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Apologies if I’ve asked this before….
Links
Multiple different crew may be linked to a single ship at once, but each crew can link with only one other crew or ship at a time unless an ability specifically allows additional links to be created.
How many cargo spaces would a ship gain if it carried all three Knights of Malta at once? (Don Rafael Y de Teresa, Roderick the Pure, Benoit de Marseilles)
All three of them link to the other two. The rule seems to imply that a ship would only get +1 cargo from having all three of them – if two link to each other, then the third one is the odd man out. Or, Don links to Roderick and Roderick links to Benoit, but Benoit can’t link to Don?
The links apply in both directions, so two of them would link to each other giving a single +1, and the third would be left out. Essentially, all three could fit into a ship with only two spaces available.
That trio only seems to exist for flavor reasons; I can’t think of any scenario where using all three together on a single ship would be even remotely beneficial. Even putting two of them together is stretch.
Also, do Marines stack?
The no-stacking rule does apply to them so only one could shoot… while on a ship.
The text of the rule does not refer to islands, probably because Marines are the only crew that breaks the normal rule about using abilities there, so multiples on an island could all shoot.
For ships that can stern turn, I assume that rotation “sweeps” across the playing surface? (and the ship needs a clear path, rather than getting picked up and placed, though the Code mentions the latter under Moving)
The stern turn is written as just a rotation, so you do not get to pick up the ship like with a normal segment. You aren’t able to rotate through things, unless there’s enough clear space to rotate entirely around it in the opposite direction.
Also, do you think the Home Island Raider ability should have been handled differently? Similar to boarding parties, I don’t think it should be the loser’s choice – either have the winner choose, or make it a random coin. Of course, if the winner chooses, then they get to see all the coins on the enemy HI (in multiplayer at least), which can be a big information advantage too.
I think it was designed/written with the standard two-player rules in mind, where all treasure would be face up and visible on home islands, and when played like that it would work fine to let the raider choose what to take. But, like you said, Multiplayer (or two playing using the MP rules) is where it breaks, and why it gets put under the general rule where the person losing the item chooses. Being able to look at everything there could be way too powerful, and would slow the game down if the player using it had to stop and look through/count up everything instead just taking the first good coin they find.
Something in between might be good, where the HI owner would have to reveal a certain number of coins (4 or 5?) and then the raider could pick from those. Maybe with the added restriction that all of the values shown had to be different (if possible), so you couldn’t just flip a bunch of 1s and 2s.
Curious as to your thoughts on these. What about:
1. Basing the capture on a boarding score differential (ex: If this ship wins a boarding party by a differential of 8 or more, you capture the other ship but she cannot be given actions this turn.)
2. Only being able to capture non-derelict ships if they have no crew (ex: If this ship wins a boarding party against an enemy ship that isn’t assigned any crew, you capture the other ship but she cannot be given actions this turn.)
I’m still not really a fan of abilities that would allow someone to capture a non-derelict ship, but maybe with some testing and tweaking it could be okay. Basing it on a differential makes it pretty luck based between normal ships, but still gets skewed really badly when the 10-masters are factored in. If those could be excluded somehow without it just looking arbitrary, the 8+ differential might work.
Basing it on whether a ship carries crew really only makes Oarsmen even more essential as meat shields, but wouldn’t really change things much from how they’re already used to prevent capture by keeping a ship from being counted as derelict.
Currently I have the “nerfed” version as follows (from an edit made some years ago): This ship can tow a ship by touching a derelict in any location (not just the bow), and can immediately initiate towing after resolving any action. (currently ~7 points on a couple custom crew)
Allowing a ship to tow derelicts while touching any part wouldn’t cause any drastic issues, especially if you stuck with the existing towing rules and had it merely remove the bow requirement. 2-3 points would probably be more than enough for that.
From the Proboards forum:
marhawkman said:
Eternal Dragon – 5 – Jade Rebellion
Whenever this ship eliminates the last segment of a sea creature, instead of eliminating the sea creature, it gains the eternal keyword, becomes docked at your home island, becomes a member of your fleet, and its faction becomes Jade Rebellion. If Eternal Dragon is eliminated, all sea creatures affected by his effect are eliminated as well.
