The time finally came for me to do a proper Fleet Review! As you probably saw from my “Collections” post and the “preview” pictures I’ve been posting, my collection has grown considerably from its previous size. This made it necessary to complete a HUGE restructuring and reorganizing of my collection.

Almost all of this took place over the 25th and 26th of November 2014. I always keep my collection organized so I know where everything is at all times. I had a lot of new stuff that needed to be integrated into the boxes and binder I already had. For the first time in years, I got out ALL of my ships. A lot of them were brand new stuff from the past month of acquisitions, but I also had a tin of stuff from trades.

I keep all of my deckplates (the first card of each ship) in a binder with named crew cards. This allows me to easily find ships to use and compare and contrast different ships and crew. I have one large binder that used to contain every unique ship and named crew. Now it only contains ships from the Big 4 (England, France, Spain, Pirates), and about half of the American fleet. The rest of the American fleet is in a different, smaller, binder with the Cursed, Corsairs, Jade Rebels, Vikings, and Mercenaries. Another binder contains every single named crew, and a fourth binder has my UT’s and a handful of other stuff. The “other stuff” is equipment, forts, the promo pack inserts (ex: PP824), and at the back I keep a copy of the rule book for each set, as well as a checklist for each set (the checklists are fun to look at all on one page – very colourful!).

Getting out the ships was intimidating at first, but once I got started it became less overwhelming. I organized each fleet by faction, ordering the ships by size and type. For the English, the first faction I got out, I separated duplicates and grouped them together accordingly. However, I didn’t do this for the other factions in order to save time (plus I felt it was unnecessary).

It is important to note that I didn’t count sea monsters, flotillas, or forts as “ships”, at least not for the overall count. However, I did count sea monsters and flotillas as “ships” for the “overall unique ships” count, since this is more relevant to the actual game.

Total overall ships: The number of actual built ships.
Total unique ships: The number of different ships (including sea monsters and flotillas but not forts).
Total overall crew chips: The number of punched crew (both generic and named).
Total unique named crew: The number of different NAMED crew.

Of course, part of the reason I wanted to do a proper fleet review was to count the numbers of ships and crew and to take pictures.

Pictures or it didn’t count, right?

Some of the boxes I use to store everything:

Here is my personal “treasure chest”. The shoebox at the bottom of the photo used to hold my entire collection of 49 ships, with deckplates, treasure, islands and all.

Without further ado, here is one of the biggest fleets you’ll ever see!

First up, the English:

England

Total overall ships: 157
Total unique ships: 98
Total overall crew chips: 97
Total unique named crew: 46

The three English flagships. HMS Lord Walpole and HMS Birkenhead were my first two English ships, and HMS Lord Algernon was my most-wanted ship for years until I finally acquired her. They are still in their unaltered state before I realized I had been putting the masts in backwards.

“The pride of the Royal Navy”:

This one reminds me of Lord Cutler Beckett’s armada that was assembled at the end of the 3rd Pirates of the Caribbean movie:

Overhead shot of the entire fleet:

Staring down the rows bristling with guns:

A true “forest of masts”:

One last look at Her Majesty’s Navy.

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Next up, the French!

France

Total overall ships: 101
Total unique ships: 80
Total overall crew chips: 53
Total unique named crew: 28

More colourful and pretty than their enemies across the Channel!

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The last of the three historical imperial nations, the Spanish!

Spain

Total overall ships: 119
Total unique ships: 89
Total overall crew chips: 105
Total unique named crew: 37

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What our game is named for.

Pirates

Total overall ships: 141
Total unique ships: 110
Total overall crew chips: 139
Total unique named crew: 61

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The fleet with the most new ships – America!

America

Total overall ships: 123
Total unique ships: 91
Total overall crew chips: 66
Total unique named crew: 30

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The last of the “Big 6” – the Cursed!

Cursed

Total overall ships: 52
Total unique ships: 47
Total overall crew chips: 53
Total unique named crew: 17

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The largest of the minor factions – the Barbary Corsairs!

Barbary Corsairs

Total overall ships: 41
Total unique ships: 37
Total overall crew chips: 26
Total unique named crew: 8

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Possibly the hardest faction to acquire – the Jade Rebellion!

Jade Rebellion

Total overall ships: 22
Total unique ships: 21
Total overall crew chips: 27
Total unique named crew: 12

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The fighters from the north – the Vikings!

Vikings

Total overall ships: 14
Total unique ships: 12
Total overall crew chips: 18
Total unique named crew: 4

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Last but not least, the Mercenaries!

