USS Reprisal
Set: Pirates of the Age of Sail
Release: Revolutionary War Part 2 (RW2) (July 2026 Mega Pack)
Collector’s Number: 092
Nationality: American
Point Cost: 8
Masts: 2
Cargo: 3
Base Move: S+S
Cannons: 3L-3L
Ability: If this ship is within S of an enemy ship when this ship is given a move action, she gets +S to her base move. This ship may dock at a French home island or fort and be given repair actions while there.
Link: Lambert Wickes
Flavor text: While carrying Benjamin Franklin to France on a diplomatic mission, she became the first Continental Navy ship to visit Europe. Not only an escape artist, she has captured multiple British and Irish vessels under the command of Captain Wickes.
As her flavor text explains, she had a very interesting history. Loved giving her a brand new ability for the French connection. Even more fitting for this particular release because the French get a couple game pieces as well in RevWar 2 (their first game pieces I’ve created for my Pirates relaunch that went public in 2024). I think she’ll be a flexible American asset capable of playing a dual role, especially when her linked crew is aboard. Though between the linked crew and her stats/ability spread, probably more likely to snag gold by commerce raiding or taking prizes than by conventional island gold running. Wickes is 5 points, so there’s still point cap space to add a helmsman and oarsman/etc to accompany him.
Art: Between her combat history and escapes, I wanted her sails to be a bit damaged. Her deck is probably one of the more realistic I’ve made – each deck and sail I make is generally unique even though a lot of them inevitably end up looking similar due to being historical ships. Historical flag flying from the mizzenmast. Hull and sails color matched to some paintings I found of her. Those paintings also guided her cannon distribution, with specifically 16/18 cannons on the hull with the final pair on the weather deck aft. (I’m aware that some of these smaller ships of 2 masts or fewer usually had their cannons on a weather/spar deck, but although I did that in full for USS Niagara and USS Lawrence, I generally prefer to only show main deck cannons on the hull artwork, with anything above the uppermost main gun deck going on the weather deck(s). I think having the cannons “topside” and aligned to hull cannon art would work better on ships that have deck tabs rather than hull tabs, because those models have a deck that can actually be aligned with part of the hull (rather than models like this where the topmost deck is always higher than the hull art).)