This one is really interesting. I think you could possibly justify a cost of 5 if it got nerfed a little more. I would add “removed” to the last part – “If Eternal Dragon is eliminated or removed from the game….” That way, if their ship sinks, the sea creatures go with them as well.
I know these probably aren’t the best for keeping it flavorful, but these alterations could also help:
-Have it only apply to Sea Monsters, not all sea creatures (or some variant that excludes perhaps at least two sea creature types)
-When he is eliminated or removed, eliminate all friendly sea creatures, whether or not they were “reanimated” by the crew or not.
-“If this crew is cancelled, sea creatures affected in this way cannot be given actions that turn.”Adding a contingency that it doesn’t work on sea creatures that come back by some other means (like a built-in Eternal) would be good.
Beyond that, it’s a pretty niche ability, like Empress (the tiger in OE). Powerful, but unless a player was known to use a lot of sea creatures, it wouldn’t be a major factor in games very often.
Removing any creatures captured this way if you lose this crew is a decent idea, but specifically due to elimination or removal. Cancelling would make it too easy to defeat.
Suppose a ship finds Buried Treasure (or Plunder), and that treasure is later lost in a boarding party to an enemy ship. Does the loosing a turn aspect of those treasures apply to the ship that took them in the boarding party?
Ship A finds Buried Treasure(BT) and looses a turn and establishes value. Ship A is later boarded by enemy ship B. Ship B wins the boarding party and takes BT. Does ship B lose a turn, but keep the established value of BT?
Neither treasure seem to have a Code entry.
Play them both as written. Any time a ship loads one, it can’t be given actions on its next turn, and then the value resets.
Thematically, Buried Treasure is a little weird, but it could represent the crew fighting over the contents and the value could change based on who they can sell it to when they get to port.
So I guess the point of my rambling here is this: What exactly is the authority of the Code? My limited understanding was that it is more or less the rules set down by Wizkid’s rule arbitrator. But if that’s the case, why isn’t this printed on the cards or in the rules pamphlet that comes with the game itself?
The original purpose of the Pirate Code was to make the rules the same for tournaments and other officially-run events by Wizkids. Back when the game first came out, it was only meant to be a simple “beer & pretzels” game and was never intended to be supported at any sort of tournament level at all. The rules were intentionally left somewhat vague and open-ended, so people could easily adapt it to play however they wanted. The player base, at least the online portion, overwhelmingly demanded otherwise, so more and more official events were quickly created for it. However, because of how those original rules were written, it left the door open for players to find all sorts of creative ways to break the game. And they did, over and over again. The “Official Rules Arbitrator” position was created to deal with all of those issues and find ways to keep the game functional, without completely rewriting things from scratch.
The problem was that there was always somewhat of a disconnect between what the rules-writers did and what the Rules Arbitrator (RA) did to keep them working, and there was never really a good explanation for why. Over the course of the game’s full run the lead designers changed a few times, and some of the later ones were much more receptive to including things from the Pirate Code, but there was always still a reluctance to change the printed rules too much.
On the one hand, that was somewhat understandable, because the overwhelming majority of issues addressed in the PC deal with weird ability combinations and interactions that the basic rulebook doesn’t address at all. On the other hand, it meant that a lot of issues went completely unaddressed outside of the PC for most of the game’s run. Even the action limit didn’t make it into the rulebook until one of the last few sets, even though it had been an issue since the very beginning.
———
TL/DR: There are so many wonky rules in the Pirate Code because there are a lot of ability combinations that create confusing situations, and also because players have found so many ways to break the game over the years.
Don’t bother trying to read through the whole thing (maybe just some of the more general sections), and definitely don’t feel like you need to memorize any of it. For casual games with just a friend group you can mostly get away with ignoring it entirely, but it can still be helpful as a reference when there are disputes about specific rules or when you’re not sure how two different abilities are meant to interact.
