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If Davy Jones copied the ability of Namazu:
Give this sea monster a shoot action. A wave S wide and 2L long leaves the sea monster in one direction. Up to 2 masts of every ship in the path of the wave are eliminated. Eliminate one of this sea monster’s masts.
Would the ship he’s on be able to use the ability? Or would the text refering to a “Sea Monster” prevent the usage of the ability?
Copying an ability doesn’t change a ship’s type, so because it refers specifically to “this sea monster” in the text, Davy Jones can’t use it unless he’s riding on a sea monster at the time (via Chariot, etc.).
Behemoth can copy it and use it normally.
The ship becomes fully Cursed while the BM crewmember is on board
Does that imply that should the BM crew leave the ship, it would revert back to it’s original faction?
Yes.
The same thing happens to the ship* if Black Mark gets hit by a canceller. It’s not as devastating as when a point-reducer gets hit, but can still mess up your plans at least temporarily. (BM reactivates and re-Curses the ship* when the cancel wears off.)
*And the BM crew itself
The captive becomes “cargo worth … gold”, but doesn’t actually convert it into treasure, so gold modifiers won’t apply.
Ah shucks. I take it then other abilities that modify gold wouldn’t work as well, such as UT effects like Jade, Spices, Smuggled Goods, etc.?
Correct.
Black Mark makes the crew and the ship that crew is on cursed. The keyword states that any other crew on the ship retain their original nationalities. Would they be able to use their abilities once the ship becomes cursed or would some other ability need to be present to allow the other crew to use their abilities?
For example; Jacques duc de Valois (snape :D) is assigned to Le Bonaparte. Black Mark is declared to be in use. Jacques and the Bonaparte are now Cursed. The captain and helmsman that were also on the ship stay French. Can those two crew still use their abilities?
The ship becomes fully Cursed while the BM crewmember is on board, so crew matching the ship’s original nationality will not be able to use their abilities unless something else allows them.
In your example, if you need the ship to be Cursed, you’ll have to replace the captain and helmsman with Cursed versions if you want to use them. The French ones will only work if you use Snape without activating Black Mark.
“If this ship wins a boarding party, she may capture the crew with the highest point cost instead of eliminating it. A captured crew becomes cargo worth its point cost in gold when unloaded at your home island.”
How would this interact with the gold bonus ability, or other affects the modify gold values?
“One of this ship’s treasures is worth +2 gold when she docks at your home island.”
For example, what would happen if Bonny Peel and Genny Gallows are on the same ship. Would Genny be able to give a bonus to any captures that Bonny Peel has made? Or would Peel’s own ability prevent that, since captured crew are “cargo” and not “treasure”.
The captive becomes “cargo worth … gold”, but doesn’t actually convert it into treasure, so gold modifiers won’t apply.
Woelf, do you know if there’s a specific reason that crew on scuttled ships are eliminated rather than removed from the game? I’m not sure if I really grasped that until rereading the rule just now.
Most likely it was just an “oops” when the rule was written and no one ever noticed it, but play it as written. There are a few very specific abilities which could be triggered by that elimination, but for the most part the distinction isn’t going to matter.
I don’t think it was deliberate, considering how frequently “removed” and “eliminated” get interchanged (when they really shouldn’t) elsewhere throughout the rulebook and ability texts.
Ben covered it well. Just a couple extra clarifications that often come up:
Likewise, if I am towing and successfully dock at my home island, does the derelict ship (after being moved to a docked position on the home island) then get an action on my turn?
Generally speaking, the ownership change from towing/capturing an opposing ship takes effect immediately. Because it is now a ship in your fleet, and hasn’t yet been given an action that turn, you can give it one. (Being derelict of course limits the specific actions available.)
Example 1) where you were towing and the derelict ship being towed had a shipwright aboard, could the derelict repair itself while being towed? Repair is not a move or shoot action.
When the repair happens, the ship is no longer derelict, so that breaks the tow immediately. If you’re looking to tow the derelict any further, you’ll have to make sure to move it with the towing ship before you start repairs.
