Barbary Corsairs

Faction Review

The Barbary Corsairs are one of 4 “minor factions” from Wizkids Pirates CSG.  The others are the Jade Rebellion, Vikings, and Mercenaries.  These factions are sometimes referred to as minor factions because they had a very limited release of game pieces – primarily in their “feature set”, which for the Barbary Corsairs was the Barbary Coast set. As a result, they have less ships and crew than the major factions that saw game pieces across many of the sets.

Overview

The Corsairs are primarily a gold running faction.  They do not usually excel in combat.  This is partly because they have many poor cannon ranks across the 38 ships in their fleet, and because they lack any ships larger than 4 masts.  However, the goal of the game is to get the most gold, so they’re actually relatively competitive compared to the other minor factions, especially the Vikings and Mercenaries.  I’ve found that the Corsairs are often underrated because players sometimes write them off due to their lack of combat capability.  However, this is a mistake, because the Corsairs have many fast ships, often with large cargo capacities and for cheap point costs.

Ships

The Barbary Corsairs have some of the prettiest ships in the game!

All of their ships can be found here, and I’ve ranked their best gunships and gold runners. The Corsairs have a number of notable ships, with the Tiger’s Eye being the most prominent.  She is widely agreed to be the best Barbary Corsair ship in the game – one of the ships that is simply stacked in just about every category.  Their best warship is probably the Janissaries’ Blood, one of their seven 4 masted galleys.  A few of my favorites that I received in my first pack of Barbary Coast are the Algiers and Griffin, two of their better gold runners.  Other stalwarts worth mentioning are the Queen of Sheba (only 6 points) and Morocco (gold runner with island spying capability).  Some of their 1 masters are overpriced, but most of them are playable.

Named Crew

Unfortunately, Barbary Corsair crew are not a strength of the faction.  They do have a few good ones though – their leader Aruj Barbarossa gives Captain+Gold Capture for 10 points, and is usually placed on one of their flagship 4 mast galleys. Kheir-ed-din’s AA (Admiral’s Action) ability is well suited to the Crescent Moon’s built-in Reroll ability, especially in larger Corsair fleets. However, Jack Hawkins is arguably their best named crew, giving you SAT (Same Action Twice, same as the Born Leader keyword) and the ability to use Pirate crew on his ship for 5 points. Murat Rais is a classic “World Hater” best used on one of their larger ships in order to get his cannon bonus applied to more shots throughout a game.

I do wish Wizkids had done justice to Dragut – just one read of his opening paragraph on Wikipedia suggest he should have been one of the most powerful named crew in the game.  I think John Ward could have been better too, or at least cheaper – much more usable at 1 point than 3.

I made a video about how to make the most out of the Barbary Corsairs as a faction!  You can check it out here:

I’d probably rate the Barbary Corsairs as a faction at a 6/10. They are very capable of winning small games. However, their lack of combat options, named crew, and overall small release in just 1 set out of the 13 produced really holds them back. I’d probably give them a 2/10 for combat, 8/10 for gold running and 7/10 for intangibles or “other”.  However, they are fun to play and really gorgeous to look at!

I’m curious – what is your opinion on the Barbary Corsair faction? Do you like them? Have you enjoyed playing as them, or are they too weak in the fighting category for your taste? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!