At the beginning of the game, shuffle the cards face down and deal 6 cards to each player. The remaining cards are placed face down as the draw pile. Starting from the player on the left of the dealer, players take turns to execute rounds. A round consists of two steps: hijacking a ship and taking an action. When hijacking a ship, if there is no pirate ship card next to the merchant ship card on the player's table, or if the player has played the strongest pirate ship card cumulatively, the player can obtain that merchant ship card. When taking an action, the player can choose one of five actions to perform, including drawing one card from the top of the draw pile, playing a merchant ship card, pirate ship card, pirate captain card, or admiral card from their hand. The game continues until the draw pile is exhausted and one player has run out of cards in their hand. Players calculate the score of the merchant ship cards they have obtained and subtract the score of the merchant ship cards in their hand. The player with the highest score wins.