Example 3) can your ship initiate a tow and then you immediately try to scuttle the ship you just started to tow?
You can make an attempt every turn while the ship is being towed, but if successful, the derelict still will not sink until your following turn.
Timing question. Let’s say that Commander Temple (SM 068) and Peter Miles (FN 050) are on the Maui’s Fishhook. The Fishhook uses her Hoist arm to explore an enemy derelict. Which ability is applied first? Would Miles be able to steal most of the treasure on the target ship before Temple’s ability kicks in? Or would Temple’s ability take precedence over Miles’s?
Miles would have to wait until after the explore action was complete, because that action was what caused the ships to touch. However, in this case that timing doesn’t actually matter because you’re allowed to transfer cargo between the ships as part of the explore action, before sending both home.
Potentially silly question.
Under point reducers and modifiers, The Code says:
-The point cost of a crew cannot be reduced below zero.Can a crew be reduced to zero points? For example, an oarsman on the same ship as Countess Diana Doone. Is the point cost of the oarsman reduced to 0 or does it stay at 1?
Yes, you can absolutely reduce crew to zero points.
It’s not silly all, and in fact was the direct source of one of the biggest rules disputes back in the very early days of the game. The “infinite oarsman trick”, primarily used with Captain Blackheart, resulted in the controversial (at the time) ruling that point reducers didn’t apply to your build total. That along with repeated reminders that the no-stacking rule applied to the oarsman ability just like any other ability shut down that massive game-breaker before it could become a widespread problem. (As much as I’d like to take credit for the ruling, it was before my time as the RA. Might have even been before Tony/Piranha.)
Q2) Davy Jones (DJC) copies the Fog-Hopping ability and moved into a fog. Since his ability is reset on the next turn, can the ability be recopied and ‘hop’ out of another fog with a move action? Does the ability need to be recopied or is it carried over from the last turn?
Copied abilities generally do not carry over, so he would have to copy it again to exit from a different fog bank. If he doesn’t use it on that next turn, he can only exit from the fog bank he started in.
@Woelf: Just confirming that a copier would indeed need to copy the Fog Hopper ability on the turn prior to hopping in order to use it?Correct. Because of how it’s written, the fog-hopping ability has to be active when you enter the fog (more technically, when you end your turn in it) AND when you exit.
Also, why does the Code expand on the main rules for forts regarding their shooting? (rules first, Code second below)
Lines of fire drawn from forts are not blocked by other ships, sea creatures, or islands.
Lines of fire drawn to and from the fort are not blocked by ships, the island, or any part of the fort itself, but they are blocked by fog banks and icebergs.
This means that ships essentially have the “shoot through ships” ability when targeting forts. Is this because Wizkids was supposed to put that clause in the original fort shooting rules?
I don’t recall all of the details or discussion that went into it, but essentially yes, ships can ignore other ships while shooting at a fort.
From a gaming/balance perspective, there may have been issues at one point with players purposely parking ships in a way that made a temporary shield around a fort.
Thematically it also makes sense, because if you’re firing at a large, stationary target up on an island, you’re not going to be aiming anywhere near whatever ships are parked around the shoreline even if they are technically in between.
Also, just confirming that you cannot voluntarily eliminate cargo? (such as dumping equipment overboard)
Correct. You can only dump cargo if an ability specifically allows it, or if another player does something that forces you into an illegal situation that has to be resolved.
It’s not so thematic, but prevents some gamey issues, especially around the capturing rules, where players might otherwise attempt to toss stuff just to prevent an opponent from getting it.
If the game was still going, instead of calling this “bidding“, you could call it “bribes to get someone with direct contact with the designers to push to add specific abilities“. 😛
Spain gets a capture crew at Bonny Peel’s price, and a sac-captain equivalent to the original Blackheart.
I think an equally interesting thought, especially if it could be applied retroactively, would be to bid to remove certain items and/or prevent certain nations from ever getting them. Not every nation really needs or should even have a canceller or sac-crew.
If abilities that have the same trigger but are different, what happens?
For example, lets say that Bonny Peel is on the Fool’s Hope and the ship wins a boarding party. Which ability may be used?
