All your crew are belong to us

Originally published to Miniature Trading on March 9th, 2015

Title is a play on All Your Base.  One of my favorite fleet descriptions.

This is a gimmick fleet. This is not serious at all. The idea is to control your opponent’s crew and use their crew against them to win. In a regular game this fleet would have almost no chance of winning. The fleet is meant for fun and to use game pieces that never see usage.

I know that the Golden Medusa has 16 points of crew aboard, but between using the link effectively to reroll Nemo’s boarding attack and the fact that Nemo is a bit overpriced I’ve decided to just go with the setup anyway. Captain Nemo, when combined with Lady Baptiste’s reroll, should be the most effective way of capturing enemy crew, which is why the Golden Medusa is the flagship of this fleet. I considered other ships but the Golden Medusa is an excellent ship whose ability protects Nemo from being killed in failed boarding actions.

The second ship is HMS Swallow, who has Myngs and Owen aboard to double her S+L+S speed. The captain ability will help soften her targets up to help limit the damage from return fire. Chain Shot is where she could really use Owen’s reroll. Using Chain Shot (and the chainshot specialists) is essential because to use crew like Atkinson you must give up the ship’s action for the turn, which makes the crew functionally useless since your opponent can sail out of range. If they’re hit with a chainshot, however, they’ll be frozen in place and ripe to be possessed (lol) by Atkinson, who will have rerolling help from Owen.

The Executioner is just like the Swallow, except with no SAT and no reroll for the chainshot or the “possess” crew, in this case Papa Doc (poor Cursed and their lack of named crew). The Executioner is another excellent choice for this fleet. Similar to the Swallow, she has abnormally high speed for a ship of her size, and her ability helps soften her targets and improve the chances of the chainshot working.

The Locker was a tough choice. I wanted to include the Fiddler’s Green since she’s the ONLY Cursed ship (not sea monster, which can’t carry Edward Low) or crew with the rerolling ability. I went with the Locker because she can stay submerged while Edward Low tries to possess crew. Eddie probably won’t roll many sixes so I gave him some chainshot to play around with if he wants to risk coming to the surface.

The Rook’s Folly is the final possessing ship. She even has the ability built-in, making her even scarier than the other ships! Sammy (what a scary name!) will try to induce FEAR in order to stop ships in their tracks by rolling even more sixes, something this fleet really needs a lot of. Even rolling a 5 would help since it would cancel enemy helmsmen. In addition to Sammy we have a helmsman to make the Rook sail at S+S+S and a chainshot specialist that probably won’t hit very often with such poor cannons.

Since this fleet needs to catch and overtake enemy ships in order to nab their precious crew (hopefully your opponent will bring a ton of high cost named crew), the Celestine was added to boost the overall speed of the fleet and add to its diverse nature (English, Pirates, Cursed, Mercenary and French). The Celestine will pump out trade currents like some kind of crazy mad demon on crack.

Let me know what you think of this wacky fleet idea!

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