7 Player Game at 120 Points – Pirates CSG 2022 Weekend Marathon (October 16th, 2022)

7 Player Game, 120 Points

10/23/2022

The largest game of the 2022 Pirates CSG Weekend Marathon was a 7 player game with a 120 point build total!  😀  A power outage at Mox Boarding House in Bellevue led us to go to their Seattle location instead. We used these house rules and some additional ones:
-Lord Mycron legal, but has Limit and Ransom in addition to his regular abilities.
-Custom game pieces are allowed if all players agree to their legality.
-Three islands placed per player.
-Each player can place 3 pieces of terrain during setup (in the same order as islands, per usual), with a maximum of 1 massive terrain and 1 medium terrain per player. (Picture – Massive=7 in top 2 rows; Medium=7 in bottom row)
-The last player in the turn order chooses their home island location first, followed by the second to last player until the first player chooses their home island last.
-Each player must contribute an equal number of coins of any value or type in order to have 4 coins per wild island. (8 coins per player due to 2 wild islands per player)
-Gold bonuses will be applied permanently to the coin in question (ex: a 7 becomes an 8 ). The added value stays with the coin, and the coin can be “used” normally for the purposes of home island raiding, fort building, etc.

These were the fleets!

Xerecs (custom Ionic fleet; game pieces found in the Customs Database)
Ignition + Atuam, helmsman, captain (proxied by Kentucky)
Okoto + Ekimu, Ackar, Kinaa, Helyrex, Draxon, captain, oarsman
Three Virtues + Amakav, helmsman, Onua, oarsman
G’Ki + Gukon, helmsman (proxied by Santa Lucia)

Kyky
La Vengeance + crew
La Danae + crew
Black Swan + crew
Conquerant + crew
Seleucis
Ophidious

Cutty
Le Soleil Royal + crew
Raninoidea
Golden Medusa + crew
Kirbac + crew
La Felicite + crew
Coral
La Santa Isabel
Banshee’s Cry + crew
Executioner + crew

Gazerbeam543 (some customs used)
Inarrêtable + Mademoiselle Moulin, Lenoir, Jordan Dumas, Griffin, Helmsman
La Dijon + helmsman, explorer, oarsman
Fetu + Lady Roimata, Madame LaFontaine, Khalid Youssef, Helmsman, Oarsman
Le Coeur du Lion + Princess Arii Auraa, Capitaine Baudouin Deleflote, Oarsman
Mist Walker

A7XfanBen
Baochuan + Admiral Zheng He, Warlord Cavendish, Ms. Cheng, RotF Crimson Angel, Grim the Savage, Bianco’s Haulers, RotF Captain Mysion, helmsman, oarsman
Coeur + Auraa, Deleflote
Floating Stone + Calypso
Neptune’s Hoard + Hammersmith, Tia Dalma, oarsman
Philadelphia + helmsman, oarsman

Witch
El Acorazado + RotF Luis Zuan, Nemesio Diaz, Roberto Santana, Joaquin Vega, helmsman, shipwright
Santo Columba + Christian Fiore, Castro’s Loyalists, captain, helmsman, oarsman
Cazador del Pirata + Fernando Sanchez, captain, helmsman, oarsman
El Duque + captain, oarsman
Bilge + Lord Mycron, Robinson, oarsman

L0rdgingerbread
HMS Titan + crew
La Vengeance + crew
La Santa Isabel + crew
Buscador + crew
HMS Lady Provost + crew
HMS Gallowglass + Lord Mycron

We were ready to set sail!

Maps of Alexandria was once again found early, revealing the location of all the various treasures.  The Baochuan has marked an island explored and grabbed some gold from it.

Cutty’s fleet setting out.  What lunacy might Pandora’s Box bring about?

The Fetu and Dijon were rapidly acquiring some hefty hauls for Gazerbeam’s fleet:

Luckily for me the Neptune’s Hoard had found Elizabeth’s Piece of Eight, but soon afterwards Cutty’s Pandora’s Box exploration would yank in a Pirata Codex to eliminate all face up UT’s from the game!

This shows the “far east” of the ocean where Xerecs’ Ignition has been dismasted by Kyle’s Black Swan.

In a huge move, Gazerbeam took his custom French 10 master over the edge of round earth to sink the Okoto (Xerecs’ custom Ionic 10 master) with help from Mist Walker!  Southwest of there, the big fog bank is getting a bit crowded.  The Santo Columba has emerged from it and is about to eliminate Cutty’s Raninoidea.

Peter continues to accumulate gold with the Fetu hoist:

Here it looks like Xerecs was trying to take the Three Virtues back to his home island in a roundabout way, but he couldn’t expect any clemency from me after raiding my HI with his Ionic sloop.

