Pirates CSG Podcast #39: A7XfanBen and Xerecs Review Custom Game Pieces!
Question of the Day: Do you have a favorite custom game piece from this episode? Do you enjoy the custom review episodes more or less than the other episodes?
(one previous known high was $232.50, hard to find others that have been exchanged since vosarnath’s at MT a handful of years back)
-Having slight technical issues that may compromise podcast episodes and THC a bit
-Between godmason being busy, my impending life changes, somewhat declining content base, and technical issues, expect shorter and less episodes this year. Suggesting topics is great!!
-Short solo episodes may sometimes be even less than 30 minutes, I can cover a bunch of stuff quickly it seems, especially with only one opinion on each topic.
-Trying to do a post/page every day at PwB, going through MT content for some of my best stuff
-Commenting on my content at PwB will help the site grow and be popular as a “hub” for Pirates CSG – plus I’ll respond to all comments!! Thank you!
-Looking at podcast data from SE, seem to have about 33 unique IP’s per episode.
Game essentials – measuring card or straws – latter great for arches and planning moves/premeasuring, Use a big d6 from SE boxes/etc for ease of use and likely better results (fun idea though – 10 tiny d6 for a Zeus shoot action since all cannons the same)
Another idea on playing solo without favoring a faction – really delve into each faction, especially before playing. Maybe stop playing favorites in general, force yourself to use a faction you’ve NEVER played before. Read a book on the Spanish Empire and then see if you like playing them better. Make customs inspired by pop culture to play the Cursed or Vikings, etc. Just think outside the box and try to really become a fan of each faction. Partly due to knowing almost all the ships and crew in the game, I find it easy and fun to play as any faction. (ex: Vikings in CG4 should be fun, and somewhat groundbreaking in terms of factional play in CG’s)
Interesting fleets for x point games – try 20 points sometime. Fast, forces you to be efficient with building, probably no +5’s, easy to get going, fun with multiple players OR multiple fleets per player, etc. Played Water World game against repkosai in 2017 with Libellule + bonuses, was very fun!!
-MUST have speed, so helmsmen pretty much always necessary (especially since a lot of lesser ships are slow). Beyond that, try to find a niche use for specific game pieces. For example, 1 cargo and fast speed? (Dark Fox) Scout explorer with crew or S-Explorer. OR, flotilla tug with surprise crew face down (canceller/captain/etc).
Slow with high cargo – home waters hybrid to get nearby gold and protect HI, potentially use with navigator. Could also use with gold factory bonus strategy, especially in case of Spanish “treasure galleons” such as Isabela, Concepcion, etc.
-Keep in mind that your competition will not want to dumb things down (people like to win and often use the same OP ships all the time), so have realistic outcome expectations and propose alternative game ideas like “make worst fleet possible, pass to other player” to get lesser ships/crew into action. Other than that, more points = more points to use on gimmicks and suboptimal experiments
“Rules variants to get the ships on the table.”
-Require specific base move – Challenge of Snails, all L, etc.
-Require all cargo holds to be full during setup – force players to make tradeoffs on when to dump crew – right at start, at wild islands (making them accessible to other players), or go with total war/all combat strategy? Con-exacerbates how OP Sac already is.
-Require each player to use ONLY ships AND named crew they’ve never used before (for starters, look through what you’ve never punched out!), or a pure faction fleet from a faction you’ve never played.
-Set Reviews now officially done, so we’ve literally discussed ALL existing game pieces PLUS nearly all the Unreleased game pieces that are publicly known (covers various “game piece reviews” mentioned in suggestions, plus you can see additional thoughts on most game pieces in my Collection Review Series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRq8fy93o3wHNqZMSQzR342yP4WX_LHzq)
-Nobody has requested custom game piece reviews, and one person even said they wanted less, so might do less of that moving forward. Link to Podcast survey is below – please provide idea suggestions!
Strategy talk: who to annoy or help in various situations you don’t expect – should you help or hurt certain opponents at various times? Especially in multiplayer. Examples include Pandora’s Box, Message in a Bottle with tied islands, Maps of Hades, etc. (with Maps – could go back and forth to toy with opponent)
The San Cristobal (SC) caught the NH and blasted most of her masts off. Luckily for the Pirates, the final mast standing meant the NH could return home with a sac action. The Star of Siam docked home gold on the turn as well, giving Norvegia a bit of a windfall. The Banshee’s Cry (BC) is hiding from the SC while the Monarca runs gold.
Question of the Day: Do you like Return to Savage Shores? Do you wish it was released? Do you like it more or less than Savage Shores? Have you used any RtSS game pieces yet? If so, how did it go?
-RTSS WAS NEVER PHYSICALLY RELEASED! Woelf provided the information in 2012. It is not a set you can collect, and you’ll have to use proxies, custom made ships, or VASSAL to use it.
Pros of my spreadsheet:
-Don’t have to scroll to the right for anything important (flavor text and treasure values off to the right) (Basically a rule of Pirates CSG spreadsheets in my opinion – if you can’t easily see all gameplay-relevant data without scrolling, columns should be shrunk down for ease of use.)
-All flavor text included
-Factions color coded for maximum ease of use (I like the new design so much that I think I will be converting my custom sets to the same color scheme!)
-Took the best stuff from each resource used (Holofernes’ notes from Jolly Roger + filtering, flavor text from Wizkids spreadsheets, Miniature Trading database for cannons and some flavor text (a/b for crewfer twofers/etc are lowercase because that is how they appear on the WK documents)
-Includes unreleased and “lost” items from official Wizkids documents
Cons:
-Some columns do not display well at all with the filter view. Those are the ones I slanted so they would be more legible (it gets worse if they are horizontal).
-Filter view does not seem to work with Google Sheets version for online viewing, unless you create a temporary filter view yourself. Even tried allowing editing mode and locking the sheets, but that didn’t work either. (https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/docs/68RwOGYUCqA/PFFYjiaKBwAJ)
To view filters in online version: Data>Filter Views>Create new temporary filter view
The .xlsx file of the spreadsheet has the filters.
-Likely some minor mistakes due to copy/paste errors or excessive dragging of cell data. (please point out so I can fix them)
Woelf has shared some original Wizkids spreadsheets with me to help in my process to create a “master spreadsheet” that I hope to turn into a second database, similar to the one at Miniature Trading. In these incredible documents are many “juicy tidbits” of information, a true treasure trove of cool stuff for a Pirates fanatic like me. 😀
How crazy is this?! New Pirates information 13 years later! XD I can’t wait to use these new game pieces in games sometime.
A7XfanBen and others discuss all things related to Pirates Constructible Strategy Game! Set reviews, custom game piece reviews, random topic discussion, stories and more! Below is the youtube playlist of the podcasts – hit the playlist icon at the upper right to find episodes!
Since 2019 I’ve had the amazing opportunity to interview numerous former Wizkids employees about their involvement with the game. They include: James Ernest, Mike Selinker, Jason Mical, Tiffany O’Brien, Tony Vigil, and Shane Hartley!
I’ve also had many great podcasts with some of the most experienced players and collectors from the Pirates CSG community, such as Captain Redgoat, Xerecs, Godmason, Captain Randy, Dholub1, DoubleAAsauce (PirateCaptainAndrew), Captain Vendari, RedDragon, Captain Ron, Creeps, and Getempowder.
There was a set review series that generally ran for every other episode during 2017-2018. Since early 2019 the theme has been interviewing special guests to learn more about the game’s history and details. If you’d like to be on an episode of the Pirates CSG Podcast, feel free to message me! (email is on the About Ben page, or through Discord/Messenger/etc.)
