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Does “on the turn this ship is pinned, eliminate one crew and one mast from the enemy ship” ability (El Villalobos, Beast’s Belly) stack with my Spanish Main ability to eliminate just a crew on the turn my ship is pinned?
Also, does this apply only on the initial turn, or is it that if the rammed ship does not leave and I’m pinned still next turn, it goes off again?
Those abilities are just different enough that they can be combined.
The effect applies only once, when the ship first becomes pinned. You don’t get any extra benefit if the ship remains pinned.
Can you play events against ships that are lost inside of a fog bank?
That depends on the Event.
If it targets the ship or its crew directly, it’ll work. Mermaids or Duel, for example.
If it targets an area or something within a range of the Event token, it will not. Becalmed, Cursed Zone, and Foul Winds, for example.
Rolling Fog affects the fog bank, so any ship inside will drift along with it until it’s given a move action to leave.
Sorry if this one has been answered to death, but I didn’t see any references to this specifically. It has been discussed that Wizkids’ handling of Sea Creature and Monster rules are slightly vague. We have also determined that Sea Monsters/Titans are granted the ability to ram and board by their keyword which overrides the Sea Creature rules. The Code, nor the keyword ever give permission for a Sea Monster TO BE rammed. So, can a Sea Monster or Titan BE rammed? Again, I’m sorry if I missed this answer somewhere, but I did look!!!
It’s not so much that the rules are vague, but that different bits of it are scattered all over the place, and every creature’s keyword changes those rules in different ways. It could have been made a lot less complicated.
To answer your question, those keywords do allow them to ram other ships, but they do NOT allow other ships to ram them.
A sneaky/fun use for a recruiter is to bring in a Shipwright that matches the nation of a ship you just captured, so you can start using it right away instead of dragging it all the way back home.
Lian & Park aren’t going to be at the top of any list of things to get rid of, but they definitely deserve a place on that list for being broken on the bad/unplayable end of the spectrum. If the opposing player got to choose who to eliminate when they won boarding or when they hit you with a crew-killer those two could be valuable, but as written, and using the standard rules, you can just throw in an extra Oarsman or some other 1-point crew to serve the exact same purpose. They only really matter against the one or two UTs that target specific crew, but even if you intentionally added one of those UTs to the pool yourself, that’s still no reason to ever bring them along when there are so many better crew options available for the same price.
The weird thing with Hidden Cove is that it wasn’t just a typo. The wording was different enough that someone had to intentionally change it. But why? Who knows?
Is the Amity from CC supposed to be a common? She is on the cards but the spreadsheet(s) list her as uncommon, which is normal for her ship type.
The data and ship type both point to it being uncommon, so you can assume that’s what it was supposed to be. I don’t have the physical cards handy to check, but if that has a red corner, it was probably a misprint.
I don’t know if anyone has ever compiled a list of items with misprinted rarities, but if there is one, you can add Amity to that list.
Hidden Cove: How was this ever seen as anything but absurdly broken?
During playtesting it sent you to the nearest island you’d previously explored instead of the nearest unexplored island. That made far more sense thematically, and more importantly didn’t break anything… but somehow it got changed before going into production.
Is there a rule set for solo gameplay? I am lucky, and have a crew for game nights but would like to get this on my table more.
My apologies if the rule set is posted already; I may be looking in the wrong places.
A few people over the years may have come up with versions of their own, but there’s never been a good solo variant that has caught on or been widely known. Even though the base rules are relatively simple, there’s so much complexity in how things are done that I don’t think there’s any good way to write an AI that could handle it, at least if you wanted it to be even remotely competitive against a real human.
However, playing it multi-handed where you control each “player” yourself in turn does work pretty well, and I think that’s generally what Ben and various others do when running large campaign games by themselves.
Cog: Once per turn, one friendly ship within S of this ship may explore this ship. (This occurs on the cogs turn)
Is this meant to include “as a free action” in the text? As written it costs a normal, full action, so it’s barely doing anything at all.
@Ben
If I have an ability that moves an enemy ship (like an L-mover on a 5-6), how does the timing of d6 rolls work with sargasso seas when forcing a ship onto one of them? Do I roll for the ship and that rating stays for my opponent’s next turn? Or do (only) they roll once it comes back around to them? If the latter, it must be assumed that the ship is tangled?
The wording for Sargasso Seas gets a little weird when ships are being moved on opposing turns, but the rating is meant to apply only until the end of current turn when the ship is actually moving, not until the end of its owner’s next turn (which could be several individual player turns in a large game).
Did Wizkids mess up the ability text for Jailhouse Dog? It says “you CAN load this treasure face down” (emphasis added of course). In that case, what’s to stop me from loading it face up and having it not take up cargo space?
The ability applies when it’s revealed, so that just gives you the option to use it immediately when found or to save it. If you do want to save it for later, you have to load it face down.
Can players choose UT’s for Pandora’s Box that cannot be loaded? If the ship is full and face down UT’s are selected, are they tossed out?
How does “chaining” Pandora’s Boxes work? If Pandora’s Box brings in another Pandora’s Box, can you get multiple UT’s from each player? (If you had a TON of copies of it, you could just “infinite loop” the UT and hand out UT’s like it’s Christmas morning lol)
It’s not strictly forbidden to pull another box from the box, but each time you do you’re going to get loaded up with more and more negative things from opposing players, and you’ll still only end up getting one non-box UT for yourself at the end, whenever you finally stop. It’s also safe to assume that if it gets out of control, at some point a Kharmic Idol/Pirata Codex will get tossed in there to shut the whole thing down.
All of the UTs gained are treated as if they were on the island when it was first explored, so any that can’t be loaded (regardless of the reason) go on the island.
How does Homemade Flag interact with ships that have Extended Range? The code ruling is unclear to me.
The range reduction is applied after everything else that modifies range, so Extended Range won’t let you bypass it.
I like how it works thematically. The fake flag works just well enough that enemy ships need to get in close to make sure they’re not firing on a friendly ship.
Holofernes and Woelf both said they have not seen this before… which means to me that it’s a true mystery. Anyone know what it’s from? Maybe that “Terror Trials” was a tournament at a con?
The style of the ship isn’t like anything from the game, so it’s definitely not “WizKids Official”.
My guess is that it was something done on a local level, like a game store (or event organizer) that found a generic ship trophy somewhere and then had the plaque inscribed.
It doesn’t say anything about winning or placing or anything, so I wonder if a bunch of these were made, and were given out to everyone that had signed up for the “Terror Trials” in advance? It would be a neat way to commemorate an event, especially if it was something big that was planned way ahead of time.
Will Holy Water/Davy Jones Heart protect a ship from UT abilities?
It’ll protect the ship from UTs on opposing ships that target your ship directly.
It won’t protect against UT effects when they’re loaded from a wild island, and it doesn’t protect itself from UTs that can remove other UTs.The entry in the Pirate Code (top of page 49) goes into finer details about this one. It’s a little messy.
Quick question after Reading all FAQ etc, just to be sure:
Recently I aquired the Abomination.
Mast cannons: 3L-3S-3S-3L
Ship’s plate cannons: 3S-3L-3L-3S
I use the ones printed on masts in this case right?Correct!
The cannons are all there, just listed out of order, so you use what’s shown on the masts.Here’s a pretty silly one that came up last night. Can you touch another ship without becoming pinned? Obviously you can with ships with certain abilities like galley, but for a ship that doesn’t have an ability like that, is it legal/possible to move your ship so the sides touch before the bow does? I keep having an issue with a Spanish fleet where L’Aguila just gets stuck after ramming a pirate ship.
Yes, definitely legal. Most ships are wider around the middle, so as long as that part makes contact before the bow, you’ll be touching without becoming pinned (or being able to ram).
It’s a little more difficult with junks because of their flat sides, but not impossible.
Black Sam Bellamy
Pirate
Crew
Point Cost: 13?
Ability: If this ship wins a boarding party by a differential of 3 or higher, you may immediately capture that ship without needing to tow. You may transfer any cargo from this ship to the captured ship as a free action. All crew on the captured ship are placed on the nearest wild island. Any remaining cargo on the enemy ship can stay aboard or be transferred to this ship as a free action.An ability like this could be cool if it was built-in to a small (1-2 mast) ship, and somehow made uncopyable, but it’s OP as a crew that can be put on a larger ship.
For example, on a 10-mast, you’re already coming in with a +4 advantage against a fully intact 6-masted ship. The other player’s roll has to beat your roll by that much just to tie. If the rolls are close, or yours is ahead at all, they’ve lost their entire ship to a single roll of the dice. Add a little damage to that other ship (which can be assumed, because obviously you have a captain too), and the capture roll becomes irrelevant – it’s yours automatically.
