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Making Ex-Pats cost 1 extra when used on non-Merc ships would work fine, but I doubt it would change things much. Most of the Ex-Pats that do get pulled over to other nations are getting used because that nation doesn’t already have the specific ability (or they do, but need multiples). Because it would almost always cost more points and/or cargo space to use a standard recruiter to do the same, they’d still be saving points on the Ex-Pat, and outside of some very specific setups that extra point is easy to account for by adjusting the other crew on the ship.
What would be really nice to have for Ex-Pat and Black Mark (plus plenty of other existing and potential abilities) would be a good, clean way to enforce varying costs against the build total, but I honestly don’t know what that would be, short of taking major aspects of the game setup back to the drawing board.
Mechwarrior had a really great system for Pilots that did this. Each had a base cost, but also had a secondary (typically much higher) cost when used in their preferred ‘Mech, because that would unlock a bonus ability unique to that pilot. Gunslinger (mercenary) Pilots went a step further, and in addition to their base and preferred ‘Mech costs they had a few additional costs listed for use with specific factions. Usually that increased the base cost by a few points, but occasionally a specific faction would get a discount, and in a few cases specific factions wouldn’t be allowed to use them at all. I think the varying faction costs were mostly story line based, but might have had a few gameplay concerns built in if the Pilot’s stats would create problematic combos somewhere that a higher cost alone wouldn’t prevent.
Anyway, on to the point – While that worked great for Mechwarrior, it couldn’t be directly translated over to Pirates because crew are a lot more flexible in where they’re assigned. You can’t shuffle Pilots between ‘Mechs during a game of Mechwarrior, so there’s no way to cheat that point system. Pirates would need extra rules to address that somehow, perhaps by forbidding the transfers of those crew, or by forcing you to use the highest potential cost that could occur in your fleet, even if the particular crew + ship combo wasn’t used. Neither of those are very good options, and I think most other variations on that would introduce problems of their own.
It’s so bizarre. A while back at MT, someone had a compelling argument based (I think) on Jules Verne material that said the Coleoptera was supposed to look like the Nautilus because she was designed to be disguised as such. Perhaps that was an alternate or later version of the ship. The flavor doesn’t match of course. I don’t know who said that or if it’s true, and maybe they were just misleading people lol. (but it seemed for real based on their explanation) Almost like a double negative/reversed situation
Now that you mention it, that sounds familiar too. It was more than likely in a forum post, because the same question seemed to come back up at least once or twice every year when someone new discovered the error for the first time.
The flavor text definitely doesn’t agree with it, but it sounds plausible as something from one of the books.
Whenever I used that sub, I’d just reverse the two deckplate sides. It was ugly, but made it much easy to identify at a glance, especially if the real Nautilus was also in play.
Even as someone who generally considers himself a near OCD completionist, that shading difference for SM is just not something I want to try and tackle.
I keep a bunch of the lighter cards mixed in with all of other cards used for playing, but that’s almost entirely due to nostalgia because most of those were literally the first cards I owned for the game.
Had I jumped into the game starting with a later set or even after the reprints, I probably would have avoided the lighter cards as much as possible, and probably would have tried to replace any that I did encounter, just to keep everything looking consistent. The darker and more vivid colors on everything else looks so much better. Crazy collectoring aside, there’s little to no reason to seek out the lighter cards.
(Ben) Pandemonium
Cannons: 3L-3L-3L-3L-3L-3L-3S-3S
Ability: This fort may use any equipment with “shot” in the name up to once per turn each (the equipment does not have to be in play).Allowing the use of effects from outside the game is problematic on its own, but even if they had to be on the island (or at least present somewhere in the game), the wording is ambiguous.
As written, it sounds like you could attach a different type of shot to every cannon and fire them all off with a single shoot action. If that’s the intent, and it can use them from outside the game, it’s horribly underpriced at only 8 gold. If the shots actually need to be present in your fleet somewhere, it works.
If it’s meant to allow any shot, but only once per turn on a single cannon, the wording should be more like this: “Once per turn, one of this Fort’s cannons can use…”
(Jonathan) Porphyrion
Cannons: 2S,2S,4L,3S,3S
Ability: Extended Range. This ship gets +1 to cannon rolls against any ship. She gets +2 to cannon rolls against forts.Even though WK was guilty of doing this a couple times too, if you’re going to give cannon bonuses against pretty much everything, you should just change the ranks of the cannons themselves.
