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From today’s game, if a player successfully rolls for SAT, moves with their first action and then has their Captain ability cancelled, can they then choose to NOT repeat the first action (since the ability says “may be given the same action twice”) and instead shoot via the Sac ability? Or are they locked in once they complete the first action?
There’s no hard limit on how many potential actions a ship could generate in a single turn. It just can’t do more than two.
In your example, as long as you haven’t already started any part of the repeated move action from the SAT, you can use the SAC to take a completely different action instead.
The Turtles UT says you can place “up to nine other Turtles”; can you intentionally place any number from 1-10?
You have to place the first one that gets found on the island. Any more than that (up to 10 total) is entirely up to the player who found it. Granted, I can’t think of any good reasons not to place them all, aside from being short on physical markers or tokens to actually represent them. (I’m still a little disappointed that whoever did the art/layout missed filling the entire card with turtles, as originally intended.)
Is Odin’s Revenge reusable with Nemo’s Plans? I assume it would be a once per round option on that player’s turn?
It can be reused once per turn.
Do you have an official Wizkids cost for the Hoist keyword?
I can’t find anything for it. You’ll have to work that one backward from other known values.
Do you know if the CC Amity (009) has a rarity misprint and was actually uncommon? (instead of common as the red rarity corner shows)
The files I have say Uncommon, and that’s also consistent with the ship type.
It’s most likely a misprint of the rarity, which isn’t surprising because that happened numerous times across the various sets. It’s good info to include in the master spreadsheet, but it’s not something the PC needs to address beyond the notes about it already on the first and last pages.
I’d never put any effort into tracking specific release dates, and it’s way too far in the past to remember any of those details, so any info you have on that will be more than I’ve got.
I certainly plan on doing some play testing once the set is more or less complete. I’m a little hesitant on changing the effects of the ability as I personally really like the idea, however I’m definitely not opposed to adding further restrictions to make that result harder to achieve. Is there anything you would suggest?
You already have Limit attached to it, so I’m not sure what adjustments to make that wouldn’t drastically change the effect. It’s mostly a concern in very large and/or campaign games where this could be used multiple times and the ships will stick around for a while. In a more “standard” sized game (40 points or whatever) it would tricky just to fit this one in at all, and hitting with that roll isn’t going to do much to change the outcome of the game compared to just sinking the other ship directly; either way it’s going to be a decisive moment in the game.
One thing you could maybe do is make the six roll also include the five effect so it eliminates all crew (or just named crew?) before capturing the ship, so you’re still getting the ship but it won’t be as capable as it was.
Name: Grosse Jacht
Ability: This ship gets +1 to her cannon rolls against Pirate ships. If you roll a 6 when shooting, you may take another shoot action.
This should be limited to once per turn, so it can’t be infinitely chained with lucky rolls. It might be a minor issue on a single-mast ship, but imagine it being copied by a 10-master, or even a 5-mast ship. It should also be clarified that it gives a single shoot action if any sixes are rolled during the first action, not a shoot action for each six rolled.
Granted, the two-action limit would be assumed to apply to this, preventing multiple shoot actions, but it’s still good to clarify it further to remove any doubt.
Name: The Black Baron
Ability: Limit. Ransom. Captain. Loyal: Germany; Hostile: Pirates. This ship gets +1 to her boarding rolls against the Pirates. If this ship succeeds at both its ramming and boarding rolls against another ship, roll a d6. On a 5, eliminate all crew from the enemy ship. On a 6, you may capture the enemy ship, even if she is not derelict.
The six roll on this one feels right on the edge of being game-breaking. Get this character on a 10-masted ship with a re-roller and you can potentially grab almost anything else without much of a fight. Testing would definitely be needed to be sure, but no one is going to enjoy watching their fully-loaded warship get stolen and immediately turned against them after a single lucky die roll.
For ships like Fantasia and Hannah that have the ability “Friendly ships within S of this ship get +1 to their cannon rolls.”, can this also apply to the ship with the ability itself?
