Dice Tower West Pirates
3/9/2024
In this 2 player 50 point game, I faced my friend Captain Randy. We were Dice Tower West Pirates, playing three consecutive games on one of the main days of the convention in Las Vegas. We used the primary Las Vegas house rules (through the “RtSS legal” part).
I rolled to go first, with a new fleet I had concocted recently: Canoe Vacuum Farmers. It’s essentially a UPS variant designed to be competitive at 50 points instead of 40 since I couldn’t figure out a satisfactory way to make it work well for a standard game.
Captain Randy went second with a mixed fleet including Neptune’s Hoard, Libellule, and Concepcion.
Randy picked my home island (HI) to be in the southwestern area, and I actually chose one of the Mysterious Islands (MI’s) I contributed to be his HI because I knew about its powerful vacuum “treasure suction” effect (wanting to keep his ships a bit further from the other MI). I intentionally placed my American native canoes at the MI #1 closest to my HI, knowing they would become professional farmers in record time. (“farming” is the term for continually redocking at a Mysterious Island in an attempt to trigger it’s effect(s)) We had agreed to place 3 terrain per player. Ready to set sail!
How about this for game-breaking! “5-6: When this ship explores this island, randomly move two treasure coins from every other wild island to this island, and then choose which to take.”
With the first action of the game, I redocked some of the American canoes. My luck was fantastic as it was this entire weekend – multiple canoes got the 5 or 6 needed to suction treasure from the other wild islands to the canoe island! However, only that morning had I realized that there was a bit of a snag in the strategy – the suction didn’t happen upon docking at the island and rolling for effect, unlike some other Mysterious Island effects. It would only vacuum the gold when the ship that rolled well explored the island, which would be on my next turn. However, I got two of the positive effects and none of the negative 1-2 results.
But that was only one move action. I was still able to go nuts with Hai Peng. She loaded an oarsman from my HI and sacced it with Jimmy Legs, speeding out to reach the center island and exploring it. Captain Jack Sparrow sent home a 5 coin to Coeur du Lion, who unloaded it for +2 gold with Maurice Aristide’s bonus. Captain Randy then took his turn and sent his ships out to the islands, but with no action generators present and no chance of eliminating canoes, there was little hope of catching up to a UPS-style fleet.
The game was as good as over, in a shockingly fast rout of broken proportions. The native canoes explored, vacuuming up all the gold in play. O_O All treasure coins that remained on wild islands were suctioned to the canoe island, making it a “kingpin” stronghold of epic loot. This meant that I had the pick of all the treasure in the game. The canoes loaded all the lowest-value coins, leaving the best for Captain Jack Sparrow to send home for a very quick win. He sent another 5 to Coeur for another 7 total with Aristide’s +2 bonus, then Jimmy Legs sacced another oarsman so he could send home the final 5 I contributed to the Rattlesnake, who was given her only action of the game to explore the HI and unload it. This brought my total to 19 gold, enough for a 1.5 round 19-0 shutout victory. O_O
In addition, I believe this might be the first time I’ve seen a game end so quickly where the winning fleet also had complete control over every treasure in the game – every single coin was either on my home island or on one of my ships. That’s usually quite the rarity in general, let alone accomplished in only 2 turns.
This is a sickening “new” way to win by combining the UPS strategy with a gold-hogging Mysterious Island abuse tactic. The canoes are included specifically so you can always have them start the game at an MI #1, and to give as many redocking chances as possible. At least one MI will always be wild, even if the other two in play are picked as HI’s. The odds are decent that at least two of the five canoes will roll a 5-6 upon redocking, giving them a chance to trigger the suction effect on the second turn. Even if they roll low and send treasure to a different wild island, as long as the last roll or two at the MI is the good effect, they can just warp it back when they explore. By allowing CJS to have his pick of the best treasure, it’s very easy to send home the highest-value coins, which in some cases mean that only two coins will be enough to win. (I will probably change the default treasure distribution of this fleet to be UT’s + 6,6,3 so the fleet can reach 16 on just 2 coins if Aristide adds +2 to both 6’s. 7,7,1 would also work of course.)
Of course, it’s a very luck-dependent fleet. I was only able to execute the combos perfectly because I went first, got the right rolls at the MI, and neither the canoes nor the Hai Peng came under fire in the first round. The HP also didn’t find any negative UT’s like Missionary at the center island. However, another nice thing about vacuuming up all the gold is that when the “kingpin island” is explored, if all remaining treasure has been suctioned, there is a very high chance (100% chance if it’s the first island explored) that the Kharmic Idol or Pirata Codex will be there, wiping out any negative UT’s and allowing CJS to have free reign on sending home the best coins when he arrives. I was very happy that things went right, as this game serves as a proof of concept for the idea.
When things go right, it’s hard to imagine a more game-breaking succession of combos.
Thanks for reading and stay tuned for more action!