[Ben]

Historical Custom of the Day #428

Carronade
Equipment
3 points
Ability: This ship gains one 2S cannon that can fire from any mast (even an eliminated mast), but cannot have its range increased. When this cannon hits, eliminate one mast and one crew from the enemy ship. This cannon may be used with other equipment. Ships may use up to two Carronades in one turn.

Really excited about this. One of the more important weapons in the late stages of sailing naval combat. Absolutely devastating at short range and when combined with grape shot.

Amethyst
Type: Ship
Faction Affiliation: Mercenary
Rarity: R
Point Value: 10
Number of Masts: 1
Cargo Space: 2
Base Move: S+S
Cannons: 3L+L
Ability: Mercenary. Schooner. Hidden Gold. [This ship has 2 extra cargo spaces that may only be assigned treasure.] (Modified version of original keyword by Xerecs)

Flavor text: The Amethyst is a tricky opponent. As her name implies, she is often laden with valuable cargo. However, sometimes she carries even more than can be expected of a ship her size, leading pirates to pass her up in favor of large treasure galleons. When an approach is made, the Amethyst is usually able to deter the ship by using her surprisingly long-range cannons as a warning.

Deilzenar Halgeren
Type: Crew
Faction Affiliation: Mercenary
Rarity: U
Point Value: 8
Ability: Ex-Patriot. Unholy Light. Once per turn, you may eliminate TWO of this ship’s crew to give her an extra action. When this ship rolls a 6 to hit, also eliminate one cargo from the enemy ship.

Flavor text: The son of wealthy Austrian parents, Halgeren left Europe to pursue massive profits on the high seas. He may soon attain that goal when wars break out all over the oceans. His greed has led to a few chance encounters with Fitzgerald, who seemingly taught him a thing or two.

You can find my custom sets here: Pirates of the Age of Sail and Pirates of the Epic Seas

[Ben]

The crew elimination ability seems useful, and makes the most sense. I’ve always found the Marine and Musketeer ability to eliminate masts rather comical, since you’d expect them to be carrying, well, a musket.

Haha!  Exactly!  The concept of mast elimination (and how it doesn’t slow down ship speeds) has always been rather strange in this game.  That reminds me, I still need to finish making my custom Carronade equipment.

One change I would make is how they’re eliminated. Instead of two hits in the same turn, I think it should be two hits from the same shoot action (ignoring any ship or crew abilities that eliminate crew during shoot actions). In my mind, that would give them a bit more durability and make them more worth the investment.

I agree with that as well!  I think a combination of small changes could be an interesting way to go about it as well.  Perhaps adding that change, +1 to boarding rolls, AND making the cannon 1S would make them worth 6 points. (barely?  XD)

Adding your idea to the main post!  Thanks for commenting!

[Ben]

Execration
Type: Ship
Faction Affiliation: Cursed
Rarity: C
Point Value: 14
Number of Masts: 3
Cargo Space: 2
Base Move: L
Cannons: 2S-3L-2L
Ability: Fear. L-range cannons cannot hit this ship.

Flavor text: Foul misdeeds follow those who have lived through an encounter with the Execration. It seems as though anyone who loses a battle with the ship’s crew but survives is cursed to commit sin. For some, that can be worse than simply getting slaughtered. Case in point – a man who mistakenly murdered his young daughter in a fit of rage.

Illmeth
Type: Crew
Faction Affiliation: Cursed
Rarity: C
Point Value: 4
Ability: Fear. Every time this ship hits an enemy ship, you may choose whether to eliminate masts or crew.
Link: Devil’s Slumber

Flavor text: His name strikes fear into he hearts of sailors. For it should – Illmeth is personally responsible for over a thousand deaths, and he’s only a Master Gunner!

Demon’s Den
Type: Fort
Faction Affiliation: Cursed
Rarity: C
Gold Cost: 8 gold
Cannons: 2L-2L-2L-2L
Ability: Crew with “demon” in their names can use their abilities while in this fort, if applicable.

Flavor text: Unlike the Repository, the Archfiend Demoncense only lets the best of the best into this fort. Demons treat the fort like a sanctum, always prepared to worship at the shrine.