Added Gallows to the list. How did he slip through for so long? They’re so close that everyone probably just assumed they were the same anyway.
I edited and updated a few of the section headings while I was in there too.
Does that mean that for each iceberg that will move based on the initial roll, a separate d6 roll is required for every single iceberg that moves that turn?
I’ve always played that they all move with the same number of the 2nd roll (which is usually still in different directions), but perhaps I never read that sentence closely enough.
After the initial roll to see which one(s) move, they do each get rolled separately, so they could all end up drifting in different directions.
Woelf, do you happen to have an FAQ or multiplayer rules document from 2004 or 2005 from before Crimson Coast came out? I peeked around here and BGG a bit but didn’t find a document.
A few of us are planning to play a 30 point game on the 20th anniversary of SM (7/28) and we’ll be using only rules that were published for SM.
I found a couple files from around that era that I’ll email to you, but you might already have some of them. They’re the oldest I can find:
-Comprehensive Tournament Rules – Dated 7/11/2005
-Multiplayer Rules – Dated 11/28/2005
-FAQ (Post-Rev) – Dated 12/01/2005
Even if the point reducer is moved to another ship? For example, lets say I have Stump on ship A, and then decide that I might want him on ship B. If I transfer him to ship B will he reduce the point costs of any crew on ship B?
Just to confirm, if I had a point reducer in my fleet, but didn’t have them assigned to a ship at the start of the game (placed on home island) would I be able to assign them to a ship later in the game via a transfer to gain the point reduction?
The effect is always active on whatever ship the reducer is on. If they transfer to another it’ll reduce the crew there instead, and crew on the previous ship will revert back to normal. (Note that if this would make the original ship’s crew total illegal, you’ll have to unload enough other crew to get below the un-altered limit before you can transfer the reducer.)
Suppose I have a set of Native Canoes in my fleet. At the start of the game, the canoes are placed at a wild island. The Canoes cannot explore on their first action, per their keyword. If I get a ship with the S-Explore ability out to that island on my first turn and mark it explored, can the Canoes be given a move action to re-dock at the island and explore it as a free action?
They can’t explore on the first turn, period. It doesn’t matter if the action would be free or not.
Separately, can a Bombardier’s flame strike cannon be given a cannon bonus?
They can’t use equipment, but can apply abilities that affect the roll, like +1 to cannons or a reroll.
The Stump & others
Place this crew face up during setup. Reduce the cost of all other crew placed on this ship by 1.The Code leads me to believe that this ability can only be applied at the beginning of the game, during set-up. I take it that the point reduction would not function if this crew was transferred to another ship later in a game? Also, you couldn’t start the game with this crew on a home island, then load them later for the point reduction?
Is the point reduction continuous, or is it a one-time effect that applies only to the crew on the ship at the start of the game? As in, if other crew are transferred to the ship with this ability, would those crew also have their point costs reduced?
The original intent for the ability was that it could count against the build limit, but players figured out almost immediately how to break the game with that, so it was changed via an official ruling.
It only counts toward the build limit of a ship, and the effect is continuous/always active as long as the point-reducer crew remains on board. Crew that board the ship later will gain the bonus while they’re on the ship, but crew that leave don’t retain the reduction. If the reducer is eliminated or cancelled everyone else on the ship immediately reverts to their full values.
The reduction doesn’t apply to the reducer itself, so you need a minimum of three other crew before the reductions will be enough to make it worth having. They’re not particularly useful in general, unless you have a ship with a lot of cargo space and a high (but not quite high enough for the crew you want) point value.
Do free actions stack when triggers happen.
I believe so, though Woelf will be able to give more clarifications on if they do and if there are exceptions.
If multiple different things can be triggered by one thing, generally they can all be used unless something specifically prevents it.
Do you have any specific examples in mind, aside from the Captain/ramming/boarding timing that Ben covered above?
MrHolly of the Discord server brings up a good point: if you cancel the Marine keyword, you could load an enemy Marine onto your ship to make them part of your fleet.
Though not technically a “capture”, maybe still worth a mention in a future PC update.
Ex: “In order to capture a Marine, you must use one of the following methods:”
It is correct, but I’m hesitant to make a list of ways to capture them because there are a few other ways to do it too, but only the cancellation is unique to Marines. Maybe just a not specifically mentioning that it’s allowed, without a full list.
How late in the boarding process can you reveal a boarding bonus crew? (such as +1 to boarding rolls) Can you do it after both players roll their dice, or must it be earlier such as at boarding initiation or before dice are rolled?
If it adds to the roll (+1), it should be revealed before making the roll. A reroller can wait until you actually want to make a reroll. Abilities that trigger when you win a boarding roll (kill all crew, steal all treasure, etc.) can stay hidden until you win the boarding.
Confirming for a Discord user: A crew with the Sac ability cannot use it on themselves to give their ship an extra action, correct?
Once per turn, you may eliminate one of this ship’s crew to give her an extra action.
Answered before I’m sure, but didn’t see it in the Code so I wanted to make sure I didn’t give them the wrong answer.
The instant the crew is eliminated the ability goes away and takes the extra action with it.
What is the maximum number of actions a ship may be given without stacking using SAT, EA, SAC captain, Admirals action, and any other various action abilities such as “instead of giving this ship an action, you may give another ship in your fleet two actions”? If I remember correctly, Ben laid out in his revised start here YouTube video that a ship may be given at most two actions. This has been a point of contention through the years but I thought I’d get a thorough explanation!
Without any of those additional action generators, each ship is allowed just one full/standard action, usually move, shoot, explore, or repair. With action generators, a ship is allowed at most one extra (two total).
There’s no hard limit to how many free actions a ship can take in a single turn, but most of those require specific situations to occur or are self-limiting in some other way.
Would I be correct in interpreting this to mean that if a ship has only L range cannons and tries to Broadside Attack a ship that cannot be hit by L-range cannons, that the target ship can be shot at, but not hit, even if the roll for Broadsides Attack is successful?
For example, Commander Temple is on HMS Gallows and targets targets the Sea Fox with a Broadsides Attack. The Broadsides roll is successful, but Sea Fox ignores the hits due to her ability.
Is that right, or would the Broadsides Attack hit the Sea Fox?
Broadsides Attack shuts down the L-defense, allowing the full attack to hit.
Black Snout
Points: 26
Ability: Sea Dragon. Give this dragon a shoot action. A wind gust L wide and L+L+L long leaves this dragon in one direction. Every ship caught in the gust loses up to two masts and is moved S in the same direction as the gust. This dragon cannot be given actions for turns equal to the total number of crew on all affected ships.This effect covers a huge area, but the penalty is incredibly harsh, to the point that it’s almost unusable, especially for 26 points. Unless you manage to catch the rare empty ship with it, a single use could shut this dragon down for a major portion of the game.
Losing a turn for each affected ship would be more reasonable, even if that means scaling back the size of the target area slightly.
Red Imaginite
Ability: If this treasure is loaded by a Nexus Alliance ship, you may remove this treasure from the game to randomly place a treasure from any wild island on this ship. If loaded by any other faction, this ship may randomly swap a treasure with an enemy ship within S.As written, the secondary, non-Nexus effect of this will almost never occur, because players generally aren’t going to be exploring wild islands with enemy ships that close, especially one that hasn’t already explored the island first and taken this for itself.
A more functional wording for that part would be something like this:
“If loaded by any other faction, keep this treasure face up; when this ship is within S of enemy ship, you may randomly swap one treasure with that ship, then remove Red Imaginite from the game.”
It’s also unclear what happens to the treasure if it’s loaded by a Nexus ship but the player (“may”) chooses not to grab a treasure immediately. As written, this would just remain on board with no further effect; if it’s meant to be useable at some future point, that should be specified.
The first question concerns the oceans edge card Davy Jones, which states, “limit. Once per turn, roll a D6. On a 1–4 you may give the ship an extra action: on a 5, you may give any ship you control an extra action: on a 6, you may give an enemy ship an action.”
I assume this means if you roll a 6, you can move an enemy 5 masted ship into a reef to do damage?
Yes, that’s one of many options you can do with that ability.
Second question. What I said above actually happened in the game. The five masted ship went into a reef by Davy Jones effect, and lost all its masts eventually. The question is, when a ship loses all its masts inside a reef, does that mean you remove half of the hull to show that it is shipwrecked? Can a shipwreck inside a reef be explored by any player?
The ship only becomes a wreck if it would take more damage than it has masts remaining. Essentially, if the reef would have done enough damage to sink it. If it takes exactly as much damage as it has mast remaining it only becomes a derelict, and can still be repaired (or towed).
If a ship does become a wreck, it can be explored by any player.
Professor Ray
Points: 10
Ability: Black Mark. Ability text on Cursed pieces cannot affect this ship.As written, this would prevent most Cursed crew that were placed on Ray’s ship from working if he Black-Marked it. The few that would still work would have to directly target opposing ships/crew without doing anything for or to this ship at the same time.
A Chieftain is the only generic that would work. All-Powerful would work only on a 5 or 6. Fear would work.
Assuming this is meant only to block opposing Cursed abilities, you should specify that in the text. If you want to keep it as-is, you can drop the price significantly.
I know its stated somewhere, but I can’t find where; Mysterious Island effects cannot be re-rolled (such with a re-roll crew like Coconut) because the roll technically isn’t being made for the ship, correct?
That’s correct. You’d need something that specifically referred to rerolling islands.
Rynah Cannons
Points: 9
Ability: This ships cannons have L range. When this ship rolls a 6 on any cannon roll, eliminate two additional masts from the target ship. If this ship rolls a 1 on any cannon roll, turn this equipment face-down. This equipment cannot be turned face-up again unless given a repair action to do so.You should add a brief line or phrase saying that this needs to be placed face up when first assigned to a ship, and that it flips face up when repaired, so you avoid any potential tracking issues if you have a large fleet with multiples of these in play.
These questions technically involve a house rule where players don’t have to have the punched crew chips face down on their ships’ deckplates, so I understand if that makes it hard to give definitive answers.
The last few years I’ve noticed a lot of players using full crew cards face down instead of the small crew chips designed to go on a deckplate. What recourse would a player have if their opponent (whether intentionally or unintentionally) had what amounted to a “deke” in this regard, such as a crew chip in a card that didn’t match? (ex: crew from a different set, like Bianco’s Haulers in a face down SCS crew card) Technically the opponent shouldn’t have known what set the crew was from in the first place, but if a player is willingly going to show their cards with set affiliation by crew, it seems like fair game. Essentially, would you consider that a “fair deke” under the house rule circumstances?
A number of other odd permutations are possible as well. Ex: Using a crew chip from the Caribbean set (with the different Pirate/English flag backs) in a Revolution card. Can I ask them if it’s a crew from PotC vs. RV, or am I supposed to ignore the card around the chip because the chip is what should matter?
The square crew chit is the only thing that actually matters to the game, so I guess do your best to ignore whatever card it’s attached to if there’s any chance a player might have switched it out to hide what it might really be.
If it becomes a problem, it’s well within the rights of the person organizing an event to require all players use the correct cards and/or not use the cards at all for indicating where crew are placed.
Edit: Now I’m seeing the Code ruling on cargo. I assume the free action of transferring crew wouldn’t be enough to voluntarily eliminate crew from the game either.
Voluntarily is the key word. Essentially, you can’t do anything on your own that would force an illegal situation, which in most cases means you simply cannot use whatever ability or rule would cause it.
It has to be triggered by an opposing player, or some outside force that you can’t directly control, like a UT found when first exploring an island.
Ok, so I wouldn’t be able to repair and move/shoot in the same action but with an extra action I could?
Correct. With an extra action, you could also repair twice if you wanted to.