Indeed there would be swift action, as the NH and Baochuan teamed up to dismast the Three Virtues, allowing the Philadelphia to capture it after Tia Dalma cancelled the ship’s oarsman.

Gazerbeam builds Paradis de la Mer:

My next turn was a homecoming, as I hoped that the Three Virtues would be a valuable addition to my fleet after some time spent repairing.

The most notable development here is at the upper left, where Cutty has warped into Witch’s territory using a whirlpool from his Calypso on the Golden Medusa.  Witch has built a Spanish fort in the corner and Cutty may have designs on its gold.

The available gold in play was already dwindling down a bit, and I wanted to grab some of it in addition to hopefully a home island hoard via Grim afterwards.  I used my Calypso to warp the Baochuan and Neptune’s Hoard into the far east.  The NH was primarily there for protection, mostly via Tia Dalma’s canceller ability.

In a huge asterisk for the game, Cutty had a car emergency which forced him to take his entire fleet out of play.  Gazerbeam has built another fort near his HI.  Kyle has captured the Ignition with the Black Swan, but the huge sargasso sea is severely slowing his progress in making any use of the prize.

Spencer had somewhat quietly been playing a very good game, accumulating considerable gold while sinking the Santo Columba with HMS Titan and protecting Mycron by putting the Gallowglass in a fog bank.

I had miscalculated the risk to my ships, as I hadn’t anticipated a multi-canceller multi-player collaboration against the Baochuan and Neptune’s Hoard.  Witch’s Acorazado whirled into the area, with Diaz and Dalma cancelling each other out.  Mycron’s Bilge gave the Acorazado a shoot action, which sank the NH!

More trouble was on the way, with Kyle’s Conquerant getting an extra action to shoot and ram the Baochuan, taking her from 10 masts down to 1!!  The Baochuan’s defenses (Parley and can’t be shot at while docked) were cancelled by Diaz on the Acorazado and Lenoir on the Conquerant.  Seleucis gave Ophidious a second action to surface and shoot, sinking the Baochuan!

Witch was playing to sink ships rather than win, and thus took the Acorazado into further combat, sinking the Conquerant and injuring Ophidious.  By now Kyle had captured Xerecs’ final ship, eliminating him from the game.  The Fetu is the latest ship to get stuck in the big sargasso.

Spencer’s Lady Provost was the latest HI raiding threat against me, and she was joined by my Coeur in the fog bank now that Deleflote had a minute to breathe with both of my primary ships out of play.  The Three Virtues had finished repairing, but I knew my chances of winning were quite slim.

Kyle had the unique idea of putting 058 Captain Jack Sparrow (of UPS fame) on La Danae, something I never would have expected.  The Baochuan sinking provided some fireworks, while Ophidious would soon start repairing after an intentional reefing to trigger Eternal.

Witch took the Acorazado near the reef to dismast the Black Swan:

With the help of Lord Mycron, Spencer’s Lady Provost was able to rob a coin from Gazerbeam’s HI and immediately duck into a nearby fog bank for safety, quite the perfect trick as time wound down.  Unfortunately we were fighting another time constraint from various real-life angles, so this marked another game that would not be finished properly.  My HI was raided for the third time (by a third ship and third player!), this time by the Cazador del Pirata with Fernando Sanchez on board.  Gazerbeam now controlled the last 10 master standing and used it to make Witch’s fort abandoned in the northwest.

The final few turns featured some of the more exciting plays of the game, mostly with desperate boarding attempts.  On the left the Buscador and Lady Provost ram the Cazador del Pirata for stolen loot.  At the right, I used an extra action from the Three Virtues to emerge from a whirlpool and eventually destroy one of Gazerbeam’s forts, freeing up a few coins.  However, this effort was in vain as the Acorazado and Inarretable arrived on the scene and sank the Three Virtues.  On my last turn the Philadelphia rammed the Fetu but failed to win the boarding party.

Unfortunately the time was up and the game was over!

1. Gazerbeam543: 53 gold
2. L0rdgingerbread: 42
3. Kyky: 18
4. A7XfanBen: 11
5. Witch: 0 (still active)
6. Xerecs: 0 (eliminated)
7. Cutty: 0 (left game)

Congratulations to Gazerbeam on what looks like a near-perfect game played!  Aggressive gold acquisition early while knocking out an enemy 10 master set him up well for the rest of the game.  Any threat I could muster was quashed by the anti-Baochuan alliance, while Spencer couldn’t quite steal enough gold at the end to make up the difference in coinage.  Kyle played a nice game for a sneaky 3rd place finish.  Witch accomplished his goal of sinking at least 10 ships (11 total), while Xerecs and Cutty were on the wrong end of some devastating broadsides very early in the game.

Here is some game footage!