Letter of Marque Attack!

Originally published to Miniature Trading on June 11th, 2017

75 Points

Did you know that sea monsters can be assigned equipment?

This is a somewhat odd and gimmicky fleet that takes advantage of the rarely-used but potentially awesome Letter of Marque equipment. To further this aim, they are placed on the most unlikely of hosts – Cursed squids that have cargo for them!

The main ship in this fleet is the Belle Etoile, chosen for her speed and overall effectiveness at carrying the necessary crew and supplies. Arnaud is starting to repay his debt to his godmother by helping out the Cursed beasts.

One of the biggest keys is Cissey and the fact that you can glimpse your opponent’s fleet before choosing what to add with the extra 5 points. This allows for a faction check, and you can add the appropriate Letter of Marque equipment (all the same one if they’re going faction pure), which could include French Letter of Marque or Soul Mark.

I initially forgot about how the equipment is eliminated if you shoot at the ship of that nationality. However, the solution is to use the monsters to pin enemies in place, at which point the Belle Etoile (who will be working in tandem with them anyway due to Arnaud) can use her speed to swoop in and blast away! In the meantime, the sea monsters are immune to cannon fire and use their tentacles to wave a piece of paper at your annoyed opponent! XD These particular sea monsters are also great at boarding, so you could board them repeatedly and use their abilities multiple times without actually shooting and losing the letters of marque.

The gold running choices aren’t very unique, but I haven’t used the Coeur as a pure gold runner in a while, so putting a helmsman aboard is different for me personally. Each gold runner has a different speed, so they can hit separate islands. The Intrepide will hit the closest island with an explorer and get gold back quickly to start the parleying cycle. Until you have gold, the sea monsters can stay submerged. The sea monsters (with the boost) and Belle have the speed to help defend them if needed.

This is a gimmick fleet, which means there are big drawbacks. If you Parley away too much gold, you could lose the game from your own strategy. The Belle needs to quickly dispatch enemy ships before they can trigger the letters of marque. If the enemy doesn’t use one of the five factions covered by the letters of marque (notably the Pirates), use Cissey to instead add any number of things to the fleet. The creatures could be given shot equipment, which would make them more dangerous. Each ship could be given an oarsman, or you could even grab an extra gold runner such as Le Pique.

Finally, 70 points is a bit strange. You can make it 40/45 by taking out Calypsos, the Bon Marin, and the Intrepide with all their cargo. However, this would leave the Coeur as the only gold runner and only one unique usage of a letter of marque on a sea monster.

Thanks for checking out my fleet! Let me know if you think this concept could be improved!  You can see more in the Fleets category.

Fleet page at Miniature Trading