Originally posted to Miniature Trading on August 18th, 2017
Heroic or Downright Atrocious – Surprising ship performances
This post is reserved for those ships that performed spectacularly well (heroic) or atrocious in individual games, to the point of absolute disbelief. Oftentimes a “hero” ship will be an unexpected one – you expect HMS Titan or the Acorazado to be a big-time ship, so those types of ships aren’t as likely to be mentioned here. (though you still could if they were insanely good and better than they actually are) Of course, on the contrary, unexpectedly bad ships would be ones like the Titan – ships that are supposed to be amazing, but disappointed you in a specific game or did horribly on more than one occasion.
What ship or ships (or crew, if you can manage that!) have been “heroes” or downright garbage in your games?
For me, my Economy Edition game featured at least 3 good examples.
The San Estaban had an absolutely heroic performance for the Franco-Spanish, shooting a whopping 8 for 9 (with rank-3 cannons, which I usually miss with all the time, so I’d expect her to go about 2 for 9) and surviving 2 full-scale Cursed attacks. She then returned home and may have shot some masts off Pirates before succumbing.
On the opposite end of the spectrum was the Black Mamba. In one of the worst performances in naval history, this ship went 0 for 6 in two shoot actions. Think that’s bad enough? Three of those misses were 1’s, which meant that the ship had dismasted herself without doing ANY damage to the enemy. 
Finally, the English ship Swiftsure was simply untouchable during the American assault:
| Quote: |
| The Swiftsure was the first ship launched in the game by any faction. Used as a treasure runner by the English, she’s now picked up a captain from their HI since she has a 2S cannon, which is better than the other guns English treasure runners are carrying. She hasn’t done much damage, but the stubborn sloop is putting up quite a fight! Neither the Kettering, Saratoga, nor President can hit her because of her L-immunity. Frustrated, the President has rammed her, but miraculously rolled a 1 to miss the dismast attempt! With Peregrine Stern giving +1 to boarding rolls and the President having a 3 mast advantage, the boarding attempt looked like a lock. However, the Swiftsure rolled a 6 to the President’s 1, winning the boarding party 7 to 6 and killing Stern, one of the most valuable named crew in the game at 9 points!! |
Other atrocious performances include 10 masted ships in general, especially during my RISK game and Defence of St. Helens game. In terms of numbers, I do know that the Shui Xian and Baochuan combined to go 2 for 13 in one turn, despite the Baochuan having Chang Pao aboard. Also, HMS Grand Temple had a rough start to her career with me, but has more than made up for it by now.
I’m sure there are other examples from my games, but I’ll post them as I remember them or rediscover them in the Battle Reports.
Post your own surprising ship performances in the comments below!