As long as their end effects are different, you can use them together.
With that particular combination, Bonny’s ability can grab one crew, AND you can pick two options from the ship’s ability. Bonny gets to choose the order they’re applied (generally you’d probably want to use hers first, but there might be a situation where the opposite is preferred).
The Code:
“Named crew have only the abilities printed on their cards. They do not gain any other abilities based upon their name, title, or flavor text. However, named crew may still be used to trigger other abilities that refer to a specific name or title.”
Does this mean that Capitaine Chevalle for example, would satisfy the condition for the Black Pearl (025)? I’ve always interpreted those abilities as needing a crew with the captain ability to trigger, is that not the case?
That sort of situation is exactly what that entry is meant to cover. He doesn’t have the move & shoot ability, but he does still count as a “captain” for abilities that refer to one.
Also Odin’s Revenge seems to be missing from the Code. Would revealing Odin’s Revenge cause a derelict ship to sink?
Odin’s Revenge only removes masts, so a derelict ship would be unaffected.
I think that part of the keyword would prevent any boarding while submerged, even the S board ability.
Correct, “cannot board or be boarded” will block the use of the S-boarding ability in both directions.
Can Sea Dragons be used to build a fort? Not as the ship that explores, but as the friendly ship docked at a previously explored island.
It seems like they could be used to build a fort, is there something we’re overlooking that would prevent them from being able to do this?
Sea Dragons technically count as ships, so as long as one is touching a wild island it’s considered docked, and that’s enough to build a fort there (assuming you also meet the other standard requirements like gold, nationality, etc.).
It’s funny to think about what might be happening thematically, but as far as the rules are concerned, it is legal.
So given that Sea Monsters and Titans cannot be rammed, what is the point of the ability text of Empress (crew) and Hanc0ck (ship)? “If this ship wins a ram roll against a sea monster or titan, remove two segments instead of one.” I just can’t imagine a completely useless ability, a niche one sure, but not an invalid one.
That ability is just plain broken. I think a ruling/errata had been made for it once, to make it playable, but I can’t recall what it was. Most likely, it was that the ability could override the sea creature rule and did allow you to ram Sea Monsters and Titans (but still not Sea Dragons or Krakens/Octos).
Barnacle and Grand Barnacle need to be added to the No Duplicates list as the same ship.
I never realized there was so much extra backstory for those ships!
Added to the list under “Different Name, Same Ship“.
So in this case could those masts not shoot forward?
They can. I think it was just an oversight when designing how the ships would look. My bad, I was only thinking about schooners.
Yep, that’s just an artwork thing, to make them look prettier or something.
Any single mast by itself always has a 360° firing arc, regardless of which side the die is or isn’t printed on.
A mast also never blocks its own line of sight no matter how it’s shaped, so you only need to worry about other masts nearby when drawing lines of fire.
I would think the assumption that a ‘Sea Monster’ defaults to sea creature rules if not stated would be incorrect. The ‘Sea Monster’ keyword says if the monster is surfaced, it acts as ship with the listed modifications (pin/board mods). It should be following the ship rules, not sea creature rules. That would mean cards like Empress (crew) and Ophidious continue making sense.
The Sea Monster/Dragon/etc. keywords apply on top of the sea creature rules, and the sea creature rules apply on top of the standard ship rules.
When something conflicts between, the higher layer overrides the lower layer(s), but anything that isn’t specifically called out in a higher layer still applies normally from the lower ones.
Using the example above, the while the Sea Monster keyword says they can ram, it doesn’t say they can be rammed, so that restriction/protection from sea creature remains in effect.
The Sophisticated: Makes fleets and theories involving silver coins, Parley, obscure combos and reducer crew but rarely even plays the game.
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The Nice Guy: Often points out different avenues an opponent can take, opening their mind up to great moves they otherwise wouldn’t see that could result in the nice guy losing the game. Great at teaching new players.—
The Unpredictable: Comes at you with different fleets in every game.
