MagExpress

My usual style of play centers around what I call “gap filling:” I’ll have a main faction that I primarily base my fleet around, but will bring in ships of another nation (usually Pirate) if there’s a role the primary nation can’t adequately provide with the remaining build points. Usually, the “gap fillers” are small treasure runners or su…[Read more]

Time for round two of my picks, mostly just runners-up from my last list. Here are the last few from DJC:

Executioner

“El Fantasma’s new acquisition is composed of the bones of his victims. Each time a wave breaks over her bow, a thousand trapped souls scream in anguish.”

That’s pretty friggin’ metal if you ask me. I wonder if OSHA (if it e…[Read more]

The DJC LE ships have some of my favorite pieces of flavor text, some which are horrifying on a psychological level, and others which are more blatant. Here are my top picks:

Howl

“From the mists that gather at nightfall, the Howl appears with the scream of a thousand tormented souls.”

Crypt

“No one has seen the inside of the Crypt and…[Read more]

I used to keep all of my punched treasure coins in a small Icebreakers gum box. It could hold a lot of them, but it was very hard to find the coins I needed to set up a game.

Now I keep them in one of those plastic organizer boxes, and they are all separated by type (gold or silver) and value.

Mine is more of a double-edged sword than a thing I downright dislike: eBay.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten some excellent deals on Pirates stuff on eBay, and I’m sure others here have too, but I’ve started to notice that prices for ships I consider to be relatively common are increasing at an absurd rate. This has spread over to lots as well,…[Read more]

Crimson Coast is my favorite set, yet I’ve only built a handful of the ships from it (less than ten if I remember correctly) and have only played maybe three or four of them at most.

Also, I’ve only ever played Pirates CSG with people I introduced to the game, despite knowing about the existence of VASSAL for almost a year now.

Corsairs for sure. They offer the most bang for your buck, but their named crew is very hit-and-miss and their ships are plagued with poor cannon ranks, which probably leads people to  choose the Pirates over them.

My personal choice would be the Vikings. Though they lack any overly fast or durable ships, they certainly aren’t lacking in…[Read more]

I have ships and crew from every set, most of which are complete or near-complete (Curse you, Tasmanian Devil!!)

My favorite set is and will always be Crimson Coast. Besides the excellent selection of ships and crew it provides, I find myself fascinated by the much darker tone it has in comparison to the sets that preceded and followed it, a tone…[Read more]

I wouldn’t say cargo overall is undercosted, but it does seem like there are a handful of ships with absurd cargo capacities for their size and/or point cost.

Too bad WizKids never released a game bible or anything detailing exactly how they assigned point values to ships. It’s pretty easy to figure out the base cost of each ship type and the…[Read more]

If I had to pick a single ship, right now I’d have to say my Mourning Star [FS 207]. Not only does she have a lower point cost than pretty much every other five-master, she is also cheaper than so many of the Cursed’s smaller ships that it’s downright disturbing.

My second favorite thing would have to be my binder with all of my minor faction…[Read more]

Parts I need:

• Tasmanian Devil [MI138] – I have two sets of punched cards for this ship, but not the ship herself or any of her pieces.
• Jape [OE144] – Missing the deckplate.

Here’s a quasi-historical ship from the custom set I’ve been working on. Point cost could probably use some adjustment

Moonlight

Type: Ship

Faction Affiliation: America

Rarity: UC

Point Value: 16

Number of Masts: 4

Cargo Space: 5

Base Move: L

Cannons: 3S-3S-3S-4L

Ability: Schooner, Ghost Ship. Once per turn, this ship may look at one…[Read more]

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. It’s almost like they’re toting around a carronade or an antiquated forerunner to the Bazooka (the former makes more sense for Marines,…[Read more]

I would say playing, too, though I find it much easier to make time to collect than play (I haven’t tried VASSAL yet, so all my games are in person).

Ahoy there, mateys!

I am MagExpress, which is short for Magnum Express. My username comes from a similarly named large-caliber German hunting rifle, the Heym Express Magnum; it doesn’t really have any significance, I just thought it sounded cool back in high school.

I got my first packs shortly after Crimson Coast came out (I knew someone who…[Read more]