Is the utilization of a shipwright aboard a ship at sea considered a free action that can be used once per turn or its own action taking a turn? Alternatively, If I use a crew/ship ability that would grant an extra/same action and have a shipwright aboard, would I be able to use the shipwright for both actions or would I be limited to using it once per turn?
A shipwright doesn’t grant any actions on its own, it just changes where you can give the ship a normal repair action.
Using one isn’t limited to once per turn, so if your ship does gain an extra action (or the same action twice), you could repair twice.
The same would still apply with other movement types – segments are just the most common and most likely to happen.
Hello,
First time using this site as a user so forgive me if I didn’t do my due diligence searching the archives.
I have a question regarding the unique treasure Plague. If a crew, such as John Paul Jones, with the ability that reads “this ship’s crew cannot be eliminated unless she sinks” were to explore and pick up or be rammed and bestowed the unique treasure Plague, would the unique treasure be cancelled out by this particular ability? I haven’t found a reliable answer so I leave my question for the pirate masters here!
The Pirate Code is massive, and threads like this have been going for years, so no worries about asking things that might have been answered in the past – fire away with anything you’ve got!
As for this question, the crew would be safe while JPJ was on board, but the other effects of Plague would still apply normally. The ship cannot dock, and will pass Plague on if it touches another ship.
Once per turn, this ship can move S after loading cargo. (and other similar abilities)
-The location of the cargo or treasure must be different before and after using this ability. You cannot unload (or load) an item to trigger the bonus and then immediately load (or unload) the same item before moving.
Are those abilities really enough to warrant the Code adding a clause to the ability? (whereas it’s normally just for clarifying) I think that “loophole” might be what’s needed to justify their cost.
That loophole kinda breaks the ability, and would make it into more of a “this ship can move S if it touches cargo”. It is a nice little push-off after exploring a wild island (or immediately after unloading, with the other version that meshes particularly well with Bianco’s Haulers).
If a ship happens to get placed in contact with two pieces of terrain at the same time, I assume the owner of the ship chooses which terrain applies first. What happens if the ship is wrecked on a reef but still overlapping a fog bank? Would the wreck get sucked in and lost forever? If the fog bank is applied first, does that mean the reef roll/rating doesn’t apply? (if it does still apply, it would make it even more likely that it results in a “lost wreck”) Similarly, if a ship is moved laterally to overlap a sargasso sea and fog bank at the same time, can she get “stuck” in the fog bank and need to make sargasso rolls from the fog? (which might depend on which terrain is applied first)
A bit of a niche situation if not using a house rule for terrain to be closer than S, but still certainly possible, especially if L-moving a 10 master or other ship with a long hull.
Assuming both were reached at the end of the same movement segment, the general rule that a ship can only move to touch one thing at a time would be applied, so the controller could choose which one it hits.
1-2: Randomly move two treasure coins from this island to another wild island.
Confirming that this “negative” effect for MI #1 means that you do get to pick which specific wild island the coins are flung to?
Correct. The treasures are chosen randomly, but the player who triggered it gets to choose which (one) island both get moved to.
Huh, well I’ve been messing that up lately. It feels like “remainder of the game” should mean just that (and “all treasure”), but maybe I’ll try doing it the official way sometime too.
The distinction isn’t going to make too much difference overall, because there are so few ways to flip treasures face down once they’re up.
It’s mostly only relevant to the treasure that was already on ships when MoA gets revealed, but even those are far more likely to be unloaded at home islands than dropped on other wild islands if they’re of any useful values.
There are a few MIs too, but they mess with plenty of other stuff already.
Can a Sea Dragon’s head/neck segment be eliminated before the wings can be eliminated? If the head is removed first, the wings have nothing to stand on and would be floating in midair if allowed to continue like that.
No, for the same reason you wouldn’t remove the hull of a ship when it still had masts remaining. 😀
Do Kharmic Idol and Pirata Codex eliminate themselves as well, or can they stay face up on the ship loading them?
They are face up while the effect is applied, so they get removed along with all of the others.
