After a long career of raids and robberies, Captain Morgan retired from piracy. He made a magic map that would remind him where he buried his ill-gotten gains. He ripped up the map in many pieces to foil those who would try to find his treasures. Unfortunately for the old pirate, he was cursed by a sorceress a long time ago. This curse has turned his torn-up map into a guide for others to locate his treasures!

You have come into possession of many pieces of Morgan's map. Every time the fragments are rearranged, they magically point to the right spot to dig! But other pirates have parts of the magic map as well, so now you must race your fellow pirates to see who can gather the most valuable treasures before the map fades to dust forever.

Morgan's Magic Map is played over a series of turns in which players will use map cards to locate where Captain Morgan has hidden his treasures. To set up, put the twenty map tiles in a 4x5 grid, with water and land edges always being adjacent to one another. Most map tiles comes with a reference point, such as The Tomb, The 3 Columns, or Big Nose Bay. Each player begins with two doubloons and four map cards in hand; each map card shows a reference point, a distance from the reference point, and a bonus icon.

On your turn, you can take a map tile that has a free edge and move it elsewhere, as long as the map stays in one piece, water touches water, and no pirate is on the tile. Next, you can move your pirate — which begins in a corner of the map — up to two spaces orthogonally. Then if you meet the condition on any map cards in hand, you can play them since you have followed their directions to find treasure. If, for example, a map card shows The Tomb and has a 3 on it, then you may play that map card if you are three (orthogonal) spaces away from The Tomb. Treasure cards come in six colors, and five cards are available on a treasure board, with the more valuable cards found deeper on the board. If you play three map cards in a turn, then you can take any one of the topmost three cards. The deeper you dig, the more doubloons you get along with the treasure!

Every map card has a bonus on it, and once you've played a map card, you keep it in front of you until you use the bonus, whether to move an extra map tile, walk farther with your pirate, or dig deeper when you locate treasure.

Once the deck of treasure cards is exhausted, the game is over. For each of the six treasure types, whoever has the most of that type gets a 6 doubloon bonus, with tied players splitting the bonus. Sum up the doubloons you gathered during the game, bonuses, and the value of the treasures themselves to see who ended up the richest pirate.