You can find my custom sets here: Pirates of the Age of Sail and Pirates of the Epic Seas

[Ben]

Big win today.  Managed to increase the speed of the home page and main forum page – Google’s PageSpeed Insights tool now shows a perfect 100 score on desktop for both.  Mobile is only at 74, but lately it’s been in the 27-34 range, so still a big improvement.  So for now I might kinda rest on that since it can get technical, confusing, and time-consuming, but I hope to optimize the speed of the site more in the future.  (now it’s kind of a “ain’t broke, don’t fix it” thing, as some of my efforts to improve the site in the past backfired and I had to revert back.)  I’m not sure that the page speeds will be better on all pages, but those 2 are the main ones that get a lot of traffic, and are of course the most important ones in general.  Sometime I’ll probably test out speeds on other pages as well.  If certain things don’t load immediately (especially avatars), just be aware that the deferred stuff is making the rest of the stuff faster as far as I know.

I’ve also been adding the eBay RSS feed to pretty much all of the sidebars.  Sometimes that may depend on how hot eBay is; right now there are a bunch of quality auctions up, so I don’t feel shy about advertising the good deals to be had.  (of course they might not end up selling for cheap with sniping haha)

[Ben]

Making the rounds and finding a few things:
4 pounds of cards, total mystery lot: https://ebay.to/2JEfE0Z
Same thing but 8 pounds: https://ebay.to/2XKlQto
Lot with some useful crew: https://ebay.to/2JEEkX5
Roanoke: https://ebay.to/2SelcTz
HMS Titan: https://ebay.to/30taHPe

[Ben]

I have to admit I was wrong about the DJC LE’s.  Thought there might be a bit less demand nowadays.  The roundup:
Tarantula: $31
Pandora’s Box: $10.50
Judas: $36
Blackgate: $31.50
Dance: $6.50
Salem: $29.50
Black Gentleman: $24.50
El Pluton: $10.50

Grand Wind: $26

Guess attention now shifts to the kendarus auctions: https://ebay.to/30xZz3H
Starting to wonder if a bunch of those will get crazy too… though much less rare stuff in most of them.

[Ben]

The Experimental Cumulative Game

[Ben]

Although, it might be a little difficult to make a physical model for this, since forts only have room for 8 flags…. I suppose you could squeeze some in on the sides.

Definitely should be simple because of how the slotted flags should sit on the non-slotted fort walls.  It’s also the type of thing that would deserve a custom fort with a special configuration.

I think I have heard that song; it’s ironic because I may have seen the Fantasia show at Disney World in Florida in 2000.  XD  (if not, a year right around then)

[Ben]

Responding to Report 7:
Love that midsize American launch. Especially the Mohican setup; one of the most underrated 3 masters. Love the maxed out crew setups in general, makes a lot of sense given the gold available.
Notre Dame looks cool and intimidating. Love the realistic shadows at 6:42.
Love the grand wide angle shots showing pretty much the whole ocean; those are still my favorites for the most part. Really gives me a better idea of where all the factions are and the HI locations/etc, not to mention the big scale.
I hope the French don’t just sit on the gold and get a worse position in the standings simply because they didn’t launch enough.
No don’t kill Marty! XD
So funny to see Ophidious decapitated! Glad they did that though, I think someone needed to hit those English Mycrons.
Just when the Pirates started to look down and out, they get some capital ships (including the Zeus), and then a trio of Merc cancellers. Whoa. 🙂
24:46: Wow, they’ve basically got an assembly line factory going on. XD Along with lines of battle to partition off their waters. Amazing. Brilliant use of the hoist. They have more gold than they can realistically spend. The English battle fleet of CG1 with ~800 gold was extremely powerful. Spanish have like 4x the spending power. O_O
Cursed ConcH, btw not Conk. 🙂
Wow that English turn of shooting reminds me of some of my worst turns in big games from 2011/2012. Now I see what JW was talking about. XD
30:19 A perspective I’m not used to seeing; makes me think the French should launch gunships and start whittling away at the Spanish gold fleet from around the island.

[Ben]

In addition to that some of the factions need to be SHOWN that the Spanish are a threat, and others are hesitant to fight an ally.

I think it’s pretty obvious – even if they don’t have a ton of gunships in the water, they could quickly and easily.  Their biggest obstacle might actually be logistics and space constraints, but they could get a launch point in more open waters if they wanted to.

If I do a point count I might only post it here and on the FB group, since I don’t really want to make a video about it. I don’t think I’ll have surpassed CG1  o CG3 though.

I think it would make sense to at least mention it in a video at the beginning or end of a report, since people might see the reports for years to come without seeing a text writeup.  I think the recorded high of 3,516 points from CG1 is very much within reach, but more launching probably needs to happen first.