No, “within X” is measured outward from the ship but doesn’t include any part of the ship itself.
It’s the same reason cancelers can only target things on other ships, not their own.
Can Behemoth copy the specific ability of USS Lamon/Barracuda and ram another ship while submerged?
Yes.
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@Ben
Just to confirm, the ignoring terrain ability does not allow you to shoot while overlapping a fog bank either? (similar to Ghost Ship as discussed above)
Correct. The same ruling applies to both (no shooting from inside fog).
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What would happen if you got Explosives onto a switchblade? If it hits more than one ship with it’s blades and rams another ship, which ship can Explosives be applied to? Could it be applied to all of the affected ships, or just to one of them? If just to one of them, which one?
You can apply it to only one of the ships affected by the blades. Because you ram/board each ship one at a time, and Explosives is optional, you can choose which one to apply it to. If it goes off and blows up your ship, any opposing ships still waiting to be rammed/boarded as part of the Switchblade effect would get away untouched.
On a similar tangent, would an Eternal ship that used Explosives successfully against another ship return to its home island per the Eternal keyword, or would the UT override the keyword?
Explosives sinks the ship but doesn’t do anything extra, so Eternal still functions normally and sends the ship home.
“Infin8Ouroboros said”
To be clear, a “ghostly” ghost ship only ignores terrain while physically in motion, not during the entire move action(and associated free actions), correct?
This has generated some rules discussion on Discord, including whether a Ghostly Ship can shoot from within a terrain (such as an iceberg or Fog) while said ship is ghostly and overlapping said terrain. Additionally there is some confusion about this line of text from the Code:
“Infin8Ouroboros”
“The effect of ghostly only applies when the ship is moving. If it stops on terrain, the effects apply normally.”
this line from the code is my main point of contention, as it is unclear when a ship is considered to have “stopped moving”is it at the end of a move action or the moment during a move action at which all movement segments (and stern turns, etc) have been used?
The movement effect of Ghostly starts at the beginning of the ship’s first movement segment and stops at the end of the ship’s very last segment (a stern turn is treated as the last segment; a windcatcher flip is treated as the first).
The movement effect does not apply for the entire duration of a move action, such as during free actions generated during or because of that move action. In other words, if the Ghostly ship’s last movement segment ends with it overlapping terrain, it must deal with that terrain before it can use other free actions, like a captain. It’ll take damage from an iceberg before shooting, or it’ll get pulled into the fog bank preventing it from shooting at all.
Historical Fun Fact: Way back when Crimson Coast first came out, Ghostly and the terrain-ignoring ability (only Agustin Covas at the time) were both allowed to ignore terrain for the entire move action, including for a captain’s shooting. Covas on El Neptuno could do a really cool hit-and-fade attack from within fog banks, with no good way to defend against it other than staying out of its 2L range. That obviously created some issues, so it got shut down relatively quickly.
Does a Reroll crew work with a crew such as Jean Desailly/George Washington Lebeaux etc.? I am unsure based on the Pirate code verbiage regarding rerollers. “You may re-roll crew abilities, provided that the effect of that ability applies to or is used by the ship.” Since the effect would be moving the enemy ship I am not sure if it counts.
Yes, you can reroll those abilities because the ship and its crew are using the ability, even though it does affect others.
That clarifier is meant only for some specific edge cases, like Marines, which operate independently of the ship despite being transported on it. The rest of that PC entry names a few other things that can’t be rerolled; there may be one or two others floating out there, but I can’t recall any at the moment.
Name: Enhorn
ID: 080
Rarity: Rare
Cost: 8
Masts: 1
Cargo: 4
Movement: L
Cannons: 4S
Ability: Yacht. Pirate crew may use their abilities on this ship.
Flavor Text: The crew of the Enhorn have decided that Swedish coin is more valuable when payed than it is when taken. For now.———–
New keywords:
Yacht: If this ship carries no cargo, she gets +S to her base move.Just out of curiosity, what’s your design intention here?
Yacht is directly replicating an existing ability, with no additions or modifications of any kind to differentiate it. Keywording abilities to save space or allow for more complicated effects is perfectly fine, but this one is relatively short and simple already.
More significantly, on the only ship where it appears in your list, it’s paired up with a mutually-exclusive ability. There’s no possible (legal) way that ship could use both abilities at the same time. That’s very much something Wizkids might do to fill out a set, but I guess I don’t see the value in creating ships for custom sets that are intentionally wasting points (or worse, are purposely meant to be bad).
When Unique Treasures are revealed at a wild island, does the exploring player choose the order in which the UT effects are applied? (I know I’ve asked this before but I can’t find the answer in the Code or through a forum search here)
The wording of the specific UT matters, with the effects of some being determined when loaded versus when revealed (“when revealed” applies first – PC page 62), but both will generally refer to the state of the ship prior to applying any UTs. Beyond that, if there are no other obvious clues to the order they apply, the player loading them gets to choose the order.
I think Divers and Raft seem like the most fair events though they don’t really feel like “events” per se. They feel like they should be something like equipment with a one time effect.
Both of those would have been great as equipment. For a point or two more, Divers could even be made reusable. Raft could be reusable too, assuming you went to the island and retrieved it along with the rest of your stuff.
For being called “events”, several of them felt more like crazy magic powers you used to attack your opponents. I agree they would have been much better as global effects that applied to everyone at once, for an entire round, several rounds, or even the entire game. Mechwarrior (also by Wizkids) already had cards that applied planetary conditions to the entire game, so they should have gone with something similar.
Even if they were kept as targeted effects, most of the problematic events could be retooled into UTs without too much difficulty. Becalmed and Cursed Zone could apply around the island where they were found, and could even stick around for more than one turn. Mermaids is already doing essentially the same thing as Natives, Jailhouse Dog (also Kharmic Idol/Pirata Codex) functions similar to Favor, Message in a Bottle has a similar effect to Hidden Cove, and there are several that remove treasure in various ways. Duel… can just go away, or could provide some sort of post-boarding effect.
From this old FAQ, does this part about Ghost Ships and fog banks still hold true? (for regular fog banks, not those created by smokepot specialists/shot)
Q: If a ship becomes “ghostly” while in a fog bank and is forced to leave the fog bank, where does she exit?
A: She can exit at any point along the edge of the fog bank!
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Very interesting read. It’s always neat to see very early versions of things that become much more established later. It’s also a good reminder of how the traditional “Q & A” format for a FAQ becomes horribly unwieldy when it grows beyond a couple pages, or when interactions between rules become more complex than what a few loosely-targeted questions can handle.
As for that particular ruling, it no longer applies. It was intentionally removed at some point, but really wasn’t needed in the first place. Ghostly or not, you use the die roll to establish the ship’s exit point and move from there (which could be right back over the top of the fog bank). The same applies to abilities that ignore terrain while moving.
Events are a neat idea that was very poorly implemented.
Becalmed and Mermaids were both massively game-breaking against any fleet that wasn’t specifically built to avoid them or at least minimize the effect. Players started “unofficially” banning them in games almost immediately.
Favor of the Gods, which wasn’t released until two full sets later, was nothing more than a Band-Aid that became almost mandatory to include in builds if there was even a remote chance of an opponent using one of the other events. At the same time, because it was assumed that all opponents would have FotG, that in turn made players far less likely to use those other events because they’d be immediately nullified by something that cost less. Unless it was known for sure that opponents wouldn’t be using events of their own, players more often than not tossed it into their fleet builds “just in case”; it was better than the alternative of needing it but being caught without it.
Hidden Cove worked well during playtesting, but the wording was changed at the last minute from “previously explored” to “unexplored”. Instead of the nice thematic effect of letting a ship quickly return to somewhere it had already been, it became a teleporter that instantly sent one of your ships to an island loaded with treasure… and not even FotG could do anything to prevent it.
False Treasure is a nasty effect that could potentially swing games, but the 10-point cost made it completely unplayable in anything close to a standard (40-point) fleet build. Even in 100+ point games it’s difficult to justify.
Duel almost worked, but it needed some serious limitations, particularly on ranges, and probably point limits too. There are enough high-value crew in the game to make Duel an auto-win against more common but still essential crew (especially captains), which made it way too overpowered. The fact that you could pull it out and hit someone all the way over on the other side of the table, with almost no way to defend against it, made it even worse. Maybe limit it to targeting other crew within L, and reduce the bonus to something like +1 (only) to the player who used the event and/or at most +1 to the more expensive crew, making it far more thematic but also much more risky.
Rolling Fog was… meh. It was mostly just a way to burn a leftover point if you had literally nothing else to spend it on. The effect was fine, but because it was completely random you really couldn’t use it for anything meaningful. It would have been far better as an additional (or optional) effect for the fog terrain itself, making them work more like icebergs. That, and/or give the player who placed the Event full control over where that fog bank moved.
They aren’t all bad, though. Divers provides a cool bonus for sinking an opposing ship without breaking the game, while Raft is a good way to kinda protect important stuff from being lost if an opponent gets the jump on you. It can at least buy you some time, maybe.
Cursed Zone always had some really interesting tactical uses both offensively and defensively, but you definitely had to plan around it, and the ever-looming threat of FotG meant you couldn’t rely on using it for very long.
Foul Winds was more annoying than useful, but in the right circumstances you could catch someone off-guard with it and maybe disable a small or heavily-damaged ship that thought it was in a safe place.
This clears things up! Thanks. Now to find more exploits….
Keep the exploits coming! (So they can be fixed.) 😀
Has this already been covered with the orange text?
They are now, but it wasn’t completely clear before. Mostly I just wanted to make sure there weren’t any other weird cases out there I was forgetting, in case that revised wording needed to be tweaked a little more.
Is there a ruling that states this is the case? It seems logical that you wouldn’t be able to, but I can’t find anything in the code that specifically states that you can’t.
Shipwrights only change where you can take a repair action, but they don’t provide any mechanism for actually removing the fire mast first.
You can use one to repair other masts on the ship, but if you try to repair a mast that’s on fire it’ll remain on fire.
Can you use a Shipwright to repair a mast replaced with a fire mast?
Shipwrights won’t extinguish the flames, so you have to put the fire out some other way before you can repair the mast.
On Nemo’s Plans with Runes of Thor:
Similar applies to these. You could use it against a ram roll, then a boarding roll, and then a single shoot action roll, but you can’t use it on every single die rolled during a single shoot action.
The discussion from 2020 gave me the impression that this couldn’t be done. Is there something I’m missing?
No, definitely use that previous ruling instead. I knew it had been covered at one point, but couldn’t remember what it was and I was interpreting what I’d written in the PC years earlier. The entry needs to be rewritten to be more clear and specific.
I’d prefer to avoid calling out a bunch of other UTs specifically by name under the Nemo’s Plans entry, but maybe that’s necessary?
What other questionable ones are out there that need it, besides the Runes and the Cross?
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ADDED:
Here’s a revised version of the text. Does this help clear things up a little better for general usage?
-If a UT applies to, modifies, or is triggered by a specific action it may be used once, each time that action occurs.
-If a UT applies immediately upon being found and/or provides an action directly to a ship, it may be used once during each of your own turns.
-If a UT is loaded facedown and can be revealed voluntarily later, including as a response to an opponent’s actions or effects (such as a die roll), it can be used once per round.
“The Code, Nemo’s Plans”
If a UT applies to, modifies, or is triggered by a specific action or situation (other than exploring the wild island) it may be used once, each time that action or situation occurs.
Does this mean that if Cross of Coronado (or a similar treasure) were on the same ship as the Plans, you could use the Cross every time the ship would loose a mast, or just the first time?
Ability of CoC for reference:
You may load this treasure face down. If one of this ship’s masts would be eliminated, you may reveal Cross of Coronado and remove it from the game instead.
Nemo’s Plans belongs in a museum! Then it won’t keep causing so many problems.
The “once each time” phrase is most important here, so you could use the Cross multiple times in a turn if multiple different mast elimination effects occur, but if multiples would happen as part of a single action (shoot action, most commonly), the Cross could only prevent the elimination of a single mast during that action.——-
Using the same line from the Plans, how many times could you trigger Runes of Thor/Loki per turn? Once per every turn, once per your turn?
Similar applies to these. You could use it against a ram roll, then a boarding roll, and then a single shoot action roll, but you can’t use it on every single die rolled during a single shoot action.See Below
Once each time this ship is given an action, you can roll 2d6 any time you would roll a d6. Choose the result you want to use.
Can this ability be applied to extra action, SAT, or other such die-rolling ability? The Code is not clear.
That ability applies only to die rolls made as part of an action.
While those abilities can generate actions, the roll itself doesn’t occur within one, so you can’t use the die doubler there.
I assume that the “cannot load treasure” part of the Sea Creature rules would satisfy the above and thus prevent Intermediaro from giving treasure to a friendly Sea Monster?
Correct. Intermediario’s ability doesn’t say anything about overriding cargo restrictions, so that sea creature rule still applies.
Is it correct that a Musketeer shot can benefit from the “This ship eliminates two masts with one hit.” ability?
The code entry says “This ability applies to all additional cannons provided to the ship by abilities, unless specified otherwise.” and doesn’t seem to contradict anything in the Musketeer’s wording, but I just wanted to clarify. Thanks.
Correct. The Musketeer’s cannon is treated like any other already on the ship, and can benefit from any other cannon abilities as long as they don’t touch its range or rank.
@Ben
Can a Hoist’s free explore action happen in between its own move segments? (ex: move S, hoist free explore, move S)
No. It’s an independent action that isn’t applied as part of a move action, so you have to complete the entire move action first (or use it before moving).
If you cancel the Sea Monster keyword, can you still use an L booster like Jerky Johnson to give it +L?
Yes. Even though it loses the abilities of its own keyword, it still counts as a sea monster (ship type) and can still use the Jerky boost.
Suppose that Jonah is on the same ship as Papa Doc. Would Jonah’s ability force any possessed crew to take up cargo space, or would the possessed crew not take up cargo space, per the Code entry?
That line in the PC entry for Papa Doc should be applied as a rule, which means it can be overridden by other abilities, but even if it was part of his printed ability text, Jonah’s “always” would still take priority, so the possessed crew will take up one space each.
As an extension of that, if you have Jonah and Papa Doc on the same ship, but no free cargo spaces, you won’t be able to use Papa Doc’s ability at all. You can’t “possess” a crewmember just to immediately toss them (or anyone else) overboard.
How do cancel abilities work with unrevealed crew? The specific example I’m thinking of involves crew with the Eternal keyword encountering a ship with the “one ship/crew within S can’t use its ability that turn” ability. If the person knows I typically use Eternal, can they just call it out as cancelled on a hunch? Or does it have to be revealed by in-game means to be cancelled?
You can’t cancel a facedown crew, even if you do know what it is. You have to wait until it’s revealed before it can be targeted.
With a facedown Eternal crew, the only way to cancel it (the first time, at least), is for the canceller to be within range of the sinking ship at the moment it would sink, which is when the Eternal crew would have to be revealed.
There’s some metagaming opportunity there in deciding whether to reveal an Eternal crew that you know would get cancelled immediately, to leave the opponent guessing about a facedown crew on some other ship, but whether you reveal and get cancelled or choose not to reveal, either way you’re going to lose the first ship.
If I have a sacrifice captain and a doctor on the same ship, can I sacrifice another crew, then save him with the doctor (with a net result of no extra action and the sacrificed crew being turned face down)?
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No, because the Sacrifice ability only resolved if the crew sacrificed is removed from the game. This is because it is a cost to activate said ability. The “Doctor” ability only works on crew that would be eliminated.
Davy is correct. Both possible results of that combination are blocked. You can’t use them together to get unlimited free bonus actions, nor can you use them simply to flip crew facedown.
