Gaming in Seattle – 5×60

12/9/2022

This report is a summary of a 5 player, 6o point game played at Oasis Tea Zone in Seattle Washington as part of a U-District Board Game Meetup.  We use these house rules, and game pieces can be found in the Master Spreadsheet.  Chris went first with the Jade Rebellion, Phillip second with the Spanish, myself third with The Cursed, Kyle fourth with a mixed fleet, and Witch fifth with the Americans.  There is bias towards my own position/view on the game.

Due to the table shapes, the ocean was a long rectangle:

The Baochuan gets the first action of the game:

This was my Cursed fleet:
Behemoth
Shaihulud
Pyre + Sargasso Nightmare, RtSS Papa Doc, helmsman
Coins: Plague, Missionary, Wolves, Odin’s Revenge, Curse of Davy Jones, three 1’s

I made sure to pick up some “goodies” on my trip to New York.  🙂  I grabbed some things from my original play collection, including my named crew+UT tin, along with Behemoth and a few other things.  It was nice to be able to contribute Odin’s Revenge and to be able to use an expensive beast like Behemoth.  I was changing my mind and going with a Spanish fleet before the game, but decided to stick with my original plan when I saw Kyle and Phillip (the players on either side of me) pull out Spanish ships as well (to avoid having so many from the same faction).  I believe this was the first time I maliciously targeted a specific player in a multiplayer game, and will likely be the last.  Witch has won a shockingly disproportionate amount of multiplayer games in recent months (a testament to how good a player he is), so much so that I’ve been feeling the need to “intervene” and try to give the other players a better chance in one of the 4+ player games.  This also felt like the best time to do it since it was Chris’ first game with us and Phillip hadn’t won in our group games yet.  In addition, it was a bit of an experiment – would it even work?  Or would Witch still come away victorious?  I had also been wanting to use an L booster with multiple sea monsters, specifically on a submerged submarine with cancelling so as to make the L booster as immune as possible.  With the recent reunion with Behemoth, all the stars were aligned for me to play a simple attack strategy, something I do once in a great while to change things up.  However, I do have less fun with it than trying to win normally and this was no exception.

Odin’s Revenge strikes early!  However, the timing makes it mostly irrelevant, as most players simply spend the first round repairing at home.

At the right, an island is missing as it’s been yanked away by Bad Maps.  Witch was using a custom American 1 master proxied by the Seminole: 1 cargo, L+L speed, 5S cannon, ability: “Once per turn, this ship may look at one face down cargo on any ship.”

The Providence avoids reef damage with Dr. Clark Lewis to explore a nearby wild island.  My speedy submerged forces round earth into American waters.

The Baochuan whirls to the other side of the map:

The custom Seminole finds Wolves near the round earth boundary, further restricting Witch’s access to treasure.  I had stayed off his HI for a turn or two before getting bored and round earthing towards some wild islands.  The Americans seemed scared to leave their HI with the Cursed so close.  My combos were fully revealed by this point, with Sargasso Nightmare increasing Shaihulud’s speed to S+L+L and Behemoth to L+L.  Combine that with their abilities and it was a frightening trio.  Behemoth could copy Shaihulud’s ability to shoot at submerged submarines to target USS Mercury, or copy RtSS Papa Doc to cancel any defensive abilities.  Both monsters have all rank-2 cannons and they could surface, move quickly, then shoot (with our house rule) and ram.  At one point I copied the spyer ability to see the final crew on the Mercury (11 points of which had been revealed, so still 5 available for canceller DNT), but it was just an oarsman.  Commodore Peregrine Stern and Wayne Nolan weren’t having much luck generating EA’s for the Mercury thus far.  With the Jades heading east, the competition for gold was elsewhere…

The Baochuan was on a tear, S-exploring islands and stacking up coins in her legendary cargo hold.  Phillip and Kyle were doing solid in the gold game but it was becoming apparent that Chris might run away with the game if the Baochuan returned home with all her loot, especially since he also controlled what appeared to be the only HI raider in play (Virtuous Wind).

Shaihulud trades one of its segments to eat the custom Seminole’s rigging.  The Americans stay at home to avoid getting slammed by the Cursed.