Ah, Pirates and Spanish as possible friends.  Quite the alien concept in my games.  XD

[Ben]

MI packs and some singles including the DJC LE’s ending today!  (depending on time zone)

Also, kendarus may have lowered their prices on some lots.  Some of them look pretty solid for someone getting started that’s looking to play, especially the punched BC lot.  (look at description – looks like only deckplates for most of the punched lots)

[Ben]

I’ll admit this is dumb, but I couldn’t help it after discovering it through a fittingly WICKED EPIC SONG. (found the name of this “fort” in youtube comment and looked it up) (That will be one of the songs of The World Game if it ever gets played)

Showed this to my dog. It now has three heads and guards the gates of Tartarus.

Tartarus

Type: Fort
Faction Affiliation: Cursed
Rarity: LE
Gold Cost: 500 gold
Cannons: 3L-3L-2S-2S-2S-2S-2S-2S-3L-3L
Ability: Fear. Sea creatures may repair at this fort. Sea creatures within L of this fort get +4 to their d6 rolls. Sea creatures may be launched from this fort regardless of game rules. Enemy ships that come within S of this fort lose all their masts and cargo. This fort’s cannons cannot be eliminated. If a non-Cursed ship docks at this fort, replace all of that ship’s masts with fire masts.

Flavor text: “In Greek mythology, Tartarus is the deep abyss that is used as a dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked and as the prison for the Titans.”

Absurd and silly, but perhaps some things are too epic to be used in Pirates?  XD

You can find my custom sets here: Pirates of the Age of Sail and Pirates of the Epic Seas

[Ben]

Playing around with the top menu a bit.  It was time for Blog to get demoted, but that made the bottom row about half empty, so I added the Information category down there.  Might add one more thing soon to fill it out.  I’m at 113 pages and 521 posts, so lots of content to attempt to prioritize!

Edit: Just updated the Information and Stats page.  Removed most links to Miniature Trading + updated some other links.  Also added the rules and a note about the MT saved post.  Plus some other minor changes.  Feedback welcome as always.

[Ben]

Hi everyone, I’m the same Phymatine who was on Miniature Trading. Thanks for setting this up, Ben!

Ahoy matey, great to see you here as well!!

[Ben]

(reposted from youtube)

Love it!! Lots of great grand shots at the beginning.
Spanish should basically run away with the game, especially since some of the other factions are fighting each other and not forming an anti-Spanish coalition. (which hasn’t been discussed?)
Nice to see your factions going at it. This gave me a new idea for a dumb custom. XD

The Spanish chain exploring is super long, but that can make it incredibly vulnerable. Wondering if a faction will be daring enough to suicide a ship into the line and make it falter. Then all the ships have to regroup or add a new one to replace. XD Makes me wonder what I wondered back when I may have been the first to do it – it’s possible that you could profit more from regular gold running. But of course, chain exploring is super convenient since you don’t have to move those ships every turn, which speeds things up. I think that’s actually why the Spanish did it in the 2011 cumulative game – it was a novel idea, and probably helped me get through some of their long turns lol. XD

Looks like the Cursed are this year’s French. ?? (massive eye rolling) That player could be booted from the game with other people taking over their factions. I mean don’t the Cursed want to win? You all know what you’re getting into with these games at this point; there should be no surprise at all at the time commitment.
Though I like how the Chum Maker is just casually showing up. XD Forgot you had her. “hey I kinda stink but I’m worth way more than you guys!” ? (though not the Guichuan)

Hate Pirata Codex, such a fun ruiner. Does make things simple and easier to (not) remember though.

Do you guys always play all together, or do people sometimes take their faction turns alone or with 1 other person around as well? Quite the time feat if it’s always everyone there.

Looks like at least 3000+ points in play. If you do a point count it would be cool to record if you surpass CG1 as the second biggest game ever. If the Spanish go on a long launching spree and fill their area with massed ships they could surpass the CG3 American fleet as the biggest ever.

Love how grand the ocean is. I know it must be annoying sometimes reaching into the middle area. Someday I hope to have an ocean with a big hole in the middle where I can crawl under and pop up in the middle for easier playing on a big ocean. XD (along with tables that move/slide easily in order to get to stuff.)

Not really sure who to root for. The Pirates seem to be in trouble. I like what the Americans have been doing. Kinda hoping the Cursed or someone will start to get reckless against the Spanish.