Mercenaries

Total overall ships: 12
Total unique ships: 10
Total overall crew chips: 29
Total unique named crew: 8

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Now for the best moment of all! Every single punched ship in my collection all in one place!  O_O

773

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Here’s a few pics before I sorted the Spanish, Pirates, and Americans.

The intimidating “Nelson chequer” of the English gunships:

The Big 4:

This is one of my favourites, showing the French, Spanish, and Pirates:

Here’s the Big 6 before I brought the Americans and the Cursed over for the group picture:

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By the numbers

Total overall ships: 773
English: 157
French: 101
Spanish: 119
Pirate: 141
American: 123
Cursed: 42
Barbary Corsair: 41
Jade Rebellion: 22
Viking: 14
Mercenary: 13

Total unique ships: 595
English: 98
French: 80
Spanish: 89
Pirate: 110
American: 91
Cursed: 47
Barbary Corsair: 37
Jade Rebellion: 21
Viking: 12
Mercenary: 10

Total named crew: 253 chips, 251 different/unique
English: 42 chips, 46 different
French: 25 chips, 28 different
Spanish: 37 chips, 37 different
Pirate: 64 chips, 61 different
American: 29 chips, 30 different
Cursed: 19 chips, 17 different
Barbary Corsair: 8 chips, 8 different
Jade Rebellion: 11 chips, 12 different
Viking: 4 chips, 4 different
Mercenary: 14 chips, 8 different

Total generic crew: 360 chips, 357 total cards
English: 55 chips, 47 cards
French: 28 chips, 39 cards
Spanish: 68 chips, 52 cards
Pirate: 75 chips, 61 cards
American: 37 chips, 41 cards
Cursed: 34 chips, 30 cards
Barbary Corsair: 18 chips, 18 cards
Jade Rebellion: 16 chips, 16 cards
Viking: 14 chips, 14 cards
Mercenary: 15 chips, 12 cards
+27 other punched cards without the nationality specified. I didn’t feel like looking all of them up.

Total overall crew: 613 chips
English: 97 (punched chips)
French: 53
Spanish: 105
Pirate: 139
American: 66
Cursed: 53
Barbary Corsair: 26
Jade Rebellion: 27
Viking: 18
Mercenary: 29

Total Unique Treasures: 73
Total different equipment: 7
Total forts: 7

In addition, I have a solid amount of unpunched (UP) stuff that I didn’t include because they’re all duplicate and going up for trade soon.

Here are the final numbers when duplicate unpunched game pieces are included:
Ships: 908
Named crew: 334
Overall crew: ~694
Unique treasures: 87

Just for the fun of it, I also counted terrain, both punched and unpunched.

Total islands/terrain: 372
SM islands: 35
Mysterious Islands: 38
Whirlpools: 25
Icebergs: 86
Fog Banks: 69
Reefs: 64
Sargasso Seas: 55

Generic crew:

I wanted to see how high the stack would be if I stacked every single generic crew card together! Luckily I got a few pics before the top 1/3 fell down!

Ships, crew and UT’s that will be up for trade:

Perfect size box for storing tons of punched cards:

Unique ships and crew before being put into the binders:

And finally, the GOLD:

How else would anyone end this?

Here is every ship type that I own. It’s fun to see them all at once!

Friends and foes alike squeeze in for a group photo:

The Grand Temple, then and now:

selvaxri wrote:

how many 10-masters you got?

 

3: (as of back then; now I have all 6)

Size comparisons: (I built turtle ships incorrectly back then, oops!)

I find it interesting that the Americans are one of the most unique factions I have specifically in terms of 3 masters. They have a hoist, a windcatcher, a submarine, a longship, and an icebreaker. No other faction in my collection comes close to matching not only the diversity, but the diversity of ships that all have the same number of masts!

All of my six masted junks:

More pictures of the ten masters:

Thanks for looking! I would do this every year as an annual thing, but my collection won’t grow nearly enough to make it worthwhile to do it that often.

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I forgot something!

I meant to do this earlier. I played around with the effects editor on Photobucket. Some of the effects were purposely designed to mess with you a bit, kind of like the ship would in real life.

I think we all know this ship by now:

She is a notoriously difficult ship to acquire and use:

How many masts?

However, the Delusion is most famous for when the sun goes down and the darkness descends over the world’s oceans:

As it gets darker the Delusion gets brighter:

The scariest ship (thematically) in Pirates CSG:

This one reminds me of the Flying Dutchman. She almost appears transparent with glowing seaweed covering her rigging.

Unholy Light:

The Delusion leaves a trail of death and destruction in her wake:

Along with a few of the other pics this one was not edited:

A true ghost ship:

The Delusion: