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Towing probably should be specifically mentioned in the keyword, but it is covered under the heavily-implied “ghostly ships can’t touch anything” blanket rule. It would be so much simpler if the rule could just say that, but rules like that always seem to run into problems when you get into the countless nuances and interactions with other abilities.
If you have Filching Gold but also want to board a ship to steal an additional coin, which happens first? (I assumed the Filching Gold; perhaps the owner of the ship can decide?)
Filching applies when the ships first touch, so you use it before boarding.
If you lost the boarding, you could potentially return the coin that you’d just stolen seconds earlier.
If Neptune’s Figurehead kicks in right after scuttling, can that ship be given a move action right away? (more of a clarification; in this case the ship sunk via scuttling at the beginning of the turn, then appeared at the HI fully repaired and immediately sailed out and rammed a ship!)
As long as the ship hasn’t been given its action for the turn, it can be given a move action immediately.
Can you activate Ghost Ship while that ship is being towed? (for example, to prevent opponents from ramming a towed derelict to steal gold from it)
You can activate it on either ship involved at the beginning of your turn, but that immediately breaks the tow.
What do you think of letting submerged game pieces ignore fog banks while submerged?
For the purposes of moving through (under) a fog bank that wouldn’t be that big of a deal, aside from adding complexity for the sake of complexity.
It’s not going to change anything as far as interactions with other ships go, for the same reason abilities that ignore terrain when moving don’t change things. Your ship might be able to ignore the terrain, but that doesn’t mean other ships can too, so their positions remain undefined in the fog.
Thematically, the subs in the game aren’t equipped with sonar, and using a periscope to look for other ships in fog runs into the same visibility problems as someone standing on a deck.
The few and far between “official scenarios” never seemed to amount to much. Whatever story setup they included was often interesting, but didn’t really affect gameplay at out, outside of requiring players to use one or two specific game pieces in their fleets. Beyond that, players would still tend to go with whatever they normally used for fleets, and the game itself would play out much the same as it would without the scenario.
Playing with a “flavor-themed” fleet when not required to was usually pretty fun, and requiring all players to use single-nation fleets always makes the game more interesting, but it was pretty rare when that didn’t put you at a slight (sometimes not-so-slight) disadvantage against players using a wide open mixed fleet.
The best scenarios were the ones that really forced players outside of their comfort zones to do something completely different. I don’t recall any scenarios from WK ever doing that, but there have been more a few fleet challenges at MT over the years that did a good job with it.
Liked:
-The collaboration made a ton of sense. Pirates + Pirates couldn’t have been more obvious. It shouldn’t have taken nearly as long as it did.
-It was great seeing so many characters, even minor ones, appear on crew cards. (*See Dislikes)
-It increased exposure for the game quite a bit, and certainly drew in some players that hadn’t been interested (or even known about it) prior.
-Several excellent ships and other abilities were added to the game. (Jailhouse Dog, Hai Peng, etc.) Even the Krakens were pretty cool, even if they weren’t the best for gameplay purposes.
-Fully compatible with everything before and after. (*See Dislikes)Disliked:
-Very little cohesion with the rest of the game. For example, I understand why they used different flags, but it would have been better if they’d matched.
-Only two nations represented. Again, I understand why they did it, but nearly half the crew in the set would have fit better as one of the other nations, Cursed especially.
-Named crew with generic and/or repeat abilities. It was a good way to get a lot of minor characters into the game, and fine if this was the only set someone ever used, but highly disappointing to anyone that was already into the game. Named generics was bad enough, but giving lousy abilities to great characters (Gibbs) was even worse.
-Horribly imbalanced distribution of abilities. Granted, the focus is meant to be on the Pirates, but for being a “full” faction in this set, the English should have had more than 6 crew. Pirates *really* didn’t need a canceler (Tia Dalma).
-Duplicate UTs. Obviously there needed to be Rum, but it would have been better if the new version was different from the original. Others duplicated previous UT effects but had new names.
-Some broken items. Captain Jack!!! Park & Lian were broken in the opposite (useless) direction.
-They really stretched things to get enough ships in the set. There are, what, maybe a dozen named ships in all of the movies? Many of the ships are also direct copies or very slight variations on ships that appeared in previous sets.
-It erased Jack Hawkins. Legally, it sounded like they were forced to stop using him because he was (legitimately) too similar to Jack Sparrow. Captain Mission/Mysion, the intended replacement, was a poor substitute.I’ve done plenty of games where at least one island is surrounded by terrain, sometimes including reefs. Off the top of my head I can think of at least two past battle reports that will be republished where I did something like that. (hopefully I will get them up here at PwB this year)
Many years ago I’d made scans of a couple terrain pieces and then printed them large enough to fill an entire Letter-sized (8.5″ x 11″) sheet of paper.