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The Weirdo: Constantly uses The Cursed/Vikings/Mercenaries, doesn’t care about winning, often uses strange named crew and combos just for the heck of it.A little bit of all of these mixed together. Certain factions, items, and strategies did get used more than others, but I always made it a point to try at least something new every game (or at least different from the past few games). Not necessarily obscure stuff for the sake of obscure stuff, but always more than just pure speed and firepower, and I’d often purposely avoid using the best of the best ships.
I have no idea what my win/loss record was, but I don’t expect that it was much above 50/50 because so many of those plays were with people new to the game or at least less experienced, and I was always helping them out when needed.
The Completionist/Super Collector: Wants at least one of EVERYTHING. Busts, boxes, tattoos, inserts, one of each type of unopened product, wrappers, GF9 islands and booty finder, etc etc. This is a broad spectrum with “one of every playable game piece” on the “cheap” end.
Mostly this one, although it falls more toward the “cheap” end. For a while I tried to get at least one of every playable piece (and multiples of generics, especially for the once-off factions), but beyond buying packs, some limited trading, and the rare direct purchase, I didn’t go out of my way to ensure I had 100% of everything. I got a double set of the GF9 islands (two each of the two different sets) somehow for significantly less than MSRP, but can’t recall how or where anymore.
I also got several other incidental things like some of the busts and various other non-playable odds and ends, but never actively sought any of those out. They either came direct from WK (see below), or were thrown in with trades or something.
The Ex-Employee: Has a gaudy collection they got (mostly?) for free from working for or with Wizkids back in the 2000’s.
This was certainly a factor around the middle ages of the game, but was wildly inconsistent. I did get several factory sets, but they usually didn’t include the LE/SE items that weren’t part of the main set itself, and some sets got skipped entirely.
Almost as much of the “free” stuff I got from WK was for entirely different games. I’ve got a nice Mechwarrior collection because of it, and acquired a bunch of other great board games in trade for HeroClix factory sets.
2. Ghostly ships could be shot at while ghostly.
These both seem to miss the mark thematically and we have house rules reversing them.
While it may seem questionable thematically, it was done that way as a balancing thing. There were only two cancellers in the entire game (Nemesio and LeNoir) when Ghost Ship was introduced, so they had to provide some other way for the average fleet to counter those ships. Without one of those two specific crew in your fleet, Ghostly ships would be effectively invincible.
Submerged took Ghostly that extra step further, but could kinda get away with it because cancellers were a bit more common at that point, and much more widely used. However, even to this day that ability to avoid all damage can be problematic if your fleet doesn’t have specific provisions included to deal with it.
What would happen if Jail!, Celestine’s Charts, and Nemo’s Plans wound up on the same ship? Would the Plans and Jail! basically keep crew from being assigned to that ship? Would the Charts stay on the ship, or be moved as per its own ability text?
Celestine’s Charts and Nemo’s Plans don’t interact in any meaningful way, because CC moves to an island instead of removing itself from the game. It’s reusable entirely on its own, and doesn’t trigger any part of NP.
The interaction between Nemo’s Plans and Jail! becomes optional after the initial crew get sent away. Nemo’s Plans says “…can be reused…” not “…must be reused…”, and Jail! isn’t a continually-functioning effect, so while you do keep Jail! on the ship, you don’t need to apply the effect again on other crew that board the ship later unless you want to immediately send them home.
As a follow-up, what’s the timing on the Selkirk’s ability? The card says “once per turn”. Could it be used like a canceller, which is also a “once per turn”?
It has no specific timing, so you can use it before, after, or between actions, or even between movement segments, similar to a canceler.
Are there any other changes to the 4 main actions you would recommend? Any new main actions you would add?
realoading guns that fired for one turn before shooting them again. If a 5 mast ship shoot 2 times on turn A, on turn B he’s realoading 2 and can fire 3
That’s adding complexity and tracking requirements that this game doesn’t really need, unless you’re planning to completely overhaul the combat system to make it more like a sim with realism for the sake of realism.
(different response)
I would add a new action called “Recruit” which would allow home island-docked ship to exchange gold for new generic crews, however this would not allow a fleet to exceed their starting fleet point limit or the point limit of the ship.