The Baochuan returned through the whirlpool, meaning she was nearly home!  The Tiger’s Eye had taken off some masts but the Jades looked poised for a huge windfall if they could make it through one more round.  Behemoth and Pyre moved towards the 10 master, but I kept canceller copied (through Papa Doc) in case I would need it for defense.  I could have copied Helmsman to get closer to theoretical cancelling range, but then I wouldn’t have the cancel ability in the first place.  Important to note: “-A copied ability remains in effect until the beginning of your next turn.”  This is part of why I was so hesitant to copy anything other than canceller, because I would have to spend the other 4 player turns wondering if Behemoth might get cancelled to the surface, or if I would regret not copying it for some other reason.  What I didn’t bother disclosing was that I wasn’t really after the Baochuan – I would have much rather fought the Americans.  Plus, by this point there was open discussion about teaming up to take down the Baochuan (as is right since the other players wanted to win), which is exactly what happened to me in the 7×120 game in October.  I didn’t want an exact repeat of that (with the people teaming up to take down the Bao nearly the same), so I was not really wanting to pin the Baochuan with Behemoth anyway.

With some delicate maneuvering, Chris just barely manages to get the Baochuan home while staying outside of Behemoth’s cancelling range (Behemoth still submerged).  This was partly due to making sure to measure the cancelling range of S with the physical white segment on the card, compared to using the full length of the card.  This is something I plan to bring up more consistently – I see too many players using full card lengths for measuring purposes when S and L are actually a bit shorter than that.  As all players know, that can make the difference between being able to dock at home, take an extra shot, be in range of a canceller, etc.  AKA, sometimes the difference between winning and losing.  In addition, lately I’ve seen a lot of unofficial measuring devices such as sticks/straws/etc.  Those are fine but should be made exact so as to not be longer or shorter than the official segments.  For that reason and being more old school with the game than many current players, I will probably always default to using a card in general, though the straws/etc can be extremely useful for premeasuring.

With the endgame upon us, the Americans begin to leave their house at last.  The Tiger’s Eye follows the Baochuan through the whirlpool.

Le Bon Marin headed home with two coins.  El Rosal’s crew has been killed by the Plague (given to her by another Spanish ship in Phillip’s fleet), while the Virtuous Wind had bad luck with that fog bank, rolling a 4 two out of three times to emerge straight onto a sargasso sea where she got stuck once.

Shaihulud surfaced and avoided reef damage to attack the submerged (and therefore undocked) USS Mercury, landing one hit that was ignored due to the sub’s ability.  The Mercury surfaced to return fire and kill the beast!  The Providence rammed the Tiger’s Eye, with a desperate endgame likely given the main hoard of treasure was (likely) safe in Jade hands.

The Providence whirled to some action in the east, but Behemoth copied Commodore Stern, got an EA, and followed the Providence and sank her!  The Tartessos, Tiger’s Eye and USS Maryland are caught up in a skirmish over some gold that is unlikely to affect the outcome by much.

The Pyre came through the whirlpool in order to give the Sargasso Nightmare’s +L boost to Behemoth, who sank the Bon Marin and her 3 total gold.  This left Behemoth exposed to USS Mercury, and in the endgame Stern was catching fire with EA’s, one of which was used here to help the sub kill Behemoth.

That’s the last picture I have for the game, but more events occurred.  Chris was masterfully raiding Phillip and Kyle’s HI’s for extra gold with the Virtuous Wind, then transferring the coins to the (mostly) repaired Baochuan for safekeeping.  USS Mercury had loaded up the Frond of Fisaga earlier in the game and was nearly able to use it at the perfect time.  However, the sub was still out of range to do something meaningful about the final gold remaining in play.  The Jades got it home and it was over!

1. Chris (Jade Rebellion): 62 gold
2. Phillip (Spanish): 18
3. Dan (Americans): 9
4. Kyle (mixed): 1
5. Ben (Cursed): 0

Chris is off to a great start with our PNW Pirates group, finishing with more than twice as much gold as all other fleets combined!

With that, I’ll probably take a break from Team Chaos/Lawful Evil for at least a game.  XD