Pirates Under Fire is an original, tactical, and dynamic two-player tile game that lasts 30 minutes and that can be played from 10 years old.

Each player is a pirate in charge of a fleet; each ship is numbered from 1 to 9, each of them having a special ability. The goal of the game is to deploy your ships to form combinations while performing their effects.

Players perform their turns one after another by laying a ship on a sea space. They apply the effect of the sea space and the effect of the ship tile. This is the main action. They can also perform an optional action: buying a mercenary ship by paying its cost. The game ends when each player has played 16 turns.

At the end of the game, players score victory points (VPs) for:
• the combinations made (three or more ship tiles laid side by side with identical numbers or forming a sequence of increasing or decreasing numbers),
• the ships laid in the opponent player's sea side,
• some mercenary ships, and
• the VP tokens collected during the game.

The player with the most VPs wins.