Even with Bellamy on a 5 or 6 masted ship, capturing smaller or damaged ships will be reliable enough to use as a primary tactic. As written, you could even nab ships parked at their own home island.
Some fixes to consider:
Make it function more like a normal tow-capture, just slightly more efficient. Make it so the opposing ship has to be derelict (or least mastless), so you can’t grab ships that would otherwise still be capable of fighting back. That skips waiting until the next turn, which doesn’t fundamentally change what happens when you capture the ship (compared to moving and towing it on your next turn), but it reduces the time an opponent has to intervene, and it’s getting rid of the requirement of touching the ship’s bow, both of which are nice non-game-breaking benefits.Kicking the crew off sounds like it’s mostly just thematic, and the “free” cargo transfer would be available after a normal capture by giving the towed ship an explore action, so neither of those make or break the ability.
If the UT is one that must be revealed when loaded, it would be flipped back up as soon as it was placed on the new ship.
In that case it wouldn’t take up cargo space once it was face up… so technically you can use Barrel o’ Monkeys to your advantage where the transferred coin does not ever take up cargo space, correct? (Ex: If a ship had a full cargo hold and got to take a face up UT via the monkeys, can they take it? Or does that split second where it’s supposedly face down make that impossible?)
The ones that are “permanently” face up would work the same as if you’d picked it up by exploring an island while your ship was already full. The immediate reveal would avoid the cargo limit issue, and you’d take it on board normally.
Can an opponent request or force you to reveal face down crew on a setup with a reducer to prove that it’s legal?
If you need the reducer’s ability to make the ship legal during setup, you have to reveal it during setup. That ability won’t function if it’s face down.
I know the reducers have to be face up; my question was if you had to reveal OTHER crew that the reducer is allowing aboard, to prove that the setup is legal. Ex: The Stump is face up as he has to be. He allows a bunch of extra crew aboard. An opponent wants to check the crew on my ship to prove the setup is legal. Am I required to reveal the rest of the setup (in addition to The Stump) to prove I’m not cheating?
If it’s a question of cheating, intentional or otherwise, that’s not an issue unique to reducers. Whether there’s a reducer involved or not, anyone could claim their starting setup was legal.
If it’s a concern, that’s where it might become necessary to bring in an impartial third party (or the classic “Privateer running the event”) to verify that it’s legal. If that’s not an option for whatever reason, short of everyone revealing everything at the start, the only real way to verify it was legal is checking things after the fact, either when the game ends, or during the game if enough stuff has been revealed naturally to know for sure.
Given the age of this game, and the size of the remaining community of players, I’d like to think that at least purposeful cheating at it is a non-issue at this point. Maybe not?
it does prevent a whole pile of weird issues with certain ability interactions and timing.
Interesting, I haven’t thought of those possibilities then.
There were several others that came up over the years that escape my memory, but the most significant scenario was when a ship with an S in its printed base move plus a Helmsman aboard moved within range of a canceler.
Before that ruling/clarification was put in place, people could try to argue that they’d used the Helmsman’s segment as their first segment, so by the time the ship moved in range of the canceler, targeting that Helmsman wouldn’t have an effect on the rest of the ship’s movement even though there was an entire S still waiting to be used.
I’ve been wondering can you put a Tribal Chieftain of a different nation Say the Cursed Chieftain on the HMS Concorde, Would the Chieftain still be able to command the Cursed Native Canoes?
If the nationalities don’t match, and there’s no other ability that allows other nations to function on the ship, the Cheiftain’s ability won’t work.
And also, can you stack the S-Cancel abilities?
Multiple different cancelers could target a single ship/crew, but each has to come from a separate ship.
Two or more cancelers on the same ship would be restricted by the no-stacking rule like any other ability.
Also if you have someone with SAC and someone with the Doctor ability on the same ship can you SAC the second Oarsman thats on that ship and then flip it face down due to the Doctor on that ship, And if so would you get the extra action from the SAC Ability?
To use a SAC ability, the crew has to be eliminated permanently. If something prevents it from being eliminated, or it comes back immediately after being eliminated, you don’t get the extra action and in most of those cases you can’t use the SAC ability on it at all.
If a ship has a Base Move of L+S/S+L does that ship have to move L then S in that order (and vice versa). If so, what, if any, is the mechanical advantage of one over the other
As Jack said, you can use those segments in any order. There’s no functional difference between L+S and S+L.
