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This is a really complicated subject. To me the problem is actually less with the point cost variation and more that there are too many ships that just don’t seem to have a purpose. I don’t have a problem with distinguishing the good ships from the pack filler by tinkering with their point costs. But at least give the mediocre ships a defined niche in which they would be not be completely hopeless if they actually wind up on the table.
I agree though that volume is not inherently the problem. Having lots of ships is fun – having lots of useless ships is not.
Do the Jade Rebellion versions of the Clear Wind and the Divine Wind have the same ability? I noticed that the master spreadsheet gives them the same ability, but the actual text on their cards is different.
The Divine Wind has the standard wording for her ability: “If this ship shoots at a ship that was previously shot at by another ship this turn, she gets +1 to her cannon rolls against that ship this turn.”
The Clear Wind has: “If this ship shoots at a ship that was previously shot at this turn, she gets +1 to her cannon rolls against that ship this turn.” Nothing in there about requiring it to be a different ship. Read literally, would shooting one of this ship’s cannons at a ship give the following shots within the same shoot action the bonus, or does “previously shot at” refer specifically to a shoot action and not an individual cannon shot? If it does refer to an entire shoot action, would she grant herself the bonus if she got an extra action and used it to shoot again at the same ship she had already shot at with her original action?
It might be worth noting that the Cursed version of the Clear Wind from Ocean’s Edge changed the wording to the usual version, where it requires a different ship.
I assembled some 60-plus ships over the last week or two, and this got me thinking…how many times do we suppose the production process WK was using changed during the game’s run? I identified the following trends that I feel are consistent enough to be significant:
Barbary Coast is where I feel like I first noticed a change – the slots seem to have been cut smaller (or the tabs bigger). This is the first set where it felt like I sometimes had to struggle to get a ship together. It’s not nearly as bad or as consistent as some later sets, but this is the first time I noticed it showing up.
South China Seas and Davy Jones’ Curse both had the well-known issue with the art coming off if the card gets hit with so much as a light breeze. In contrast to BC though, I would say I found these to generally be easy to assemble – whatever was going on with the cut of the tabs and slots in BC wasn’t an issue here.
In Frozen North the plastic is noticeably stiffer. I’m pretty sure I could tell the difference between a card from FN and a card from any earlier set with my eyes closed. This is the only set where I’ve ever broken a ship while trying to assemble it – the stiffness of the hull pieces makes it a little tricky to get the tabs in. I’ve only ever assembled two ships from Mysterious Islands, so I don’t know whether this problem started there – maybe someone else can chime in on that set.
Ocean’s Edge seems to have remedied the excessive stiffness a bit, but the cut of the slots and tabs just flat out don’t fit anymore. It’s like they took the difficulty of assembly from BC and turned it up to eleven. I can’t even imagine the annoyance of trying to play ‘by the rules’ with ships from this set – once the masts go in, they really don’t want to come out again. I’ve never broken a ship from OE, but I’ve definitely been worried I was going to.
And then came Pirates of the Carribean…and it seems like they fixed every problem I’ve ever had from this point forward. I don’t know if changing the shape of the tabs is responsible, but assembly became easy again. They also somehow made the artwork almost impossible to scratch off. If I have one criticism, it’s that they got rid of the pennants. I get the change in the sail design – the gaps between the sails on the old style masts always made them a little flimsy. But why did they decide not to keep putting pennants on top of the mainmast? The pennants look cool!
I don’t think there’s any question that the Corsairs would be the answer to that question.
I’m not sure even the Pirates can match the sheer quantity of cheap, fast ships the Corsairs can put on the board. A ship that moves S+L with 4 cargo for 6 points is a great deal. Some factions (the Cursed say hi!) don’t even have a ship like that. The Corsairs got something like 4 or 5 ships with that kind of profile – and most of them have more than one mast! I wonder if collecting issues are really to blame – it’s hard to appreciate a fleet you can’t play, and finding the necessary generic crew for the Corsairs is like pulling teeth.
I won an auction for several Jade 6-masters recently, but to get it I had to pay for a duplicate Grand Path. I kind of need to recoup that portion of the purchase price.
I know the big Jade ships are getting harder and harder to find, so I figured I’d give folks here first crack at it before listing it back on eBay. Effectively I had to pay $25 for it, so that’s what I’m looking to get back. If that interests you, shoot me a message.
I think all UT’s that are loaded facedown take up cargo space normally. Not sure if that answers your question.
The rules say that crew must be turned face up “when using its ability” – but crew like Master Bianco have a passive ability that is always active. I was thinking in terms of a situation like this: you have a ship docked at a wild island with a cargo capacity of 4, and 4 crew tokens are present on the ship, all face down. Then you indicate you intend to load some treasure. At that point, your opponent goes “how do you have space to load the treasure?” Is this the point where you would be ‘using’ the ability on Master Bianco and thus have to turn him face up? Or can you just say “some of these crew don’t take up cargo space.”
Is ‘This crew takes up no cargo space’ an ability unto itself that is subject to the no-stacking rule? For years now I assumed it wasn’t, probably because it always comes bundled with another ability, and for whatever reason in my head I thought of no-stacking rule as applying to the suite of abilities in total in the case of such crew. But it seems like if you put Master Bianco and an Oarsman on the same ship, one of them would have to take up cargo space just as if you had two Oarsman crew, right? Is Oarsman different in any way because the ability is part of a keyword? The ‘stowaway’ crew like Amos seem like they would stack, since the ability is different (only taking no cargo space when revealed instead of ‘always’).
Another related question – if you have used links and/or crew that do not take up cargo space to exceed the printed cargo capacity of a ship, do you have to reveal to your opponent that your arrangement is legal? Does that count as ‘using the ability’ of the crew in question (meaning you would have to flip them during crew placement)? What about when you load treasure? That seems more vague, since you could have loaded UTs, which don’t take space. Is this just a matter of checking the fleet lists after the game is over to verify that all crew assignment was legit?