After making these 1S,1S,3L,2S,2S you could still give +1 against forts if you really think it’s necessary.There might be a photoshopped image or two floating around out there somewhere, but if an original correct version or rendering exists, it hasn’t made its way out to the public.
Then, in the artwork, the sails and/or deck can be shown to be on fire.
Disappointing but makes sense.
If the fake fire mast actually does something it would be fine to reference it in the ability, but based on your description it sounds almost entirely decorative.
That’s fine having extra pieces for decoration whether it’s referenced in the ship’s abilities or not (oars of a galley or turtle, for example), but because it’s not functioning as a normal fire mast, at the very least it should look completely different so there’s no chance for confusion. The center mast could be made to look like a plume of smoke and fire going straight up while still using the normal cut shape, and empty spaces could be filled in black like on those handful of skeletal and ghostly looking Cursed ships. Give that mast a cannon rank of 6, don’t refer to it as fire in any way, and you wouldn’t need to address it in the ability at all. Thematically if it’s meant to always be the last to go, you could add text saying that mast can be removed only if the other two have been removed.
At the very least, it would be nice if whatever crew were included in a pack were guaranteed to match the ships they came with, especially named crew. Generic crew could be changed to true generics without nationality requirements so they’d be a non-issue.
Single nation packs would kill the “game in every pack” marketing claim, but when was the last time *anyone* actually played the game against someone else using only the contents of a single pack?
(I’d rather the game have a “starter set” or two with pre-determined contents that included everything needed to play a simple two-player game, like most of the other WK games did. The individual packs could then be slimmed down to just the cards themselves, with at most an extra island, so you don’t end up with large piles of garbage whenever you open a dozen packs at a time.)
I’m all for adding rules to allow for buying/building new ships, especially in campaign settings, but requiring a shipwright for that just sounds like a weird way to force players to dump extra points on crew they otherwise don’t want or need. Limiting the number of masts you can build based on the number of shipwrights you have makes that even weirder, and doesn’t account for the fact that there’s only a very weak correlation between the number of masts a ship has and how well it performs. There are countless examples of small ships that are far superior to ones with two or even three times as many masts.
Allowing those shipwrights to be purchased during the game doesn’t make it less weird, it just adds an extra surcharge when buying the first few new ships.
If building/buying is to be allowed at all, it should be done as a standard rule for that particular game (or campaign), and be available to all players, so there isn’t a penalty for not bringing along a specific crew type, and losing a specific crew doesn’t leave a player potentially crippled for later games in the campaign.
That being said, if you did still want to involve shipwrights somehow, perhaps they could provide a slight cost discount, or make the action more efficient or something. Maybe each shipwright reduces the cost per ship by 1, or maybe new ships come into play with no masts, but then get a head start of one mast per shipwright present.
Ring Besis (pronounced “bee-sis”)
Type: Crew
Link: All Cursed 10 mastersDoes this only link to ships that are naturally Cursed, or does it also work on ships converted by Black Mark?
Ceremonial Sacrifice
Number of Masts: 3
Cannons: 2S-X-2S
Ability: Firepot Specialist. This ship’s mainmast (middle mast) is always a fire mast that requires no roll [it cannot spread or be put out]. Whenever this ship touches another ship, eliminate one crew from the other ship.Ability text should not be used to explain an artwork decision, especially when that text requires further outside (PC) explanation. It reminds me of those schooners in Rev where the re-release added text that had literally no effect in the game, but caused all sorts of confusion and disagreements among players.
You’d be better off making this a “normal” 2 or 3 mast ship (depending on whether that middle one is meant to actually count as a mast or not) with just the FPS and that crew-killing ability. Then, in the artwork, the sails and/or deck can be shown to be on fire.
I just think calling it Hidden Gold would be less confusing, especially because “Galleon” makes me think of ship type keywords like Galley
I agree with Ben, calling the ability by two different names would be confusing, like the Born Leader/SAT situation
There’s nothing about this ability adding two treasure-only spaces that cries out for it being “hidden” in any way. It sounds more like an expanded cargo hold, or having much more organized/efficient storage system within the typical space of the ship. You could even steal the “Cargo Nets” name I had used for a custom equipment years ago – if I recall correctly, the effect was even the same (or very similar).
