Ultimate Zone Control

Originally published to Miniature Trading on September 10th, 2015

I’m in the process of editing this fleet. Please comment any thoughts you have!

Here it is: an exercise and experiment in “zone control”. The idea is to control as much of the sea as possible as quickly as possible through lines of fire everywhere. The keys are forts on islands, flotillas left in key places, and the sniping ability.

The Hai Peng/Captain Jack Sparrow combo is the best way to build forts quickly, as demonstrated in fleets like these.

The Hai Peng will move out at L+S+L+S, which should let it reach an island. It’s likely that I would want to sac the oarsman on the first turn in order to reach a further island. That way I can build a fort closer to my opponent’s HI, beginning the theme of controlling the sea through lines of fire. With treasure swapping, the Paradox can trade away another oarsman and then re-dock the coin, which will hopefully be at least a 3 since the Hai Peng will take the highest coin available from the wild island. Ramsgate and Paradis de la Mer are the highest fort priorities, and Ramsgate is perhaps the most fitting single game piece in this theme of zone control. The Hai Peng can then keep saccing the Paradox’s remaining oarsmen and build more forts, blanketing the sea with lines of fire and doubling as a way to protect the gold. The third oarsman on the Paradox would start the game on the HI.

One of my first ships from DJC, the Selkie has long been one of my favourite Pirate ships. She gives you good firepower and decent cargo for a low price. With Bruce Grey aboard, her L+L sniping will hit on a 5 or 6, making her a perfect weapon for this fleet.

The Selkie’s partner in crime is the Freedom’s Hand, towing the Doombox. The Hand doesn’t have the same range or bonus that the Selkie has, but she can still snipe and hit accurately at short range. The Doombox flotilla could be dropped off to maximize the amount of zone control. Other ships such as El Tejon don’t have the speed necessary to tow a flotilla.

In order to get Ramsgate in there, I had to have an English ship, which I wanted anyway so I could include the Gibraltar flotilla, my favourite flotilla and one of the best firepower deals in the game. I thought about HMS Gibraltar (which would be ironic given the flotilla’s name), but this fleet was lacking any larger ships and the Victor costs the same amount of points with a captain aboard, not to mention she has a much greater overall firing arc, which is what this fleet is all about. The Victor will tow the Gibraltar around, repairing at sea when necessary. Also, this fleet has some fragile ships, but the presence of so many forts could help me in that regard with repairing.

For the French, Le Pique is fast, cheap, and a viable treasure runner. She’ll help out gathering gold for forts and towing around the Mont Blanc for defense, or to drop it off somewhere. In addition, the Pique just happens to have the sniping ability as well, making her an even more perfect choice!

I added the Coeur combo with the marines to help expand my zone of control. The idea is to slingshot the Hai Peng, where a treasure can be traded to the Coeur (who unloads it to possibly build a fort) for a marine, who is then stationed on the island. S range from an island is easily avoided, so it would help if the islands were close together for the setup.

I still don’t have any SS islands, but I added the Great Turtles as a way to adapt to your opponent’s strategy. It would be very interesting to see a fort (especially Ramsgate) moving around and increasing your overall firing range. I liked the thought of Bad Maps, but with the Hai Peng flying around it’s unlikely that your opponent will find it first. If you find it, your opponent could yank a fort out of place, while the original island setup (with reasonably equal distances between islands) would likely be more optimal.

The UT’s were included to protect my ships and bump up the overall value of the coins I contribute, although everyone I usually play with just uses random amounts anyway (and usually only gold from one person’s collection so we don’t mix our gold).

This fleet is open to revision, even more so than most of my fleets. I really wanted to include a crew like Roberto Santana or Thomas Gunn, but for now I want to limit it to 100 points. A flexible crew like that becomes more valuable in bigger games, and Santana would work well on the Neptuno, another piece I would have liked to include in this fleet. However, the Neptuno and associated crew would cost more than I want to pay for a single ship in this fleet (outside of the Hai Peng), and I want this fleet to be about lots of “zones” and overall zone control rather than a big bad 5 master.

Thanks for reading! Please comment – I really appreciate the feedback!

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