The Random Topic Thread

Interesting post from 2005 on the US/UK pack difference.

“We actually made different versions for the two countries. Neither game style is better – the English one is only set up to have two players, but because it’s on a map, they have limited space and are basically forced into fighting each other more. The game is slightly more complicated because of the increased number of dice. The American version is great because you can have tons of players, it’s not as complicated, and the game can be played for a long length of time because the space is not limited.

 

WizKids, Inc.

Beth Kirschbaum

Customer Service

Front Desk & Supported Conventions Coordinator”

More advancements in 3D printing!

Has anyone in the Pirating community played a PC game titled East India Company? It’s a decent game in the age of sail.

No, but like the dozens of naval and empire video and board games I’d love to play someday, it looks very cool.  If Pirates ever comes back or categorically can never come back for some reason, I hope to someday in the distant future have time to play some of them. (Naval Action, Age of Empires, 4X games, etc)

Huzzah!  Finally a quick and easy fix!  Looking at this solution, all I had to do to enable pagination of thread topics was to disable the threaded/nested reply feature, which I didn’t really like anyway.  Right now I’ve set things to have up to 100 threads per forum page, with 30 replies per page. (twice MT’s limit of 15; I may increase the latter a bit if nobody complains about slow load times)  Already the Custom Ships thread is loading faster for me.  😀

I’ve been watching lots of Sea of Thieves vids lately. I’m sorely wishing I could play that. Alas, my poor laptop would not be able to support it, and getting a PC that does will be EXPENSIVE.

Yup.  You could use the time you use watching the videos to do something to make money instead.  But then you might not have time to play the game, or you might have better things to do with the money.  🙂

Another must-watch video by the great Joseph Vincent.  Tom Brady is the Lord of the Rings!  Full screen and high volume recommended!

So I remember back on MT there was a discussion (mentioned by Ben I believe) about formulating an “updated” pirates code based upon the the experience and opinions of the present fan base.

What are your thoughts on creating an alternative Pirate CSG code that only seeks to balance out and address some of the key issues we routinely see?

I like the idea of a “community ruleset” (not so much FAQ, although maybe I said something about that?), but it’s impossible to please everyone.  If all somewhat experienced players took the following surveys, it would help towards determining a consensus of sorts.

Rules Survey: https://goo.gl/forms/dDV50a3yVQHVrNG03

Ability Costs Survey: https://goo.gl/forms/MS4gufdXBBSRbqX43

I don’t think the Pirate Code is the problem, the problem is that Wizkids NEEDED a massive FAQ to explain their rules and to even make the game playable on a reasonably complex or competitive level for fairness.  I have disagreed with a few things in the PC, but for the most part it makes a lot of sense and has helped me countless times when playing.

It sounds like you’re talking more about a massive rules/game overhaul than just changing how a few specific things work.

This would mean alternative point costs for ships and crew (not every piece just the most egregious pieces) as well as modifications of some keywords.

I still feel that this opens up a can of worms and is difficult to stop.  If you make the Banshee’s Cry 10 points, maybe Bloody Jewel is suddenly the best Pirate gold runner.  Should she go up in cost too?  It might help curb some of the blatantly OP game pieces, but it would probably just make others replace them.  I’m more in favor of simply banning events, and then discussing with your opponents prior to the game whether it will be more towards competitive or casual. (so the fleets aren’t unbalanced to an extreme)

I foresee an improvement in factions such as the Cursed where their general tournament weakness may be improved by cheaper point-costs and more realistic keywords.

I can’t speak for Woelf of course, but him and I would both agree that the Cursed don’t need to suddenly be viable for competitive tournaments.  They just kinda stink in small games, and I’m fine with that.  It’s good to have unique factions, and the Cursed are arguably the most unique in a lot of ways.  I wouldn’t want to lose that by basically giving them steroids like some custom creators have done. 🙂 (I know I have a lot of crazy Cursed customs, but they’re mostly gimmicky or ludicrously expensive, not so much competitive/cheap stuff)

