Play Ship Captain Crew Online

What Is Ship Captain Crew?

Ship Captain Crew is a pub and family dice game for two or more players using five dice and three rolls per turn. The goal is delightfully specific: you must roll a 6 (the ship), then a 5 (the captain), then a 4 (the crew), in that order, and once your vessel is fully manned the two dice you have left become your cargo. The total of the cargo dice is your score for the round. Fail to find all three in three rolls and you sail home empty, scoring zero.

The order rule is what makes the game. A roll full of 5s and 4s is worthless without a 6; a 6 and a 4 with no 5 leaves you with only the ship. Every turn is a small drama of near-misses and last-roll rescues, which is why the game is also known as 6-5-4, Ship of Fools, Destroyer, Clickety Clack, and Cap’n, Bos’n, Mate.

It sits in the same family of quick, tactile pub games as Shut the Box, and it is a gentler cousin of Craps: both are games of rolling for specific numbers, but here there is no layout and no house edge, just you against the other players. If you like the “collect these in order” feel, Dice Poker and Yahtzee offer the same three-roll rhythm with richer scoring.

A Short History of Ship Captain Crew

Ship Captain Crew is a public-domain folk game with no credited designer and no documented date of origin. It is routinely described as a sailors’ game that moved from ships to dockside taverns, and the naval vocabulary (ship, captain, crew, cargo, and the alternative names bos’n and mate) certainly points that way, but we could not find a primary source that records where or when it was first played, and we do not repeat the various unsourced claims that circulate online.

What can be said with confidence is that the game belongs to the same tradition as the English pub dice games of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: it needs nothing but a cup and five dice, a turn takes thirty seconds, and it converts naturally into a game for a round of drinks or a pot of small coins. The rules published by Bicycle and the summary on Wikipedia agree on every essential point, which is unusual for a folk game and suggests the rules settled early. Where minor differences exist, for example on whether cargo may be re-rolled or how ties are broken, this guide points them out and says which rule our game uses.

Ship Captain Crew Rules

Equipment

• Five six-sided dice
• A dice cup (traditional, optional)
• Pen and paper or, in a pub, a pile of coins for the pot

Object of the Game

Score the highest cargo. In our version you and the computer each take one turn per round for five rounds, and the higher total across the five rounds wins. Traditional play is often a single round per pot.

How a Turn Works

1. Roll all five dice.
2. Bank in order. If a 6 is showing, set it aside as your Ship. If you have a Ship (from this roll or an earlier one) and a 5 is showing, set it aside as your Captain. If you have a Ship and Captain and a 4 is showing, set it aside as your Crew. You may bank all three from a single roll, but never a lower one before the higher ones: a 5 rolled before you have your 6 stays in play and is re-rolled.
3. Re-roll the rest. Roll all the dice you have not banked. You have three rolls in total.
4. Cargo. As soon as you have the Ship, Captain and Crew, the two remaining dice are your cargo and their total is your provisional score. If you have rolls left you may re-roll both cargo dice; if you do, you must accept the new total even if it is lower.
5. Score. After your third roll (or when you stand), record your cargo total. If you never completed the 6-5-4, record zero.

Banked dice are never re-rolled. Only one die of each kind is banked: two 6s on the first roll give you one Ship and one free die.

Scoring Table

Winning

The player with the highest cargo wins the round. In a pot game, the winner takes the pot. Bicycle’s rules give tied players an extra turn each until one wins; Wikipedia’s summary lets the pot carry forward to the next round on a tie. Our five-round match simply adds up the totals, and a tied match is declared a draw.

Worked Examples

• Roll 1: 6-5-4-3-2. Everything at once. Ship, Captain and Crew are banked and the cargo is 3 + 2 = 5. You have two rolls left, and 5 is below the average of 7, so re-roll the cargo dice. Roll 2: 6-1 gives cargo 7. Stand, or roll once more: with cargo exactly 7 a re-roll is a coin flip, so most players stand.
• Roll 1: 5-5-4-2-1. Two captains and a crew but no ship. Nothing can be banked; all five dice are re-rolled. Roll 2: 6-3-3-2-1. Ship banked; four dice go back. Roll 3: 5-2-2-1. Captain banked, but no 4. Score 0. This is the classic Ship Captain Crew heartbreak and it happens in nearly half of all turns.
• Roll 1: 6-6-4-4-1. One Ship banked (the second 6 is just a die). Roll 2: 5-4-3-1. Captain and Crew banked from the same roll; cargo 3 + 1 = 4. One roll left. Roll 3: 4-4. Cargo 8. Score 8.
• Roll 1: 6-5-2-2-1. Ship and Captain. Roll 2: 4-6-6. Crew banked; cargo 6 + 6 = 12. Stand: midnight cannot be improved.
• Final round, you have 24, the computer has 31 with its turn finished. You need cargo 8 or better to win. You complete the crew on roll 2 with cargo 5. Standing guarantees a loss, so re-roll: two dice total 8 or more 15 times in 36, a 41.7 percent chance.

Probabilities

We computed these exactly by enumerating every outcome of the turn (a simulation of 400,000 turns agrees to one decimal place).