Enemy ships get -1 to their boarding rolls against this ship.
I’ve got that ability on some customs, and it would be effectively the same as +1 to boards
Yeah, there’s really no need to create a new ability that produces the exact same effect as an existing ability.
Instead of reducing rolls, a better debuff might be to prevent the use of boarding abilities, similar to what the S-Boarding ability does. It won’t help against every ship, but would be pretty useful against the ships that did have something.
You could run into a weird scenario with two marines facing off, so you’d have to specify if both worked in full (blocking the bonuses of both ships), or if only one of them functioned.That’s the thing. I don’t want to make customs that are purely in line with what Wizkids costed things at, because then none of my switchblades and whatnot would be priced right either.
I agree with you about WK’s pricing system having a lot of issues, and that’s why I generally try to avoid commenting on point costs for custom things (especially ships) unless something really stands out – there’s too much variability.
Not using the WK system, or at least a close approximation, does make evaluating some customs difficult, but regardless I do look forward to seeing what you do with the re-costed set.
Carronade
Equipment
3 points
Ability: This ship gains one 2S cannon that can fire from any mast (even an eliminated mast), but cannot have its range increased. When this cannon hits, eliminate one mast and one crew from the enemy ship. This cannon may be used with other equipment. Ships may use up to two Carronades in one turn.Really excited about this. One of the more important weapons in the late stages of sailing naval combat. Absolutely devastating at short range and when combined with grape shot.
I like the effect, but 3 points is way too low for what this does. As written it’s worth at least 5 points. It’s equal to or objectively better than a Musketeer in every way:
*Provides its own cannon, with a rank that’s better than the “average” of 3 found on a Musketeer.
*Effect is equivalent to a Musketeer (3 points) PLUS Antonio de Silva (2 points).
*No assignment (nationality or duplication) restrictions.
*Bypasses the no-stacking rule.
*Immune to crew-killers and boarding.
*Can combine with other equipment.———
ADDED: By contrast, Halgeren seems overpriced for what he provides. His sac ability is strictly inferior to the standard one that comes in typically at 2 points (or 3 on its own) so let’s call that a 1, and the cargo-killing bonus is worth 1 or 2 at most (compared to similar effects that do it automatically on the first hit or any hit).That puts 4-5 on Unholy Light, which granted is about where WK priced it, but still feels high. It’s a neat effect, but even the best-case-scenario information it provides isn’t likely to be worth that much, considering that by the time you’re close enough to use it you’re probably also close enough to just dock and explore the island directly.
6 points total for everything he provides would be more reasonable, and maybe there’s even an argument to be made for 5. He’d be difficult to abuse, at least compared to other individual sources of those same/similar abilities.
I’ve always wondered how often those “basic” rules ever got used for someone’s first play of the game, and assuming anyone actually did play that way, how many of them managed to enjoy it enough to want to move up to the real rules.
Several of the other WK game lines (Mage Knight, Mechwarrior, etc.) came with starter rules too, but those were for the most part pretty decent at serving their purpose as an introduction to the game. Compared to any of those, the “Basic” rules for Pirates are pathetic. Even Quest for Davy Jones’ Gold is a better game, and that’s an extremely low bar.
It’s like WK drastically underestimated the people who’d be playing the game. They would have been better off just making a single set of rules that combined both versions. Take the useful illustrations and assemblies from the basic set and incorporate them directly into the sheet with the full rules. That would probably require more than just one a double-sided sheet to cover everything, but by dumping the basic version that extra sheet is already available without “adding” anything to the pack.
When I first read the heading I thought this would be more about running up the score after it was obvious the game had already been decided.
As far as taking just enough risks to squeeze out a win, to me that’s the whole point of the game. If you always play it safe, you might have a more consistent win/loss record over a large number of games, but you’ll be on the losing side when someone takes the extra risk and pulls it off. The real trick is finding the boundary of “safe” and pushing it just enough to give yourself the edge, without being so dependent upon luck that you can’t recover when it doesn’t swing your way.
