Pirates: Seas of Japan!
Release coming January 2025!
12/23/2024
Get ready to travel to an exotic new locale and brave new waters with the latest Pirates CSG release!
Coming in January 2025, Seas of Japan is a mixed-set mini-release featuring no less than FOUR brand-new ship/creature types!
It features 11 total game pieces – four core ships, three crew, one equipment, and three sea creatures. The sea creatures (at a minimum) will likely be a collectible element of the release. Much of the release is still in progress, including the distribution model – the collectibility aspect may depend on how I can make the product. It is more likely to be collectible if I can make it on styrene sheets with full cards.
The entire mini-release is rather exotic – probably the most exciting part is that ALL the ship/creature types are new designs! There is a lot of novelty with it, compared to something like the Golden Seas set. It is a “mixed set” release, with game pieces from both of my huge custom sets: Age of Sail and Epic Seas. This means it will have both historical game pieces, and fantasy elements.
It is more focused on gold than combat, unlike my recent releases (HMS Victory and the Cursed Mega Pack). It’s a bit gimmicky, but that’s in contrast to products like Golden Seas.
The pictured ship is the flagship of the set – one of two Japanese atakebune!
Atakemaru
Nationality: Japan
Point Cost: 12
Flags: 3
Cargo: 4
Base Move: L
Cannons: 4S-5L-5L
Link: Kuki Yoshitaka, Mukai Tadakatsu
Ability: Atakebune. Two hits are required to eliminate one of this ship’s flags.
Atakebune keyword: A ship with this keyword printed on its deckplate card has removable flags that are treated exactly the same as masts on a normal ship (they can be replaced by fire masts).
This ship may be given move actions when it has no flags; its printed base move becomes S. When given a move action, this ship can rotate on her bow (the front of the ship) OR stern (the rear of the ship) in any direction as an additional, final movement segment (she cannot rotate on both bow and stern in the same move action). This ship cannot pin or be pinned.
This ship gets +1 to her boarding rolls for every crew assigned to her. If this ship wins a boarding party, she may steal one treasure from the enemy ship (winner’s choice), and eliminate one crew (loser’s choice).
This ship cannot be assigned treasure except for treasure taken via boarding party.
Crew assigned to this ship do not count towards the ship’s point limit.
If this ship has no crew, she cannot be given move actions.
Flavor Text: Mukai Tadakatsu wanted a new atakebune modeled after the six legendary Tekkōsen of Oda Nobunaga’s navy. With Yoshitaka in command of the war fleet, the Tokugawa Shogunate aim to strike fear in anyone opposing their rule.