Curse of the Black Pearl 20th Anniversary Game!
7/9/2023
20 years ago to the day this game was played, it all began. The movie that changed lives and made fortunes. The movie that led Jordan Weisman of Wizkids to make a Pirate game – the birth of Pirates of the Spanish Main and the CSG subgenre of board games. To celebrate The Curse of the Black Pearl 20th anniversary, Xerecs and I played a 50 point game on VASSAL using only game pieces from the Pirates of the Caribbean set! A brief summary follows, with a full video recording of the short game at the bottom of this post.
He went first as the Pirates, while I followed with the English. I wanted to restrict my fleet to only game pieces actually seen in the first film of the series, which got me to 45 total points using various crew on HMS Dauntless and HMS Interceptor, adding Mercer to get to 48. They would be facing off against the Black Pearl and Hai Peng.
Ragetti helped the Hai Peng snag some Plunder early, while Interceptor used her speed to reach an island quickly as well. However, my own Marines must have been brainwashed by some natives, as they shot and killed the guvna! Governor Weatherby Swann was eliminated. Only upon making this report and seeing the video do I realize that I accidentally cheated on the following turn, with Interceptor sailing home when she should have been stuck at the island due to the hangover from Rum.
On the Interceptor’s sail home, she was intercepted by the Black Pearl! The epic battle happens again!! Black Pearl took off two masts, but the English returned fire for the same on their turn!
However, this time “Commodore” James Norrington was there to intervene! HMS Dauntless came whirling onto the scene, with Mercer tossing Murtog overboard to fuel the ship’s extra action, which sank the Pearl!
From there it was a race to get gold home, with Hai Peng’s blazing speed impeded by the Jail UT which had removed her crew and therefore the captain and helmsman speed bonuses. HMS Dauntless returned to the southwest via whirlpool to explore, but found TWO Aztec Medallions! One of them eliminated the other coins from the island, though I should have flipped the Jailhouse Dog to reverse that.
HMS Dauntless came through a whirlpool again, with Mercer sacrificing Mullroy to sink the Hai Peng! However, the Pirates had won 11-10!
I also played some PotC music on violin that day to celebrate the anniversary, and saw the movie in theater at night to cap the grand day of piracy! 😀