Thematically/realistically, or in a campaign setting, it’s a different story. Coming away with a little bit more gold to take the win but losing your entire fleet in the process would be considered a disaster, very much a “win the battle but lose the war” type scenario. I’m yet to see a perfect system for it, but that’s largely what’s being attempted by the various house rules where remaining ships are factored into victory conditions along with gold collected.
Keeping the ability as-is and reducing the cost by a few points is the simplest and cleanest way to make them better. The “plain” 5-point versions we got late in the game’s run were pretty decent, but the initial set was way overpriced because they also had that +1 boost tacked on. Drop that boost (or make it just 1 point instead of 2), and reduce the keyword itself to 3 points (simultaneously reduce Musketeers to 2, since they’re essentially Cannoneers anyway), and they’d become really useful. Even 4 points for the keyword alone would be good.
Changing the ability in any significant way largely throws out the point cost and would require it to be completely rebalanced. Some of the ideas for changes would break the game without a significant point increase:
* Marines can shoot on every player’s turn.
* Marines ignore ALL defensive abilities.
* Marine hits eliminate 1 mast and 1 crew.
* Give the keyword an additional ability such as +1 or +2 to boarding rolls.
* Change their cannon to 1S.
* Allow Marines the OPTION to eliminate crew INSTEAD of masts, and enable them to target specific crew.* Shooting every turn creates a lot of timing problems, especially if it could be used as a interrupt. It also has a major scaling problem in multiplayer games if it gets to shoot on every player’s turn.
* Large catch-alls like “ignore all defensive abilities” tend to cause lots of unintended problems – just look at Broadsides Attack. Thematically there may be justifications for some defensive abilities, but even those are so varied in what they do and what they represent that it would be difficult to explain them all. Planting explosives on the hull of a slow-moving monster like El Acorazado is very different from catching a super fast and agile catamaran.
* Doing extra damage per shot adds a lot to the cost. Maybe not a lot, but enough to go beyond the original price.
* A +1 boost to boarding works thematically, but even that adds a to the cost. It’s 2 points at the minimum (SM cost), which at best puts them right back where they started (assuming Marine = 3). If one of these adjustments had to be made, this would be my pick.
* Reducing the cannon rank to 1 for a single shot puts the odds of missing low enough that you might as well just make it an automatic hit at that point. Bad luck can always sneak in, but with a 5/6 chance of hitting it’s reliable enough that Marines would become potentially more dangerous than ships with several poor-rank cannons, especially considering their status as crew with an action completely independent of the ship.
* Eliminating crew directly always seemed like something that would be better suited to Musketeers, but having that as the standard effect for a Marine would work. Targeting specific crew gets into the realm of way too powerful (essentially a low-risk, high-success, multi-use Duel), but even hitting crew from the bottom up will usually hurt after a couple shots.Instead of two hits in the same turn, I think it should be two hits from the same shoot action (ignoring any ship or crew abilities that eliminate crew during shoot actions). In my mind, that would give them a bit more durability and make them more worth the investment.
Not a bad suggestion, but I think it’s a relatively minor distinction. Maybe things are different in campaign games, or it’s a group think thing, but in all the games I’ve seen where Marines were used (by others or myself), they rarely ever left the safety of a ship’s deck. The inherent crew protections they get just by being on a ship are far better than being able to absorb the first hit they take each turn. Plus, if a Marine is on an island and being enough of a nuisance that an opponent needs to take them out, chances are pretty high that they’ll send in a single ship with enough cannons that a miss or two won’t prevent them from double-tapping the Marine within a single action. Sending two separate ships just to take out one lonely crew is horribly inefficient (and even sending one ship isn’t great in the first place).
Any sort of action of system for recovering crew after a ship sinks is already largely covered by Raft, which would become obsolete with an Abandoned Ship, Swim to Shore, or comparable house rule. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, considering it’s a single-use thing that costs build points, but also far from essential.
For the most part, I like that crew are out of the game once their ship has sunk. In terms of gameplay, aside from the handful of effects that might happen immediately (Eternal, Raft, Divers, etc.), it means there’s less and less stuff to constantly mess with as the game goes on, which helps accelerate things at the end.
