So I remember back on MT there was a discussion (mentioned by Ben I believe) about formulating an “updated” pirates code based upon the the experience and opinions of the present fan base.
What are your thoughts on creating an alternative Pirate CSG code that only seeks to balance out and address some of the key issues we routinely see?
I like the idea of a “community ruleset” (not so much FAQ, although maybe I said something about that?), but it’s impossible to please everyone. If all somewhat experienced players took the following surveys, it would help towards determining a consensus of sorts.
Rules Survey: https://goo.gl/forms/dDV50a3yVQHVrNG03
Ability Costs Survey: https://goo.gl/forms/MS4gufdXBBSRbqX43
I don’t think the Pirate Code is the problem, the problem is that Wizkids NEEDED a massive FAQ to explain their rules and to even make the game playable on a reasonably complex or competitive level for fairness. I have disagreed with a few things in the PC, but for the most part it makes a lot of sense and has helped me countless times when playing.
It sounds like you’re talking more about a massive rules/game overhaul than just changing how a few specific things work.
This would mean alternative point costs for ships and crew (not every piece just the most egregious pieces) as well as modifications of some keywords.
I still feel that this opens up a can of worms and is difficult to stop. If you make the Banshee’s Cry 10 points, maybe Bloody Jewel is suddenly the best Pirate gold runner. Should she go up in cost too? It might help curb some of the blatantly OP game pieces, but it would probably just make others replace them. I’m more in favor of simply banning events, and then discussing with your opponents prior to the game whether it will be more towards competitive or casual. (so the fleets aren’t unbalanced to an extreme)
I foresee an improvement in factions such as the Cursed where their general tournament weakness may be improved by cheaper point-costs and more realistic keywords.
I can’t speak for Woelf of course, but him and I would both agree that the Cursed don’t need to suddenly be viable for competitive tournaments. They just kinda stink in small games, and I’m fine with that. It’s good to have unique factions, and the Cursed are arguably the most unique in a lot of ways. I wouldn’t want to lose that by basically giving them steroids like some custom creators have done. 🙂 (I know I have a lot of crazy Cursed customs, but they’re mostly gimmicky or ludicrously expensive, not so much competitive/cheap stuff)
I’m fine with making the keywords have more realistic costs when making customs (Fear at 2 instead of 6 for example), but trying to retcon existing WK stuff gets confusing in a hurry, and starts to invalidate all sorts of stuff like fleets at MT, the database/Master Spreadsheet, etc etc. Also, the Cursed are more viable in large/campaign games, and giving them cheap gold runners and whatnot would make them much more like other factions in those games in addition to tournament relevance. Outside of (in my opinion) France and Spain, the factions are all quite different with their own strengths and weaknesses, and I’m just one of those people in the camp that is fine with things staying that way. I never really hear about people playing competitive tournaments anymore either, so unless there was a restart, I think fun and engaging customs are more important than boosting underpowered stuff that Wizkids made. 🙂
I like my Basic Rules, and at this point it’s hard to see myself purposely going away from that to conform to a “community ruleset” that I might never use if people don’t want to or can’t play on VASSAL anyway. At this point it seems like everyone has their own rulesets or preferred house rules, so a lot of things would be hard to iron out. Even if something was “finalized”, people coming back to the community in a year or an influx of new players might completely disagree with a lot of the changes made. You’d also have serious confusion for new players not knowing what to look at, and there’s already more than one rules document to look at when trying to play a game. (I tried to improve that somewhat by combining the best of the Start Here rules with the Complete Game rules, but the Code is important too)
Sorry to kinda be debbie downer or whatever it’s called. I think it’s an idea worth discussing, just one that may not result in much of a consensus or participation rate. I do think it warrants its own thread, so if you want I could perhaps work some kind of forum magic to make it appear that way.