Some consequences:

• The expected score of a turn is about 4.1 points if you re-roll cargo below 7 and about 3.5 if you always stand on your first cargo. Over five rounds a sensible player averages roughly 20 points; 30 or more is a strong total.
• When you do complete the crew, your average final cargo under the re-roll rule is about 7.5.
• The dice needed later in the sequence are harder to find because fewer dice are rolled for them. That is why the game is lost far more often to a missing Crew than to a missing Ship.
• Completing on roll 1 (15.8 percent) is valuable not only because it scores but because it leaves two re-rolls to improve the cargo, roughly doubling your chance of a 10-plus cargo compared with completing on roll 3.

Ship Captain Crew Strategy

There are only two decisions in the game, and one of them is forced. Even so, the way you handle them is worth a couple of points a game.

1. Re-roll cargo below 7, stand on 7 or more

A roll of two dice averages exactly 7. With a roll in hand, re-rolling cargo of 2 to 6 raises your expected score; standing on 7 to 12 keeps it. At exactly 7 the expected value is the same either way, so let the match situation decide. This is the rule the computer follows in ordinary rounds.

2. In the last round, play to win, not to score

If you are behind on the final turn, a cargo that cannot overtake the opponent is worth exactly as much as a zero. Re-roll any cargo that leaves you short, even a 10 if you need 11. Conversely, if you are ahead by more than 12 the round cannot change the result, so nothing matters. The computer applies this rule too, which makes its last turn noticeably more aggressive.

3. Do not stand on 7 early in a match when you trail

A 7 with two rolls left is a mild case: the expected value of re-rolling is 7, but the variance is higher, and variance favors the player who is behind. If you have scored two zeros and the computer has 15 points, take the re-roll.

4. Count what a re-roll can actually deliver

Needing 8 or more, two dice succeed 15 times in 36 (41.7 percent). Needing 10 or more, 6 in 36 (16.7 percent). Needing 12, 1 in 36. Knowing these numbers keeps you from re-rolling a perfectly good 9 in a round where 9 is enough, and from standing on a 5 that cannot win.

5. Accept the 46 percent

Nearly half of all turns score zero, and nothing you decide changes that: the banking is automatic and there is no choice about which dice to keep. Do not read anything into a run of blanks; each turn is independent and the next one has the same 54 percent chance of scoring.

6. In pot games, know the tie rule before you roll

Whether a tie carries the pot forward or triggers a roll-off changes the value of standing on a score that merely equals the leader. Under a roll-off rule an equal score is a live chance; under a carry-forward rule it only fattens the next pot.

Common Mistakes

• Keeping a 5 or 4 before the 6. The single most common rules error at a pub table. The game on this page makes it impossible, and the message line tells you when a tempting 5 or 4 had to go back.
• Standing on a low cargo out of relief. Getting the crew on the third roll feels like a win; a cargo of 4 is still a poor score if you had a roll left.
• Re-rolling a winning cargo. If 9 wins the round, 9 is perfect. Stand.
• Forgetting that a re-roll replaces both dice. You cannot keep the 6 and roll the 1. Some house rules allow it; the standard rule, and ours, does not.
• Miscounting rolls. The re-roll of cargo uses one of your three rolls; it is not a bonus roll.

Variants and House Rules

• Keep one cargo die. Some tables allow you to re-roll just one of the two cargo dice. This raises expected cargo considerably (you would keep any 5 or 6 and roll the other), so agree on it in advance. Our game re-rolls both.
• Extra turns on a tie (Bicycle) versus pot carries forward (common in pub play).
• Ship, Captain and Mate / Cap’n, Bos’n, Mate. The same game with different names for the 6, 5 and 4.
• Single-round pot play. Everyone antes, one round is played, and the high score takes the pot. The last player to roll is sometimes called the hammer because they know exactly what score to beat; some tables rotate the starting player to spread the advantage.
• Drinking version. The low scorer or any zero buys the round. Same rules, different stakes.
• More rounds. Any number of rounds can be played; five keeps the match short while smoothing out the zeros.
• Two-player showdown. Best of three or best of five rounds instead of a total.

If you enjoy hunting for particular faces under a roll limit, Bunco asks you to match the round number with three dice, Zombie Dice and Pig turn the same kind of luck into push-your-luck decisions, and Craps is the casino game built entirely around specific two-dice totals.

Glossary

• Ship: A 6, the first die you must bank.
• Captain: A 5, which may only be banked once you have the Ship.
• Crew: A 4, which may only be banked once you have the Ship and Captain.
• Cargo: The two dice left after the Ship, Captain and Crew are banked; their total is your score.
• Bank / Set aside: Removing a die from play for the rest of the turn.
• Midnight: A cargo of 6-6, worth 12.
• Minimum: A cargo of 1-1, worth 2, the lowest non-zero score.
• Hammer: The last player to roll in a round, who knows the score to beat.
• Pot: The pool of antes the round winner collects.

Play Ship Captain Crew Online on Dice.now

The game at the top of this page is a five-round match against the computer. Press Roll and the game banks your 6, 5 and 4 automatically, strictly in order, and the message line explains every roll: what was banked, what you still need, and when a 5 or 4 could not be kept because the Ship or Captain was missing. The Ship, Captain and Crew checklist above the dice ticks off each piece as you find it. Once all three are banked, the two cargo dice are highlighted and you choose between Stand, which locks in the cargo total, and Roll, which re-rolls both cargo dice with any roll you have left. After your turn the computer plays its three rolls in full view, standing on cargo of 7 or more except in the final round, where it re-rolls anything that would lose. The scoreboard shows every round for both players, the status bar keeps the running totals, and your best five-round total is saved only on your device. Ready to set sail? Roll the dice.