How to play Ship, Captain and Crew

Ship, Captain and Crew is played with five dice and suits two to eight players. You also need something to track points with, or chips if you would rather play for a pot each round. The story behind the name is simple: before you can carry cargo, your ship needs a ship, a captain and a crew.

On your turn you have up to three rolls to secure three specific dice in the right order:

• The six is the ship. It must come first.
• The five is the captain. It can only be set aside once you have the ship.
• The four is the crew. It can only be set aside once you have both ship and captain.

Dice you secure are set aside, and the rest are rerolled. Roll 6-5-3-2-2 on your first throw, for example, and you keep the six and the five and reroll three dice. The order is strict: a four with no five in place does you no good at all.

Once ship, captain and crew are secured, the two remaining dice are your cargo. Their sum is your score for the round, from 2 to 12. If you have rolls left when the crew comes aboard, you may reroll the cargo to try to improve it, but you must accept the new result.

If you fail to collect ship, captain and crew within three rolls, your round is worth zero points.

Every player gets one turn, and the highest cargo wins the round. Playing with chips, everyone antes one chip before the round and the winner takes the pot. If two or more players tie, they play another round between them.

A full match can run to an agreed score, for example first to 50, or a fixed number of rounds.

The game is also known as 6-5-4, after the dice that must be secured. One common house rule allows the cargo to be rerolled only once; another gives a bonus for securing the whole crew in a single roll. Agree on the house rules before the first throw.

If you like games where dice are set aside along the way, try Farkle or the calm race Going to Boston.

The order is the whole game. Without it nearly everyone would land full cargo every round, and the tension would vanish. Requiring ship before captain before crew means good rolls can go to waste, and that is where both the groans and the laughter come from.