirate game.

Shoot cannonballs into a pop-up pirate ship in upcoming board game Fire in the Hole!.

A dexterity board game for two to four players, Fire in the Hole! challenges its landlubber combatants to beat their opponents in a game of skill. The group converges around a pop-up pirate ship that contains a grid in which balls will be fired into and held inside. Players will be attempting to land their cannonballs into patterns onto the grid, eventually aiming to connect four cannonballs together to create a winning combination.

Fire in Hole! board game image

On their turn, players will choose a card from their hand to play onto the table, deciding whether to lay down a fire or a sabotage card. Selecting a fire card will give that player the opportunity to roll a set of dice to determine whether they will be the only one firing, or if every pirate at the table will be launching a cannonball at once. Certain fire cards will also affect how the players will be launching their cannonballs, with handicaps such as having to cover an eye with an actual eyepatch when aiming or using their non-dominant hand when throwing.

Alternatively, players can choose to lay down a sabotage card that will make things difficult for their opponents, such as removing one of their cannonballs from the ship or swapping the position of their cannonball with that of another player’s. Otherwise, sabotage can just cause chaos, like turning the ship to face the other direction or taking a card from the discard pile and playing it immediately.

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All the components in Fire in the Hole are made from biodegradable materials with the cards, pop-up pirate ship and box being made from paper, whilst the eye-patches and cannonballs are made from wool felt. According to the game’s publisher McMiller – a queer-owned company that has previously made several party board games includng It’s Bananas and UpRoar – several carbon offset projects, such as afforestation efforts and the expansion of renewable energies, will be set in motion in order to offset any carbon emissions production through the creation and distribution of the board game.

The Kickstarter campaign for Fire in the Hole! is live until April 9th, with a pledge of $28 (£22) getting backers a copy of the core game that’s estimated to arrive sometime in August.

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Fire in the Hole!

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About the Author
Alex Meehan avatar

Alex Meehan

Senior Staff Writer

After writing for Kotaku UK, Waypoint and Official Xbox Magazine, Alex became a member of the Dicebreaker editorial family. Having been producing news, features, previews and opinion pieces for Dicebreaker for the past three years, Alex has had plenty of opportunity to indulge in her love of meaty strategy board games and gothic RPGS. Besides writing, Alex appears in Dicebreaker’s D&D actual play series Storybreakers and haunts the occasional stream on the Dicebreaker YouTube channel.

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