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It’s been a minute since I’ve been on here XD, I just sat down to do a spreadsheet of my collection (so far just named crew, ships and unique treasure) and I’m up near 800 unique game pieces. I think I might post some photos soon to since I had the bug and some extra cash and grabbed a couple fresh packs and sealed boxes.
Hey all, I’ve been absentee from this forum for a hot minute. I just redid my office and rediscovered a box of unpunched ships (like a hundred) and my fever has come back full force XD
I’m about to try and build some custom ships for the first time, from scratch, and was wondering if anyone else here has tried this? I’ve got a photo quality printer, cardstock, a laminator and Adobe photoshop so I’m feeling confident I can get kinda close (especially since I’m going to be using scans of punched cards as templates)
Thoughts?
Yes those two! They aren’t particular great units or ones that I play a lot but I like having them as collectables.
I always love anything that makes shooting in this game more dynamic but I would want ships to have some seperate range options, clearly showing some ships as close range brawlers or quick snipers. I like the idea of reducing accuracy for a long shot, something along the lines of “double this cannon’s printed range and reduce it’s accuracy to 5. Roll two D6, you must choose the smaller number. If the canon’s accuracy is already 5, this ability may not be used.” This way ships that already have the extended range ability aren’t negated. I also thought of adding equipment for build costs at the begining of the game. Say you upgrade a gun on one of your ships for an additional build point or two to increase accuracy or range.
For me it’s a tough three way tie between the Bauchon which I was able to get unpunched for less than 20 bucks (I saw most of them at least 50). I also have the Nautilus w/captain nemo and The Flying Dutchman with Davy Jones from DJC. I have to give an honorable mention to the three transparent ships I have too; the black pearl and the two seamonsters from DJC that I can’t recall the names of. One’s a sea serpent and the other a giant squid.
I agree, love the concept and look of the wrecks. Two thoughts I had would be if the ship was crewed when it was sunk, the owner can do a sort of “saving throw” if they roll highed than the number of masts the ship had when it started it becomes a wreck. That or if a ship sinks within an L or maybe 2S from an island or terrain it is in shallow water and becomes a wreck. Could make things interesting by saying before you can explore a hostile wreck you have to kill the crew, marines and musketeers could still shoot from their wrecks and even unique treasure like “Deck Cannon” can still be used.
So me and my group that regularly play the game have started working on our own set based off Irish naval activity of the west coast of Ireland. We’re making a minor faction called the Fenians and are based off of famous Irish pirates and Irish folk heroes. One of my group knows how to use adobe creative suite so we have some carstock and a laminator so we can actually print out deck plates that are custamized. The ships I’m constructing froma pile of cannibalized ship parts from broken or incomplete ones from lots I’ve bought.
Recently got my hands on an unpunched Bauchon and did a HW gaming run. Filled out rise of fiends and pirates of the carribean sets including the holo-black pearl. I also bought a few risky lots from ebay that payed off including a lot of barbary coast/crimson coast ships and one unpunched flying dutchman from Davy Jones Curse.
@Ruben Santiago I’ve purchased a lot from Hill’s Wholesale gaming and while you can only really find bulk items (so you’re spending at least 50 bucks) they always have come in good condition and rather quickly. They have a lot of the major sets but not everything. They are a good reliable resource with pricing that per pack often beats other sources, but they only sell large lots and have a limited selection.
I’ve talked with my play group before of settinf up zones that you can only access after certain point in the game. One way we talked about was having a narrow causway that you have to pay a toll to secure passage, having a cost for a single ship or a much larger cost as a pass for your entire fleet. We also played with idea of having “npc” forts or flotillas that act as a deterrent until there is no other option then to engage them. That and we’ve actually tried playing a game where most of the islands are behind non-damaging terrain such as fogbanks and sargasso seas, making it tricky for reliable transport and even harder to get reinforcements to you gold runners should they come under attack.
I really disliked the only two factions, there should have at least been a cursed faction for davy jones and the flying dutchman. That and could have been a cool opportunity to do different pirate subfactions (the whole jack-barbossa conflict). I did, however, really like the huge amount of UT’s and the approach to generic crew was cool. That and I have the black pearl in the transluecent build like the super rare seamonsters from DJC so that’s a plus for the set.