That’s fine for a long-term game with multiple focuses, or a campaign style game, but is completely unnecessary if the primary focus remains on collecting gold.
Being restricted by the original fleet limit during the game makes towing and capturing ships problematic, especially if you wanted to recruit new/replacement crew for those ships.
Are there any other ways to determine player order that you use/prefer?
Each round to be randomized. We use this in other games where each turn it’s a random order where we have 3+ player games.
Randomized turn order works well in games with relatively small and quick turns where you have just one or two game pieces and a couple actions to perform. Someone else jumping ahead, or you getting two turns in a row, isn’t going to throw things off too much, especially when it could swing right back the next round.
I think it becomes much less beneficial, and often detrimental, in games that have far more involved turns and player/piece elimination because it can create such large imbalances and swings. With just four players, it could vary from A-A (two turns in a row), all the way to A-B-C-D-B-C-D-A (six full turns in between!). If bad turn luck hit you at the wrong time, your entire fleet of a dozen ships could get wiped out in that span, with nothing you can do about it. It makes long-term planning difficult, and leaves you largely at the mercy of the randomizer.
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One system I’ve seen that was a bit complicated, but worked really, really well, was in the old Wizkids Crimson Skies game.
Players would roll initiative at the beginning of the round (adding modifiers if they had any) to set the turn order. (Movement in that game was planned and performed simultaneously, and relative speeds were taken into account, but neither of those would be a factor here.) When it got to each player’s turn, they got to take one action with one of their planes. Then the next player would get one action, and so on. When it got back to the first player, they again got to take one action with one of their planes that hadn’t already taken an action. You’d continue looping through like this until every plane had taken every possible action (some had tail guns, which would take actions separate from their nose guns). It was almost like having simultaneous actions, without actually being simultaneous.
The initiative ranking meant turn order was variable, and while going first was a advantage because of how damage was handled (the planes used dials like Mechwarrior, Mage Knight, and HeroClix), threading all of the player actions together gave other players opportunities to react before it was too late. In that game, the planes had already moved before the shooting phase started, so a big part of the strategy was prioritizing where to shoot first.
Adapting that to Pirates wouldn’t be difficult. Players could still roll for initiative (certain less-common crew could provide a bonus) or it could be randomized in some other way, and then each player in turn gives one action to one of their ships. If it was a move action, you’d get to do everything attached to that full action (move-shoot-ram-board-etc.) before the next player took an action. If one of your ships had an extra action, instead of being able to use it immediately, it would simply let you give that ship a second action later in the round when it got to be your turn again.
If the goal is to keep the game relatively simple, boarding as a single, abstract die roll when contact first happens, works okay. If you’re going to expand it, actually expand it instead of just repeating that same die roll another time or two. Make boarding its own full action, with multiple dice being rolled and all sorts of extra variables thrown into the mix. Give players options and decisions to make even if they’re at an obvious disadvantage. Make it painful for the attacker or winner too. (The crew combat phase in Merchants & Marauders immediately comes to mind as an example of how to do it.)
Maybe doing away with pinning could make boarding more viable as well.
Is there any historical evidence of ships becoming pinned in any meaningful ways during actual battles?
That and ramming need serious looks, and should maybe even be pushed toward being phased out entirely, or left in only as last resort-type options. These ships generally were not outfitted with battering rams that would allow them to keep plowing into each other regularly, and even ships that were equipped for ramming probably couldn’t do it more than a few times before suffering significant structural damage.
On the other hand, there are things like suicide fleets designed specifically to end the game as quickly as possible, with just enough of an advantage to claim the win, or simply to irritate other players who had longer-term plans.
Have you seen fleets like that be effective at winning games? Unless there are always icebergs around, it seems like it would be tough to suicide at the right time after getting enough gold.
I’ve never seen it actually used in Pirates, much less result in a win, but the potential is still there. I have seen similar “spoiler” strategies used in other games, and with those it’s often not even about winning. Some people just want to watch the world burn. They suck as people to play games with, especially if they make a habit of it, but unless it’s your regular group you won’t always know that until it’s too late to keep them out.