Thematically it makes sense too. Most of the crew may technically still be alive, but they’re sitting in lifeboats, swimming around, marooned on an island, or even tossed in a brig somewhere; whatever the reason is, they’re far enough removed from any action that they’re no longer relevant to the remainder of the game. That’s why they get “removed from the game” instead of “eliminated”. They’re not dead, and they could very well find their way home again, but it won’t happen quickly enough to affect the current game.
In a campaign setup it would be perfectly reasonable for some or all of the sunken crew to return to the player between games to be useable again in subsequent games, especially members of various navies who would be compelled to return to duty (as opposed to pirates or other loosely-affiliated people). There are lots of thematic things you could do with them too. Perhaps some crew take longer to return due to the circumstances of their sinking, others may come back injured (lost/reduced abilities), and others may come back changed or stronger than ever (alternate versions of the same character).
In a shorter-term sense, a rule that allowed friendly ships to immediately recover crew might work, if the right conditions and restrictions are put on it. Perhaps the ship has to be within S when the other ship sinks, and then has the option to grab one or two crew if it has space for them. You could add a roll to see if it’s successful, you could require the crew to remain face down for some number of turns, you could require the ship to return to home or a safe port before the crew can be used, or any number of other things. If there weren’t any friendly ships nearby, maybe the enemy ship that just blasted the sinking ship could take prisoners that are worth gold or something like that (although this would be better suited to an actual crew/ship ability rather than a full-time option).
Weirdness continues. When I’m on the main forum page, I’m shown as not logged in. However, once I click on a thread and go in, I’m suddenly logged in. I haven’t checked the Customs thread yet though. I’m fairly sue that the oddity is on my end, though I’m not sue what to do about it, since I’ve already removed some cookies and stuff.
Please let me know if it continues or affects your participation/enjoyment here. I had a somewhat similar issue a few days ago when the hosting company had to change a few things to get the site back online. Glad to see you post in CS again.
If you want I can report your issue to the hosting support system, but it is weird that it seems to only be affecting your account. (that we know of)
Page refreshes don’t seem to happen automatically, or at least not every time. If you click back to a page you were on a few minutes earlier (like the main list of threads in the forum) it’ll often still look like it did when you were there the first time, even if you’ve logged in and posted something. More than once I’ve logged in after a day or two and it didn’t show any new posts that happened in between.
It’s easy enough to fix by hitting “refresh” or F5, but it feels a lot like the old days of the internet when browsers purposely did “tricks” like that to save bandwidth by not reloading things that didn’t necessarily need to be reloaded. It might just be a relic of WordPress that can’t be easily adjusted.
One more question, if a UT remove, like Pirate Codex or some such was revealed and all face-up UT’s are removed, in the case of the Chariot, what happens to the crew that was brought in?
Without the Chariot to ride on, that crew is in an illegal situation and has to get tossed (out of the game) immediately.
Randomizing MIs is a very good thing. Beyond just a d6 roll, you could go with a d10 or even a d20 that you roll against a whole chart full of island effects. It would almost completely eliminate any chance of farming for UTs, and would make the islands with game-breaking effects unreliable at best. It would add more randomness to the game, but if you’re already using MIs, you’re probably okay with that.
Are there any changes you would make to the basic crew and linking rules?
A house rule i sometimes played with is that linked crew not only take up no cargo but also do not count towards the point total. Can be a bit unfair but really rewards those who collected ships with their link. The Locker, and the flying dutchman were my favorites to use in these matches!
This feels like a mess, and there are enough tailor-made links to make it OP. Victor de Alva on the San Cristobal is OP without any other crew aboard; making him free instead of 8 points would be disastrous. I understand things like Edward Low on the Locker brings some total point costs more in line with practicality, but it’s not worth it for the OP cases. I think a more reasonable change would be to have linked crew give the ship +1 cargo AND they don’t take up space. Although that could be more confusing than the existing rules.
Yeah, doing this with the current setup would break things horribly. It’s not a bad idea, but to make it work the whole linking system would need to be tossed out and started over from scratch with the linked pairs designed specifically for this rule change.
Since there’d really be no downside to always using them together, the easiest solution would be to intentionally make both the ship and the linked crew slightly worse than their non-linked counterparts, so when you did put them together you’d only be slightly ahead of where you’d be by using non-lined equivalents. Maybe the linked pair costs 1-2 points less. If the benefit is too good, it makes the non-linked versions obsolete before they even start, and ultimately would just penalize players for not having a large enough collection to have the linked pairs while rewarding those who spent more money.