The Fine Print: The printed segments of a ship’s base move can be used in any order, but bonus segments from other sources (Helmsman, etc.) always have to be applied after the ship’s own segments. This doesn’t matter most of the time, but it does prevent a whole pile of weird issues with certain ability interactions and timing.
Can I link the same crew twice? For example, Mademoiselle Josephine Godiva is a 0LR re-roller, so at set up I pick a crew for her to link to. Can I use this ability on Duc de Valois, who is already “naturally” linked to her, and if so, do both links still count? If I put both of them on board L’Eroica, does it gain 3 links, effectively gaining a cargo space for free?
You can only gain a single +1 Cargo by linking together any two given crew, regardless of how they connect.
Doubling up links doesn’t double up the cargo space gained.
Why does Barrel o’ Monkeys require you to load the transferred UT face down even if the UT transferred is normally always a face up UT?
That’s intended mostly to hide the value of the transferred non-unique coins from other players, but it also will “reset” a previously used UT that can be loaded face down.
If the UT is one that must be revealed when loaded, it would be flipped back up as soon as it was placed on the new ship.
Can an opponent request or force you to reveal face down crew on a setup with a reducer to prove that it’s legal?
If you need the reducer’s ability to make the ship legal during setup, you have to reveal it during setup. That ability won’t function if it’s face down.
Non-ability links avoid this because they don’t require a face up ability to function, but with those you still have to “reveal” that a link is present. You just don’t have to reveal what specifically is being linked.
@Lukas
6. Name: Nordwind
Ability: At the Start of your turn roll a d6 on a 1-3 you MUST remove one fog out of the game. At the end of your turn place a fog as a free action anywhere on the map (it can’t touches islands or ships)
Is this intended as two separate abilities (so you might remove, but always place), or does the die roll affect both parts equally (so you either do both, or neither)?
8. Name: Wilhelm Pieck
Point Value: 5
Ability: At the Start of your turn roll a d6 on a 6 no explore actions are allowed till the start of your next turn.
5 points is a lot to spend for something with a slim (1-in-6) chance of preventing players from taking a specific action they wouldn’t be taking every turn even under normal circumstances, and it affects your own ships equally as opponents. For being a purely negative effect, it should cost significantly less, or better yet, come bundled with some other ability (or abilities) that make this guy worth having on all of the turns/rounds the roll doesn’t hit.
Also, even though not everything has to make perfect sense in the game, is there a thematic explanation for what this ability is doing?
10. Name: Friedrich August
Point Value: 8
Ability: Loyal: German. This ship gets the Longship keyword
This price is fairly accurate to how Wizkids priced it on ships, but putting it on a crew is a whole different matter. It’s frighteningly easy to get a crew like this onto a 10-masted ship, but even on a 5- or 6- mast it could be problematic.
Adding the Loyalty keyword is a good idea, but in practice that ability is a joke, because even a single matching Oarsman is enough to satisfy it. It would be better to clearly specify that this crew’s abilities only work on German ships, or to restrict where it can be used in some other way. Hostile: Non-German would do it for sure, but that’s maybe a little too much.
I realize I’m not going to win this argument, but I have a bone to pick with the rules. ?
The sea creature rules state that sea creatures cannot be assigned crew.
Ex-Patriot
This crew may use its abilities onboard any ship.The Pirate Code, page 5:
Sea creatures are considered to be ships. Any actions, abilities, or other effects that refer to ships can be applied.
Pirate Code page 15:
-This list applies only when two or more abilities conflict. When an ability and a rule conflict the ability always takes precedence regardless of the terms used, unless specifically stated otherwise.
If abilities take precedence over rules, then Ex-Patriot crew should be able to use their abilities on sea monsters that have cargo. Boom. XD ?
(Woelf’s Asesino de la Nave arriving shortly to kill my crew idea XD)
Shots fired! 😀
An Ex-Pat’s ability allows it to function on any ship, but that doesn’t have any effect on where the crew can be assigned in the first place.
If you can find a way to legally* assign an Ex-Pat to a sea creature, its abilities will work.
*Chariot/Titan
Now I’m confused again. In game 2 between the French fleet and the UPS one, it ends with the Sea Crane establishing the Devil’s Maw. But France can still move. La Courageux is actually a nightmare for the Devil’s Maw to deal with because she can just sit so only one short gun of the fort is in range and fire with impunity. How come the game ended with the fort being built?