@Ben definately fun even as my collection gets close to complete. I recently actually went through most of my sets and was able to calculate how close I was (minus SM, CC, SS cause I didn’t have their checklists). This is where I am
Revolution- 66%
Barbary Coast- 40%
South China Sea- 72%
Davy Jone’s Curse- 84%
Mysterious Island- 60%
Frozen North- 34%
Ocean’s Edge- 70%
Rise of Fiends- 10%
Fire and Steel- 76%
Been pulling some extra hours at work and have just got together a relyable play group who all draw from my collection. I decided I’d bolster it with a trips to hills wholesale gaming. Bought two displays from rise of fiends and fire and steel (I already have too much OE, DC and RV) and 3 special tins, I’ll share any good finds when they arrive!
I’ve thought about photoshopping a simple water texture, printing it out and glueing it to some cardboard calling it “treacherous waters”. When a ship ends a move action touching treacherous waters roll a D6. 1 nothing happens, 2-3 treat it as a reef, 4-5 treat it as a sargasso sea, 6 treat it as a whirlpool.
That is awesome!! SCS is one of the best sets and one of my favorites. The Jades are a really cool minor faction. The big lot of SCS I got in late 2014 was one of the biggest Pirates purchases I’ve done, but I don’t regret it at all.
Easily my biggest purchase for pirates as well but I think it was well worth it, I have two games planned this weekend so I’ll be trying them out.
Wind is a big one, but I’ll go with resources/resource management. Most of my favorite strategy games are about managing resources in some way
This is something I’d love to have incorporated as well. I recently bought a huge lot of different resource tokens (40 different types). The first version I’m working on uses them as trade goods. In a regular game there are multiple “ports” which will purchase resources from you when you dock. The way I value the different resources is through die rolls. When you take resources to market, you roll a die corresponding with the resource (for example a lot of lumber you roll a D4 but a lot of spices you roll a D10) and that is what the port will pay for that resource. You can sell or risk visiting another port but that ports value does not change unless you bring new resources to be valued. I also am working out a way explorers can find “raw” resources on a wild island (raw resources such as lumber, livestock, stone). When this is combined with a small start game, about 20 points, you and your opponent are forced to weigh your options for victory against multiple options. I’ve also played with the idea of having a third player control a “mercantile” faction giving the players the option to raid traders but risk ports no longer allowing them to dock.
There are usually expensive single packs on eBay for $10+ but finding a bunch in a lot is rare.
Ok cool, out of the 32 I was able to find I recieved almost all of the Jade Rebellion ships (including several 6 masters) and most of their named crew. That and I went through the list and was able to get 85% of the whole expansion. I’ve never had any Jade Rebellion ships so it was pretty exciting for me to make this find.
That does make sense. Allow them to be repaired, possibly even as a free action if you pay 1 gold.
I really like that too, I love any rule that lets you spend gold for a possible advantage, adds an element of economic strategy I like. (Was a big fan of forts being added)
I forgot about those until reading this post! Hardcore dose of nostalgia staring at those scenes hoping one of packs I just got would yield a ship that cool. I think they’re absolutely fair game because they are produced with the sets, as long as you have all the information wether it be with the deck card or by finding it online it is valid. Since things have become harder to find I’d say these ships/crew are even more valuable despite not being as high quality as those found by opening booster packs.
I think it would be interesting to have a house rule allowing you the option to shoot the oars off a galley by targeting them – if both sets get shot off, the ship loses access to the keyword for good.
I like the idea, helps balance it some but the permanent removal seems a little unrealistic since it’s a form of equipment. What if you had you knock out the oars per the flotilla hit rules (two hits within the same shoot action) and then they can only be replaced as a repair action at a home island.
Ah, makes perfect sense now, thanks for explaining. That is quite interesting and unique. Do you plan to test it out in a game?
Certainly would like to when I get the opportunity again, I have only a couple of pieces with the keyword though, don’t often make there way into most games.
