2022 End of Year Awards

For me 2022 marks my first year of getting back into Pirates CSG after having more or less forgotten about it for about a decade so the year has been one full of discovery. At the beginning of the year I thought the game was literally just a Pirates of the Caribbean game, as I talked about in the self-introduction thread, so I’ve had a lot to get my teeth into after learning much more about it.

After buying myself a box of Pirates of the Revolution early in the year and some trades with yourself, I’ve expanded my collection beyond the eternal battle of English vs Pirates from PotC and finally had a chance to play with the other major factions of which I’ve probably grown to like the French the most.

My favourite fleet I’ve played this year is probably the one I used in the last game I played, which was a French/English mix of Le Superbe, Le Favori, HMS Oxford and Edinburgh Trader. This was in a roughly 70 point game using my pools format that I’m hoping to make another Battle Report video for in the next couple of weeks.

My favourite fleet using the regular fleet building rules was probably a 40 point English fleet of PotC ships that I played much earlier in the year before getting hold of ships from other sets. This consisted of one of my favourite ships, the HMS Hyena, as well as the HMS Victor and Edinburgh Trader again. I think 3 master ships are my favourite to play with as there are so many different options with a lot of versatility and this fleet I feel encompasses that.

My favourite picture is this one from the 4 player game I made a battle report video for, where the United States derelicts the Cursed Blade and was quite pivotal in that it basically put my brother out of the running to win the game.

In the video I talked about how the Cursed Blade only just doesn’t reach her home island to drop off treasure. What I didn’t mention was that at the time we couldn’t figure out how she’d reached the wild island in two turns, but somehow hadn’t gotten back in two turns. This turned into a lengthy discussion into whether or not my brother had accidently cheated and got confused between the speeds of two of his ships.

None of us thought he had intentionally cheated, but we couldn’t figure out how it had happened until I went back through the notes I was making for the video to try and reverse engineer how we’d got to the position and everything became clear when I then remembered that Cannibals had eaten the ship’s Helmsman. It ended up being quite a funny though confusing moment which just goes to show how hard it can sometimes be to keep track of everything in games with more players.

This then ties in with my “Event” of the year, which was playing this 4 player game and making it into the video for the Holiday Booty Giveaway contest. It was my first time playing with 4 players as well as introducing several new people to the game. Making the video was also a lot of fun and I’ve got a couple more in the works.

My favourite game of the year is actually a 60 point game I played with another of my brothers where I was playing a Pirate fleet up against his French fleet. I don’t have any photos from that game, but I do remember it being quite a cagey affair as there was quite a lot of firepower in play and neither of us wanted to expose ourselves to being shot at first. Le Bon Marin and Bloody Jewel were grabbing any safe treasure they could find without getting involved with any bigger ships.

The game reached a point where I was trying to bring a treasure filled Black Pearl 025 and Neptune’s Hoard back to my home island whilst being chased down by a combination of Le Superbe and Le Triton with Le Soleil Royal only a turn or two behind them. Without a clear path back to my home island I was forced into a poor engagement before the Soleil Royal could make it a 3v2, where I couldn’t quite get all my cannons into range and ended up losing both ships and the game.

I also had the Black Swan in my fleet, but had only crewed her with a Captain which the Le Soleil Royal had eliminated with her ability. I think the Black Swan had only lost a mast or 2, but without a Captain it almost felt like I’d lost the entire ship. This game gave me a much greater appreciation for using Oarsman as a defensive tool on ships, which I now use a lot more regularly.

2022 has been a pretty good year for me as far as Pirates is concerned. I fully rejoined the community after taking a step back in 2020, I finally completed my custom set which I’d first envisioned two years ago, and I increased my collection from a measly 94 ships to a grand fleet of 261.

I think my “Fleet of the Year” would have to be my 70 point English fleet I played during the holiday giveaway contest, with my 150 Spanish/American fleet from that same contest close behind.

I’ve got a couple favorite pictures from this year, all coming from the aforementioned contest:

but I think my true “Picture of the Year” has to be the second fleet review I did back in October (and since my collection has grown so much since even then, I just might be doing another later this month…)

My “Game of the Year” was definitely the 150 point Thanksgiving game I got to do with my brothers, even if it ended early. It was the highest point total I’ve played a game at (although not the largest I’ve played in terms of space) and had lots of action, and was just overall great fun all around.

For a “Thing of the Year”, if I’m understanding the category correctly, I’d say how large my collection has grown. I came close to tripling my original collection of ships, not to mention the crew, which I’d comparatively little of at the start of the year. My collection also greatly diversified, having gone from being primarily made up of SM and OE pieces (and there being nothing from about half the sets) to being made up of at least one piece from each released set, and being composed of a pretty even split between most of the sets.

My “Theme of the Year” I’d say is customs. Not only did I complete my custom set, but including the pieces from it I created around 167 customs in total this year, which is a number I’m pretty proud of. And there are several more in certain stages of creation, all which I hope to finish over the coming year!