A good question! I think the reason Xerecs and I stopped playing at that point is because of the extreme odds against the Courageux. All 3 Pirate ships may have been able to ram and/or fire at her before she got to either of the Pirate forts. In addition, the Devil’s Maw also has three 3L guns, so it’s unlikely the Courageux would have been able to destroy the fort without taking a reasonable beating in return, especially with other Pirate ships there to assist the fort.
There may be other reasons behind it as well; not everything discussed on the module or said between the players is in every battle report. It looks like we should have kept playing. That said, I’m kind of glad the Quick fleet won that matchup overall or else I might feel weird about it. (as I said though, there is likely something else that led to the game ending “early” for good reason, and probably a gameplay reason)
Even though it wasn’t forced by things that happened in the game itself, you could still safely count that as using the stalemate ending. If the players mutually agree that the game has reached a point where it’s not worth the time or effort to continue playing things out, it’s perfectly fine to end it there.
Not sure if this question goes here but here goes. I’ve noticed a few “unofficial” keywords when describing semi-common abilities, like “Fog-hopper”. If at all possible is there some kind of general list of unofficial keywords of the like.
Once upon a time there was a thread with all of the common abbreviations, acronyms, and such. I think that was back at Miniature Trading, but Ben may have saved it.
It would be worth having something like that again as a sticky thread. I could set something up or add it to one of the posts at the beginning of this thread (near the no-duplicates list), but probably won’t be able to get to it for a few days at the earliest. If Ben or someone else is able to get a thread for it up first and is willing to update it as needed, by all means go for it.
Ok so this is embarrassingly simple but I suddenly think I’ve been playing forts wrong all this time. If the only gold left in the game is on forts, does the game end? I’ve always played that it did, because no player can load any treasure from wild islands that they don’t already own. But the more I think about it, the more it seems you’re actually supposed to ferry the gold to your home island before the game can end. But that would seem to mean you don’t in any way own the gold in forts?
The rules to forts changed a few times between sets, so the Pirate Code has a full replacement set of rules for them – they start on page 58.
To answer your questions, islands with forts still count as wild islands, so any gold stored there will prevent the endgame condition of all treasure being collected. You can ferry gold home, but when removing gold you have to leave enough there to cover the gold cost of the fort. In other words, if any forts have been built, they all need to be destroyed, or you need to end the game using one of the other conditions (page 14 of the Pirate Code lists the 5 different possibilities).
Do you know why there doesn’t appear to be a shark building guide in the Start Here rules for OE? Maybe Wizkids just forgot, or assumed people wouldn’t need a guide for it?
I have no idea!
They probably just forgot to add it, but it is possible that they had to cut it for space and/or time reasons and assumed by that point that players would be able to figure out how to put the three pieces together?
if you sac a sac captain
u get an extra action but cant use the cap ability is that right?
When you sac a crew, that crew’s abilities are gone immediately, so you can’t keep using them.
(This indirectly also prevents a sac character from eliminating itself.)
Since the Flotilla’s flag takes 2 hits from the same shoot action to destroy, what happens if an iceberg drifts into it? Nothing? Does the iceberg just stop?
The iceberg stops, but nothing else happens. They only eliminate masts, but flotillas have none to lose.
My next question is can Flotillas shoot while being towed?
Yes.
However, you cannot give an action in the middle of another, so it would have to shoot either before or after the towing ship moves it. You can’t shoot during the movement, or between separate segments.
Finally, how does a flotilla repair? The keyword states that flotillas may only be given a shoot action and a repair action. So, does that mean that the flotilla needs some creative crew stacking to get a shipwright on board even though flotillas have 0 crew slots? Or does the flotilla need to be towed back to the home island?
The keyword gives the Flotilla the ability to repair itself, and it can do that anywhere without being towed back home.
Does a firepot count as a “hit?” I know that it counts as a mast replacement not an elimination, so it bypasses effects like Acorazado’s, but what about effects like La Belle Etoile, which eliminate cargo when they “hit” a ship, and ships that ignore the first hit each turn?
They do count as hits, so most other abilities and effects that refer to hits will apply.
Let’s say that a ship has an Ex-Patriot crew on her, giving her the Mercenary keyword and all that implies. This same ship also has Eternal, as an ability provided by the ship, not coming from a crew. The ship is sunk. If I have Raft, can I flip it and throw the crew onto the nearby island, thus eliminating the Mercenary keyword from the ship and allowing Eternal to function?
That works, because the Raft removes the crew from the ship before Eternal kicks in, so it won’t be prevented from docking at home.