I don’t fully understand – if you rolled 2 dice, wouldn’t the probability of getting hits be better regardless of ship size? Perhaps an example would help.
By this I’m refering to a kinda complicate custom rule in an attempt to rewrite the keyword. For example we’ll say a 4 mast ship holds the keyword and engages in the action after fulfilling the requirements. Before rolling the attacking player must choose to engage the normal braodside attack or the modified. If they choose modified, they can roll an extra D6 but must forfiet one potential hit. So in this case a sucessful broadside would only render 4 hits rather that have the bonus fifth, the benefit being a higher likelyhood of hitting. If the opposing ship has more masts than the potential hit count then the attacker must call out targets. Thr attacker can add as many dice as they want as long as they still have one potential hit left (ex: a 4 mast ship rolling five dice negating the bonus hit from the original broadside rules and three of its canons). This way you can choose to go for the massive payout of destroying a fully repaired ship in a single action or you can dramatically increase your chance of landing a hit. The rationale for this rule was that in a real broadside engagement, a gun crew could simply fire at will, hoping that the enemy ship would be incapacitated from the barrage or a well disciplined and commanded crew could stagger their fire, targeting a single spot on the enemy ship- the main mast, the magazine, the rudder- as the passed by the enemy.
Not the most simple fix but one I found interesting and rooted in a some-what realistic strategy
I’ve always liked how simple yet versatile the movement system has been but I’ve almost played with a modified rule that sees a ship’s listed speed as its “top” speed. The people I have played with and I always saw it as something that you could choose to modify within your move action. If your move was S+S you can choose to move any where between that range as long as it does not exceed the maximum. The logic was that a ship can choose to change how open its sails are and thereby throttle its speed yet cannot exceed the fastest speed with all sails open.
We also toyed with the idea of incorporating a wind mechanic, something like roll a D8 or D4 and that is the direction of the wind for a turn or series of turns and it modifies the movement when traveling towards or against. It was a bit complicated so we never quite got it right but it was a fun idea.
I’ve always been kinda confused by the broadside attack keyword and only recently actually looked at how to use it. I usually just avoided the keyword all together. I feel like an acceptable balance to the ability would have to deal with scaling and loss of hits. Something like you can roll and additional die and take the highest option but you lose one “hit” and have it scale up, giving heavy ships the option to risk all hits for a low chance or basically have a for sure single hit. I’m not sure how well that would work, I may test it in a game in the near future but I loved the concept of a ship being able to pull alongside another in classic cinematic action and blast another to pieces with a ripple line of canon balls.
Whenever I have trouble interpreting the rules I try to visualize how they would function in a real scenario, how would actual naval warfare go? One of the other fixes I thought of for this is if the threshold for a hit was lower but if they hit, the enemy ship gets and opportunity to fire back before the hits “land”. Typically if two ships where to go broadside they would be blasting eachother right?
I was honestly surprised that there was still a community for this game at all when I found this site. It was a large part of my childhood for my siblings and I as we where just old enough to be able to start playing and understanding this game when it came out. I revisted it in a bought of nostalgic collecting funded by tax returns and stumbled in here on a whim after I kept being directed here for googling keyword lists!
Hey there!
I’ve used this sight a few times for reference and such as I have got back into the game recently. I’m about 50/50 player and collector and I started playing near launch when I was a young kid. I found a few wholesale stores that had displays left over from the hayday of wizkids csg’s and bought a bunch (now have means and whole lot of nostalgia for the game, that and I was a big fan of their star wars game as well). I recently bullied my younger sister into playing it with me again anf we enjoyed it more as adults than we did as kids. I think I have about 1k ships in my collection, combination from what survived my childhood and what I have been able to find since. The thing I love about this game so much is it’s versatility but simplicity. It is probably the best tabeltop bridge game I’ve ever encountered. It’s a great game to play if you want to get more into complex tabletop games like Dnd but are a little intimidated by all the rules, abilities and dice. That and you can scale the game as much as you like, I’ve played massive 500 point games before with friends that took a weekend of on and off play as well as designing little campaigns with set fleets and crew.
Overall I have always loved this game and kinda amazed there is still a community for it!