It’s also somewhat different between 2-player and 3+ player games, but playing to disrupt the game is pretty closely related to various other sportsmanship issues like kingmaking and purposely trying to take down one particular player at your own expense. You really can’t prevent it entirely, but it’s good to try to minimize any obvious places for it to occur.
Connecting that back to the above issue, unloading treasure to your home island could be made entirely optional as long as other endgame triggers are used. The gold on ships can counts the same as gold at home or in forts, ships could carry it around as long as they wanted.
Do you think that only one player being able to give future move actions would be the optimal endgame trigger if gold on ships counted towards victory? I’m wondering about how to tie that in to the points in play house rule.
It works okay in practice, but it was always a clunky way to write out what feels like a fairly intuitive rule. It’s written that way to provide as much cover as possible for all of the various ways a ship could remain in action (oarsmen, shipwrights, etc.) even after being completely crippled by opposing players and/or bad luck, but ends up sounding more complicated than it actually is.
A points-in-play rule should still count all ships that are in play, even if they’re incapable of being given actions. If an opponent doesn’t want them to count, they’ll need to take the extra effort to sink (or capture) them instead of just knocking off the masts and sailing away.
From reading this, it seems I’ve been playing gold bonus ships and crew wrong. When a ship unloads treasure and has a bonus, I get a new coin to represent that bonus and place it on the home island.
For example: La Santa Isabel docks at home and unloads 3 coins. The gold bonus kicks in, giving one of them a +2 to value. I go and get a spare 2 coin from outside the game and add it to the home island.
I keep track of bonus coins by placing them face-up, since I never place normal gold face-up during games.
That’s what I remember doing in T1/T2 and completely fine. The Pirate Code details the options on page 15.
For the most part it works just fine to grab extra coins to represent the bonus. It gets a little messy with abilities like HI-Raiders and Parley if those “bonus” coins could be taken instead of the higher-valued coins they might have been attached to. That’s why the PC specifies that the bonus gold be kept separate.
Do people think the standard treasure rules (8 coins worth 15 gold) are GOOD for the game? Why or why not?
I think it’s fine to provide a benchmark for players that need a predetermined and consistent structure for their games. It’s also useful for tournament settings, especially if there are extra rules where a running total is kept from game to game.
The specific values are largely irrelevant, and could be set at pretty much anything. 8/15 is probably just what worked best in testing, and provided the most flexibility without allowing too much craziness with min/maxing. It’s obviously not suitable for larger game sizes, so providing a sliding scale and/or several different sets of similar guidelines would probably be better.
Outside of a few very early games, and the various theoreticals in MT’s old fleets section, I never used any of those set values. It was always much more fun to make it semi-random by just grabbing several UT cards (also at random), punching out everything from them, and spreading them evenly around the islands. If there were any odd amounts left over during distribution, they either got set aside (not used) or more often than not they got placed on the island(s) farthest from all player home islands.
The winner was whoever had the most gold at the end. It didn’t matter how much was technically available at the start.
From this post last year: (emphasis added in both quotes)
If you had an extra/second action available you could use that to attempt to get unstuck on the same turn you were tangled, or you could use your normal first action to make the attempt and then use the extra/second action to do whatever you want with it.
That makes perfect sense to me, and seems to be the way it should work.
If a game piece is tangled, you can use its action for the turn to try to free it. Roll a d6 and add the current number of masts or segments on the tangled game piece to the result. If the result is morethan 6, the game piece is untangled. Orient it in any direction, facing away from the Sargasso Sea and touching any edge of the Sargasso Sea. It can be given a move action to move normally next turn.
This means if you free your ship with your first action, you can’t use a second action to move away. Which I think proves how horribly written the sargasso sea rules are.
That’s a very good example of bad wording. The way it’s written if you used your first action to get untangled, you could not use your extra action to take a move action, but you could still use that action for something else.
This also points back to how the rules frequently don’t clearly account for extra actions, or in some cases even acknowledge their existence. Effects like this really should refer to the next action rather than the next turn, unless there’s a specific reason to force it to wait (game balance, presumably).