I always did wish that linking would have done more than just add cargo space. All sorts of different small bonuses could have been used instead, like +1 to certain rolls, rerolls, protection from elimination, etc.. It would have made the rules a little more complicated, but listing the specific bonus on one or both of the linked crew would have mostly covered it.
-A crewmember assigned to a sea monster using this unique treasure ignores all cargo space requirements.
I’m taking this to mean that a Sea Monster with a cargo of 0 would be able to have a crew assigned to it, as long as it was through the UT, is this correct? What happens when the Sea Monster in question HAS cargo, does the crew assigned by the treasure not take up cargo space?
Think of the crew as if it links to the Chariot. It does not require or use any other cargo space, whether the Sea Monster has some or not.
Some clarification o UT’s and abilities that allow you to steal a treasue/gold coin.
From the code, UT section (pg 10):
-UTs may be transferred between ships like standard treasure (via an explore action), and may be transferred by abilities and effects that steal, take, or trade treasure, unless an ability specifically prevents them from being unloaded or removed from a ship.
Specifically the last bit, does this mean that abilities like Filching Gold, Hoard/Hoarding Gold would allow me to take a UT from an enemy ship, even if it was face-up?
For example, the Zeus wins a board against a ship with Metal Hull, Shipping Chats and Homemade Flag on it. Would the Hoard ability allow me to take the UT’s as well as any other treasure the target ship may have?
You can steal most UTs the same as standard treasures, whether they’re face up or not. The only ones you can’t take are the UTs that specifically say they cannot be unloaded/removed from the ship, or those that are on a ship where stealing is blocked (Secret Hold).
The searchable reference database will be by far the biggest loss, at least as far as non-personal items are concerned. Is that something that could eventually be recreated here, or on an attached website? Obviously it would take a ridiculous amount of work to set back up, so it wouldn’t be anything happening any time soon.
In my opinion, the gold standard for a searchable miniatures database has always been Warrenborn:
http://www.warrenborn.com/UnitSection.html
That only covers Mechwarrior, but it was better than MT’s database and even the old WK one. A similar setup for Pirates would be an amazing tool to have available after MT is fully gone.@woelf: Perhaps I could give the Mirage an ability similar to that of Dr. Faust from Fiends of the Blood Islands? His ability reads: “Once at the beginning of each of your turns,roll a d6. On a result of 6, instead of giving this ship an action, you may give an enemy ship an action.”
Would this make the Mirage a little less broken?Sure, that would work. That makes it comparable to the fleet action ability that gives an action to one of your own ships on a roll of 6, or the 6 effect of Davy Jones. The important thing is that it’s not automatic.
A good general rule of thumb for design to always remember: If something can be exploited, it will be.
Is the intention that it switches to boarding as soon as any cannon hits and then the remaining cannons are ignored, or could this potentially board up to 4 separate times within a single shoot action? (Plus multiple additional boardings via Switchblade and/or standard boarding.)
Doesn’t switch over while shooting; each cannon can still shoot even if a previous grapple shot was successful.
I’m still a little unclear on the intent. Does *only* the first cannon that hits count as a grapple shot, so any remaining cannons that hit after do normal damage, or does each trigger the grapple effect independently of the other cannons.
For example, you shoot and hit with 3 cannons. Do you remove two masts from the target and then board it once, or do you remove zero masts and board it three times in a row?
Chariot of the Gods, from the code:
If there are no sea monsters in play when this unique treasure is revealed, it remains aboard the ship that found it and has no other effect.
This has come up in CoEC, the Chariot has been found, but there are no Sea Monsters in play when it was found. What would happen if a Sea Monster came into play? Would the Chariot immediately apply to that Sea Monster that just came into play?
The placement effect only applies when it’s first revealed, so if there isn’t a Sea Monster in play when that happens, it does nothing further.
Granted, having Sea Monsters enter a game that’s already in progress isn’t really a thing under the official/standard rules, so if everyone in the game is okay with it, feel free to house rule it so the Chariot jumps to the first viable target that appears.