I’m fine with making the keywords have more realistic costs when making customs (Fear at 2 instead of 6 for example), but trying to retcon existing WK stuff gets confusing in a hurry, and starts to invalidate all sorts of stuff like fleets at MT, the database/Master Spreadsheet, etc etc.  Also, the Cursed are more viable in large/campaign games, and giving them cheap gold runners and whatnot would make them much more like other factions in those games in addition to tournament relevance.  Outside of (in my opinion) France and Spain, the factions are all quite different with their own strengths and weaknesses, and I’m just one of those people in the camp that is fine with things staying that way.  I never really hear about people playing competitive tournaments anymore either, so unless there was a restart, I think fun and engaging customs are more important than boosting underpowered stuff that Wizkids made.  🙂

I like my Basic Rules, and at this point it’s hard to see myself purposely going away from that to conform to a “community ruleset” that I might never use if people don’t want to or can’t play on VASSAL anyway.  At this point it seems like everyone has their own rulesets or preferred house rules, so a lot of things would be hard to iron out.  Even if something was “finalized”, people coming back to the community in a year or an influx of new players might completely disagree with a lot of the changes made.  You’d also have serious confusion for new players not knowing what to look at, and there’s already more than one rules document to look at when trying to play a game. (I tried to improve that somewhat by combining the best of the Start Here rules with the Complete Game rules, but the Code is important too)

Sorry to kinda be debbie downer or whatever it’s called.  I think it’s an idea worth discussing, just one that may not result in much of a consensus or participation rate.  I do think it warrants its own thread, so if you want I could perhaps work some kind of forum magic to make it appear that way.

I’ve been re-listening to several of the review podcasts where one of the most common complaints said about ships or keywords are their illogical point costs.

Thanks for that!  It’s flattering to hear that anyone has gotten through some of the longer podcasts more than once.

Perhaps a forum page should be dedicated to rule change suggestions?

Sounds good.  I might have time to start that today.  Sometimes it just gets complicated to determine what is being talked about – rule changes vs. point cost changes vs. Pirate Code/etc changes (changes to how the original official rules are interpreted without changing the original rules).

Also, I forgot to mention in my initial reply two others things that make me hesitant.  For one, I’ve got a lot of other big long-term Pirates CSG projects I’m already working on or would prefer to work on.  Second, between the rules of CG4, the Caribbean game, and Game Ideas, I already have a lot of alternative rules things to test out and find what I like best/etc.  I’d rather play (and have fun testing various rules/rulesets) than come up with even more rules alternatives (the World/Caribbean game rulesets was already a massive undertaking in that regard, and is still basically untested…), but finding time and players for campaign games has only gotten more difficult.  If a potential relaunch was more possible or imminent, my tone would be a bit different I think.

Post by Holofernes at MT quoting Tiffany O’Brien saying there was a 15th set planned for after Return to Savage Shores, predicted to be released around September 2009.

Got this tip on repairing mast breaks from one of the players I taught.  The closer the break is to the bottom of the mast, the better this method works.  You can simply snip off a little piece on each side of the remaining large part of the mast until it fits into the slot.  In some cases the end result can look like nothing happened, with the mast just a negligible amount lower.

I agree, she’s reasonably good in all areas, but I don’t think I’d use he as a hybrid. With the offensive ability and decent cannons, I’d go full gunship with her, captain, helmsman, musketeer, cannoneer, use all 4 cargo spots.

Hmm.  I just find that really impractical for the points, at least in most games.  Outside of a campaign game, I’d much rather have the 5 points from the musketeer and cannoneer on a different ship so I could have captain+helmsman on another ship.  To me it’s more practical to keep some cargo open for gold, while also saving points.

It would be interesting if Wizkids had priced things more accurately around the captain and helmsman abilities.  In terms of relative value, I think musketeers and cannoneers would have to be 1 point each.  That would make it a harder decision when on some kind of budget.

Ever since my group saw the unique crew trevor(spacing on his full name) we decided to make musketeers 2 points not 3

That’s a good house rule.  It also makes it a harder choice between a musketeer and cannoneer.  I suppose if the game was restarted it could be made better with a complete costing overhaul. (generic crew, ships, etc)

Here is a random question… Have any of you been crazy enough to play against sleigh/whitebeard on Christmas Eve?

Haha no!  I did play a game on Christmas Eve 2017, but I don’t even have the Sleigh and Whitebeard.  I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of at least one other Pirates CSG community member doing that in the past though.