15th Anniversary of Savage Shores!
11/5/2023
Today marks the 15th anniversary of the final set’s release! Savage Shores came out on November 5th 2008, so Captain Randy and I decided to play a quick little 2 player 60 point game to celebrate, using almost exclusively SS game pieces. It would be the first of many games we’ll play together in Las Vegas!
We used standard rules with the exception that whirlpool rolls would be bad on 1-3 instead of 4-6. The only non-SS game pieces permitted were terrain, and generic crew from any faction or set.
Randy rolled to go first with this mixed fleet:
Valeroso + captain, helmsman
Libellule + Capitaine Baudouin Deleflote
Speedy Return + tribal chieftain, oarsman
American native canoes
I followed with a Cursed American fleet:
Soul Crusher + Wraith, captain, helmsman
Frontier + tribal chieftain, helmsman, oarsman
American native canoes
We placed 3 SS mysterious islands each, then 3 terrain each. I put Randy’s home island (HI) in the far west, while he put me in the northeast. His canoes are on the far right, with mine just southwest of them.
I recorded Randy’s first turn:
Randy had a canoe head west, while Frontier loaded a big load of booty from the first island. I unintentionally was using game pieces that would effectively bypass the mysterious island docking criteria, since Frontier’s hoist arm and the canoes already being at an island when the game started made docking less important for my fleet to get gold.
Soul Crusher got in action and took on the other Turbine! However, all my shots missed, and only after winning the boarding party (which would normally massacre the Spanish crew) did we remember that Valeroso has Crew Protect built in. However, the ram damage took out a mast.
Various ships explored, with my canoes finding the Necklace of the Sky and Manawa no Kowhatu (which was ignored with no crew on the canoe of course).
Randy took two of his canoes with two coins each through the whirlpool to arrive in home waters. Valeroso was unable to escape Wraith’s wrath (which could be a fun ship name), with Soul Crusher ramming off her final mast. True to form, my cannon d6 rolling was abysmal as usual, as I believe I went 0/6 with Soul Crusher. I used the American native canoe ability to transfer a 7 from one canoe to a different canoe that had Necklace of the Sky, warping to the east to get away from Randy’s approaching canoes.
Valeroso was able to whirl home on turbine power, with Libellule and the canoes also returning to make for a gold-laden homecoming. However, Soul Crusher was busting up some canoes as Frontier unloaded another coin for me. Speedy Return was not living up to her namesake with no helmsman aboard.
Soon afterwards the final coins were unloaded!
Final scores:
- Cursed Americans: 33 gold
- Mixed SS alliance: 20
A solid quick 15th anniversary game to get us started on what should be a great year+ or many years of playing Pirates CSG in Vegas! It only took about an hour to play out, which might be a theme we experiment with over the long haul. We’ve got plans for a wide variety of things, including using timed turns, playing scenarios, and playtesting customs. Thanks for reading and we hope you stay tuned for more seafaring adventures from the desert! If you know anyone in Vegas that likes pirates and/or this kind of board game, feel free to let me know!
Lastly, feel free to grab some Savage Shores from eBay – affiliate links like that and my Patreon are some of the best ways to support my efforts to keep this game alive and hopefully revive it as well.