18. Emerald Mirage
Ability: Mercenary. Once per turn give this ship a move action, but do not move her. Instead, eliminate a mast from this ship. You may give an enemy ship an action.I agree with Ben that this is too automatic. It’s similar to the effect of Davy Jones, but he costs almost as much as this entire ship on his own, and still only gives you a 1/6 chance of actually controlling an opposing ship.
Adding a negative that masts used for this purpose can’t be repaired still allows you to use it at least twice, and also adds a requirement to track which masts are which. Maybe not that big of a deal with only two, but imagine if this ability got copied by DJ or Behemoth. Things could get ugly very quickly.
Parasitic Legion
Cannons: 3S-2S-2S-3S
Ability: Switchblade. This ship only shoots grapple shot. [If this ship’s cannons hit, do not eliminate a mast; instead this ship can initiate a boarding party against the target.]Is the intention that it switches to boarding as soon as any cannon hits and then the remaining cannons are ignored, or could this potentially board up to 4 separate times within a single shoot action? (Plus multiple additional boardings via Switchblade and/or standard boarding.)
I actually like the idea of making it automatic with shipwrights since they’re not worth using very often. Letting ships with shipwrights repair 2 masts in one action while docked at home or a fort could at least make someone consider using one instead of a cannoneer perhaps.
The part I don’t like about making it automatic at your home island is that it’s super easy for a player to just leave a single Shipwright on their home island for the duration of the game, and only move it onto docked ships momentarily to get the extra repair. Giving a smaller bonus to the roll runs into the same issue, but at least there’s a chance it still won’t help. I prefer that a Shipwright’s main benefit should remain the option to repair at sea and on wild islands, while the home island boost comes mostly from the extra facilities and staff that are assumed to be available there.
I’m torn on whether or not the home island bonus should apply at forts. They’re technically “permanent” structures that could include support for more efficient ship repair, but in gameplay they’re relatively fragile and can’t be repaired or maintained in any meaningful way, so they’re more like small, armed outposts than full-fledged forts.
It’s too bad that the “cancelled user” names get replaced with the admin’s, so it’s impossible to know for sure who posted what unless they’d left a signature of some sort or were quoted by someone else.
It’s somewhat understandable why it’s done that way, and is definitely better than just wiping those posts out entirely, but still, there are lots of old names now lost to history.
Consulting with the designers before new sets went to the printers. Even though they didn’t use all of my suggestions and ideas, it was really neat being directly involved in the design to help shape the way things came out. Quite a few problematic things got knocked down or fixed before they could become a problem.
I barely ever got into the official Competitive Play stuff. The events in this area were few and far between, and I rarely ever had time/availability when they did happen. The vast majority of my plays were with friends.
A bonus of some sort would make repair actions more efficient, but I agree that the bonuses should really only apply at your home island, and they should be limited in scope. Rolling a d6 and getting back that many masts would be way too much too quickly.
Rolling a 5-6 to get one extra mast when docked at home would be simple enough to add, and wouldn’t break anything too badly. Eternal could become problematic, but when isn’t it?
A neat twist on that would be to roll a d6 and compare it to the current number of masts on your ship when you give the action. If the roll is higher, you get an extra mast, otherwise you just get the usual 1. This would make it easier to get little ships back to full strength or get heavily-damaged larger ones to a more usable state quickly, but getting the larger ships back to 100% would take longer.
Shipwrights could remain pretty much as-is for either case, or they could do their normal thing plus give a small boost to the home island roll, like +1 to the result, so you have better odds of getting the bonus mast but it’s still no guarantee.
Sea Monsters (and/or creatures in general) being able to repair would make them far more useful too. Tying that directly to crew kills isn’t necessarily going to help them much when they have to be parked on the surface for an entire round right next to the ship they just boarded, because they’re still likely to take more damage than they got back. A simple regeneration roll wouldn’t be a bad thing, but with similar limitations to above. Maybe it only works at your home island, or only while submerged, and instead of rolling to get an extra mast you roll to see whether you get a mast at all.
Not sure why it wasn’t displayed for Ben and Woelf. It appeared plastered on every page of MT I tried prior to posting here.
Just another annoying hiccup for MT I suppose
Just a matter of timing, probably. TCO has always been the parent site, so it makes sense they’d post it there first and then add it to MT a short time later.