[Ben]

My Turtle Mania game featured a bizarre and extremely niche new gameplay idea.

And that is where a new (?) concept or game idea was born: chain capturing.  At the upper right, the Floating Stone of Tsai’s fleet was able to capture the remaining two ships of the other Jade fleet by herself (Hansan Island had been recently sunk).  Back and forth they went, with each fleet controlling 1 or 2 ships each turn of the three pictured.  Eventually Tsai’s fleet was able to chain together enough successful moves, and the captured Dragon’s Talon was within capturing distance (S+S rowing distance in this case) of Tsai’s own ship, the Proud Tortoise.  The PT was reclaimed for his own Jade fleet (this is hard to even put into words because of how confusing it is lol), completing the chain of captures that led to the elimination of the other Jade fleet!  XD  This is one of those bizarre occurrences that would only happen in a very similar situation, with lots of oared ships that are “capturable” (aka no oarsmen) and moving amongst each other and jockeying for towing position on just about every turn.

[Ben]

In a long-overdue experiment, I have added an eBay RSS feed to the Forum sidebar at the bottom.  Apparently there isn’t a way to make the images for the listings display there, but that would probably just slow the pages down anyway.  I checked the speed of the forum page after the change and it didn’t show any slowdown.  I will probably simplify it again soon since the Buy and Watch List buttons don’t link out to eBay.

This is not an endorsement of the deals that show up.  Just another way to hopefully monetize the site. (assuming the affiliate links work properly)

I am hoping to only ever have ads on PwB that are hyper-relevant – meaning mostly Pirates CSG stuff.  The only other ads I might try at some point would be to similar interests, such as PotC movies/music and naval history books.

[Ben]

That’s why they get “removed from the game” instead of “eliminated”. They’re not dead, and they could very well find their way home again, but it won’t happen quickly enough to affect the current game.

Interesting insight.

If there weren’t any friendly ships nearby, maybe the enemy ship that just blasted the sinking ship could take prisoners that are worth gold or something like that (although this would be better suited to an actual crew/ship ability rather than a full-time option).

I do think Ransom and Gold Capture could have been much more frequently seen abilities.  Game pieces of the Pirate faction could perhaps “press” the survivors into service.  But perhaps other things would be changed along the way so crew might die more frequently – perhaps cannon rolls of 6 eliminate crew or cargo.

I feel like this game has an endless amount of potential tweaks and small house rules that you could play around with for decades of playing.  Kinda overwhelming to think about though.

[Ben]

eBay heating up

guardian958 has changed some of their items to auctions. If they continue to do that as they relist things, could be a big bidding bonanza on eBay soon. ? Also seeing a Delusion up for grabs.
https://ebay.to/2JjzpMi

[Ben]

Interesting perspective, another question I have is why are At Oceans’ Edge packs so common/cheap? Did they make the most of those?

I haven’t seen hard numbers on packs printed by set, but it definitely seems that they printed far more OE than anything else.  HWG and some other places have run out of high-quantity sets like DJC, but OE always seems to be common and cheap.  The oversaturation of the set has led to it being cheap for a long time now.

It would be interesting to know what the actual print quantity was; it feels like they must have printed at least twice as much OE as any other set.

[Ben]

@xeriousone: Seems you made out reasonably well.  $7 (US)/pack is about average for SCS.

Few lots ending today, and then it will be interesting to see what the DJC LE’s go for.  Seems to be a little less demand for LE’s like that the past few years (I think), maybe because more and more collectors are satisfied over the years and a lot of those ships aren’t super interesting to players. (at least that’s my theory haha)

[Ben]

When do you think these things will start jumping drastically in price?

I’m not convinced it will be sudden and drastic.  I think it will be more slow and steady as it has mostly been for the past ~3-4 years or so.  Some packs have already gone up in price; CC and DJC have become much harder to find, and SCS always commands top dollar.  I think there would be a bit of a panic if HWG sold out of a ton of stuff all at once (unlikely), or if something caused them to go offline/out of business.  Not that there are no other reasonably priced packs out there, but most of the stuff I see on eBay nowadays seems somewhat overpriced and Amazon is pretty much disgusting.  XD

I’m glad we haven’t come close to running out of packs yet – shows how big the game was in the 2000’s and how much of it Wizkids made.

We’re also overdue for a recession, which should only serve to decrease prices on something as niche and entertainment-based as Pirates.

