Due to time constraints I am only planning on playing one game per matchup from here on out.
*If you haven’t looked at these fleets you really should! I’m not going to repost entire fleet descriptions in the report. It would also be nice if there were more comments and votes on the fleets.*
The Jade Rebellion Sea Crane is a proxy for the Pirate one from OE, which has the same stats. The Rover is being used instead of Favor of the Gods.
The islands were set up in a pyramid fashion to change things up. HMS Grand Temple v 3.0 (now referred to as GT3) rolled to go first, followed by the Gold Race fleet. Since the Gold Race fleet was entirely Pirate, the Headhunter’s world-hater was nullified. However, GT3 figured it wouldn’t matter with no opposing ship having more than 2 masts.
Turn 1:
The GT and Oxford couldn’t hit any of the Pirate ships docked at their home island.
The Gold Race fleet followed the 1st turn protocol laid out by darrin in his fleet description. However, I noticed a few issues. When trading away bad UT’s with Pedro Gilbert, the ship “must load the traded treasure“. However, with Jonah and so many crew/equipment on the ship, there’s no space with which to load it. Halfway through the first turn I decided that the Banshee’s Cry never started the game with English Letter of Marque aboard, which let the Cry trade later in the turn. For the first island she decided to keep Enemy of the State since the Cry didn’t plan on docking at her HI at any point in the game.
In addition, this fleet may be the most confusing fleet I’ve ever played. Evident by selvaxri’s comment above, Captain Jack Sparrow is probably the biggest conundrum in Pirates. (On another note, how does the crew/treasure swap work thematically?) I didn’t get it at first either and evidently I’m still having trouble with how powerful he is because in this game I made another mistake. Not only is the gold NOT loaded by the ship carrying CJS, the traded crew doesn’t go on the ship either, it just sits on the island in place of the coin. I thought there was an issue where since Jonah makes the oarsman take up space, there wouldn’t be any space with which to load the traded crew (which you would want to sac with Pedro anyway).
Lastly, Sunken Treasure probably shouldn’t be in the fleet because as darrin alluded to in his introduction to UPS v 2.0, CJS can’t trade away UT’s that are loaded face up.
On the first island that the BC explored, she found Enemy of the State, Sunken Treasure, and two 2’s (not enough to win). After trading a 2 home (which got +3’d by the Bonnie Liz), the BC sacced a crew to move to the next island to the north. Here she found Natives, which was traded away by Pedro for a 6 from another island. In addition to trading Natives away via Pedro, she traded a 4 home via CJS, giving the Pirates 12 gold at the end of the first turn.
Turn 2:
The Grand Temple sacced an oarsman but still couldn’t reach the Banshee’s Cry. The Oxford was partially blocked by the Pirates’ HI and sailed around it, sinking the Rover in the process.
The BC dumped her explorer and oarsman on the second island to make room for another explorer from home, which in hindsight was actually unnecessary because the crew isn’t actually loaded. She then traded a 2 home for a 17-0 victory!
Because of the cargo complications (which I’m still wrapping my head around, lol), I don’t know if I played Darrin’s Gold Race fleet 100% correctly. However, it still won by the end of the second turn without the Grand Temple firing a shot!
How much can you fit on a one masted sloop? 
