surface rather than a game board; before play begins, players take turns populating the play area with various pieces of terrain like islands, fog banks, and sargasso seas. Face-down gold or treasure tokens are then placed on each island. After creating the play area, players then place their fleets and gameplay begins. Players take turns moving their ships around the play area, landing on islands and exploring them, which reveals the value of the gold and treasure tokens on that island. Ships then collect treasure and attempt to return it to their home islands before their opponents. Since the game's victory conditions include both gold collection and the destruction of all enemy fleets, there are several different strategies that can lead to victory: trying to destroy an opponent before he or she can gather gold; building a fast and strong enough fleet to avoid being destroyed; or, most common, a mix of both. The game is packaged so that one person may play the game with only one game pack, but several more packs are required to play using the full rules. Additionally, the game is far more enjoyable and balanced when each player has a larger selection of game pieces from which to choose when assembling their fleets. The recommended "sweet spot" for playability appears to be three to five players on a 90 cm by 90 cm (3 foot by 3 foot) 'ocean'. Configurations The game is primarily sold in "game packs", foil-wrapped packs of randomized styrene cards and other game components roughly the same size as a pack of baseball cards or other trading card game packs such as Magic: The Gathering. Each pack includes a randomized combination of two constructible game pieces: ships (including forts and sea monsters), and various crew, treasure and terrain. These game pieces are numbered and collectible, and come in multiple levels of rarity designated by a color-coded triangle on each card's corner - the most common rarities for standard booster pack items are : Common (white for generic crew, red for ships), Uncommon (silver-grey), Rare (yellow), or Super Rare (black). Other rarity designations for non-pack ships include "Special Edition" (green), a one-off Promo (purple), and "Limited Edition" (copper) for tournament prize ships. Unlike most trading card games, due to the limited number of game pieces in each pack, some packs do not contain any Rare or Super Rare game pieces, or