[Ben]

Hadn’t heard of it but looks nice!

[Ben]

This could be worth it based on the rares… not too exciting though if the punched ship aren’t included.  https://ebay.to/2FTx0FZ

Ghostly Revenant: https://ebay.to/2XsBwGp

[Ben]

Here’s a nightmare custom ability.  Massive headaches would ensue: Once per turn, roll a d6. On a 6 your opponent cannot give their ships free actions on their next turn.

I think this falls under the “just don’t” category.  XD

[Ben]

Marigold
Type: Ship
Faction Affiliation: American
Rarity: U
Point Value: 4
Number of Masts: 2
Cargo Space: 2
Base Move: S+S
Cannons: 4L-4S
Ability: Ship treasure trading. [Once per turn, if this ship carries treasure and is within S of an enemy ship, you may randomly trade one treasure with that ship.]

Flavor text: The Marigold is a simple vessel used to shuttle cargo along the eastern coast of the United States. Her crew are meticulous and accurate, eager to get their pay and stay out of harm’s way.

Carter Willingham
Type: Crew
Faction Affiliation: American
Rarity: C
Point Value: 2
Ability: Once per turn, this ship may look at one face-down treasure on any ship within L of this ship. If this ship is assigned a shipwright, she may repair two masts in one repair action while docked.

Flavor text: A slim boy who enjoys using his agility and quiet nature to steal aboard enemy ships to spy on them. He has also developed a love for fixing damaged rigging, often volunteering to help the crew repair when he is off duty.

You can find my custom sets here: Pirates of the Age of Sail and Pirates of the Epic Seas

[Ben]

I would say playing, too, though I find it much easier to make time to collect than play

I totally understand that.  Online shopping has become an incredibly easy 1-2 click experience, and there are still plenty of reasonably priced packs out there.  (though mostly at HWG at this point)  Setup time can be a killer for this game, and I’m worried that it limits the game’s potential.  I go a little overboard sometimes with the blue ocean fabric and the custom islands/terrain, but getting ready for a game AND the cleanup afterwards can take as long or longer than the game itself, especially with newer players or people who need to build their ships to play.

I’d have to say playing for me. I have a sizeable collection already and I don’t really want any more ships since I’ve gotten most of the ones I consider useful. At this point I’d rather let my friends borrow from my collection so we can all play than get more ships haha.

Love this answer.  😀

[Ben]

Moving forward to 2017, I got hit with a large wave of nostalgia (due in part to the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean film), and I decided to get back into my old childhood hobby.

I love how this confirms the nostalgia/PotC connection.  Similar things probably happened to others; every time a new PotC movie comes out seems like a good time to restart the game.

I have also made it a goal to use every single ship I own at least once, and with 800+ ships at my disposal, I’ll definitely have to sink more time into playing.

Love it!  I would assume I’m not quite there yet (with a similar number of ships), but that might be more due to more recent acquisitions than anything else.  Plus I don’t like boring ships.  With Command the Oceans I was able to use a large percentage of my collection all in one game.

I see we think alike with sets as well.  🙂  Feel free to post here as well if you’d like.

Feel free to post some customs in the Custom Ships thread, or leave a link there to a spreadsheet if that’s what you’ve got.

Glad to have you aboard.  I like long posts about Pirates of course.  😀

[Ben]

Cool!  Slightly surprised the English and Americans haven’t fired on each other given the close quarters.  Seems the Spanish will be able to increase their lead given the resource change.

[Ben]

Page refreshes don’t seem to happen automatically, or at least not every time. If you click back to a page you were on a few minutes earlier (like the main list of threads in the forum) it’ll often still look like it did when you were there the first time, even if you’ve logged in and posted something. More than once I’ve logged in after a day or two and it didn’t show any new posts that happened in between.

It’s easy enough to fix by hitting “refresh” or F5, but it feels a lot like the old days of the internet when browsers purposely did “tricks” like that to save bandwidth by not reloading things that didn’t necessarily need to be reloaded. It might just be a relic of WordPress that can’t be easily adjusted.

I think Xerecs was having a different issue, especially since it wasn’t happening all the time.  However, I have adjusted browser caching settings so that certain things won’t update all the time.  This provided massive speed gains for the site, and if I switch it back, it might get really slow.  I plan to work on the speed and performance of the site a bit in the next month or two, but some sacrifices seem to be necessary for optimal performance.

[Author]

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