Suppose you decide to cancel a friendly Submarine to the surface. At the end of your turn what happens to the submarine? Does it return to a submerged status or does it remain on the surface?
Submerged (also Ghostly) is only toggled at the beginning of your own turn, so if it gets shut off (cancelled) in between, it stays off until you turn it back on.
If I choose to use the ability of the English Native canoes (below), would I have to apply it to all of them in the set, or however many I chose, since all of the canoes are technically being given a move action.
Give this ship a move action but do not move her. Instead, roll a d6. On a result of 5 or 6, you may repair one mast on ships within S of any native canoes.
“Move” is the action given, but what each canoe does with that move action is up to you. Some can move while others make repairs.
Note that the way it’s worded, the roll/attempt is what replaces the movement, so if that roll fails, the canoe cannot move instead.
Would a Unique Treasure ability that prevented that treasure from being removed from the game be too powerful?
I’m trying to think of a way for a face-up UT to not be removed by other Treasure’s such as Pirata Codex and Kharmic Idol.
That would depend entirely on what else the UT did.
The Codex, Idol, and Jailhouse Dog exist mostly to counteract the crazy powerful UTs that can be otherwise hard to get rid of, so anything specifically designed to be immune to them would have to be considered very carefully.
Mechanically, all it would take is a line saying something like, “This unique treasure cannot be removed or eliminated by other unique treasures.”
I’m not sure what the question is. Did some additional text get cropped out of your post by accident?
I wanted to know how often Intermediario could use his ability, if it was a once per turn, once per your turn, etc.
It’s one treasure per ship per turn, so if you have multiple ships nearby, you could use it once for each. They do not all have to occur at the same time.
Apologies for another one, but I’d like some clarification. The Isle of Fire island from Savage Shores is a Mysterious Island, or is treated as one. Ergo if a fort was built on one the effects of the island (below) would not function in accordance to the code ruling? I ask because the code doesn’t mention them and I’d rather not assume.
Isle of Fire
This island can be used only as a wild island. At the beginning of his or her turn, the active player rolls a d6. On a result of 6, randomly eliminate one treasure coin from this island.
Even if it’s not explicitly referred to as a Mysterious Island, it functions similar enough to them to be treated the same, so building a fort there will block the effect.
As a follow up question, if there was a Mysterious Island that could have its abilities used while a fort was built on it, would that be inherently unfair, OP or game-breaking, or would it depend greatly on what the abilities/effects of the island are?
Mysterious Islands are already kind of broken on their own, so whether an effect that could still function with a fort present would break things even more will depend entirely on the effect.
Any part that was meant to function while a fort was sitting on it would have to be clearly stated as such in the text, so it could override the standard rule that normally shuts them down.
For the most part, that rule exists to avoid weird interactions with the various effects that manipulate treasures, and more generally to prevent ships from easily farming effects from a protected position.
I think it could be pretty neat to have some MI effects that would only function while a fort was present. There’s a lot you could do, from simple boosts to cannon rolls/ranges and defensive bonuses, to more complex things like making it more costly to build there, or having ongoing negative effects that have to be dealt with to keep a fort in a prime location.
Since the ability does not specify and the Code doesn’t seem to either, what would the timing be on Intermediaro?
If this sea creature is within S of both a wild island and a friendly ship, she can place one treasure from that wild island on that ship as a free action.
“This ability may be used if this sea monster and/or the target ship is submerged.”
I’m not sure what the question is. Did some additional text get cropped out of your post by accident?
Sea Creature rules say that Creatures cannot load treasure, however the wording of Intermediaro says place a treasure not load. Does this mean that Intermediaro could give a Treasure to a friendly Sea Monster/Creature provided that target Monster/Creature had cargo space, or would this:
Placing the treasure is treated as if the target ship loaded it directly from the island.
prevent that, since the treasure is treated as if it was loaded and Creatures cannot load treasure.
The recipient of the “placed” treasure loads it, so if it cannot load treasure, Intermediario cannot give it anything.