A few of those on the table between islands became significant obstacles that you had to either risk crossing or spend an extra turn or two sailing around. Curving your route slightly to skirt around them wasn’t enough. They worked even better when you placed an island right in the center of one, so it was impossible to reach the island without dealing with the terrain. Those islands also became good places to put a few extra treasures during setup.
You’ve heard this before numerous times, but I’ve never been a fan of having a fixed/known quantity for the gold that gets set out at the start of the game.
It’s much more enjoyable for me to grab a few treasure cards and punch out coins at random, without looking at values, then distribute them between island roughly equally – or with extra coins on the hardest-to-reach islands. Throw in a bunch of random UTs too, so even those can’t be planned around.
The number of islands I use is usually determined by the space available. Fewer islands with a small area, lots of islands when a full table was available. Spacing would be semi-random, just making sure not to cluster them too much or put too many too far out of reach. Home islands would usually get placed after the rest were set up, and slightly outside of the wild islands in positions that were roughly equal. I know that takes away that little bit of strategy with where you place the opponent, but I never liked how one player could get stuck with a large location disadvantage right from the start.
I don’t think that change was intentional, it was just something that got messed up along the line and wasn’t fixed properly.
It was nice how most of the minor nation got unique artwork for their generic crew, and then it was especially neat in the later sets how the rest of the nations got their own artwork, even though it did make sorting quickly a little more difficult. The best were the ones that still kinda looked like the originals while still being nation-specific.
Raking, “crossing the T”, and all sorts of other maneuvering tactics that were effective in real life (or at least look cool in movies) don’t work very well in the game as it is because of the turn-based nature, and more significantly because of Captains.
When two ships are already close enough to shoot each other, moving your ship into a position where you’re lined up across the bow or stern of another ship is trivially easy if you’ve got at least two movement segments available (which applies to the vast majority of setups used), and then with a captain you can shoot immediately with no possible way for the opposing ship to try to maneuver out of it in time. Giving some sort of bonus effect for being aligned just right makes getting the “first strike” in any engagement even more decisive than it already is.
It also has the side effect of adding more risk to ramming attacks on top of what’s already there, because that generally puts your ship directly into the position where your T has been crossed. Unless you cripple the opposing ship, they won’t even have to move to take advantage of whatever bonus they get from the position.
—————————————-
Playing without Captains (and extra actions!) would make the bonuses more viable, but any battle between just two ships would easily devolve into a silly zig-zagging dance where they keep maneuvering in front of each other but no one ever shoots. Throw a third ship into the mix and it could get a little more interesting, but that’s not always an option.
A crew ability might work. For example, something like this:
“When any cannon on this ship shoots, if it can draw a single line of fire through two or more masts on the target at the same time, this ship gets [whatever the bonus is goes here]”Can a player choose the order with a Switchblade ram when there’s a blade ram and a regular ram? (or must blades come first)
Thematically it would make sense for the blades to apply first and in the order contact occurs, but the rules don’t mandate that, so you can do them in any order.
Can you explore two friendly ships at once with one explore action? (between three ships at once for a double/three-way transfer)
A Hoist can do this legally with its crane, but other ships can only “explore” one thing at a time regardless of how many they are touching.
When towing, can you move S, drop the derelict/flotilla, and then continue with the rest of the segments you’d normally have? (and if so, can you use a helmsman bonus after dropping the flotilla)
You can drop a towed object at any point during your move action, but any restrictions imposed by that object continue to apply for the entire move action.
Instantly restoring a ship’s full movement mid-move would create a bunch of weird timing and measuring issues.
Well i’m glad its not just me who thinks so. So it would be safe to say that the Sea Monster keyword over rules the sea creature “type” then? Because without ramming the few decent sea monsters are significantly worse IMO.
Abilities, including keywords, always overrule the rulebook unless something specifically says otherwise.
So yes, a Sea Monster can grab treasures after ramming and boarding a ship.
The login system at MT has been having issues for the past several weeks, maybe even longer.
Some days it’ll work perfectly fine like normal, other times it’ll kick you to that weird alternate page with the “hack attempt registered” error. If it does that, try again a few hours later and it’ll usually work. If it’s still down, wait another few hours, or try again the next day. In the meantime, you can usually still view the site, you just can’t do it while logged in.
I’m assuming it’s an issue on the server side of things.
Unless you have a rule to enforce a specific percentage of your fleet going into ships and/or crew, I’m not seeing how a “variant” giving extra points for for crew only is any different from simply raising the build total.
If you know ahead of time you’ll get X-amount of bonus points to spend on crew, you can simply build your fleet under that assumption by taking more and/or better ships with fewer crew initially, then add the rest of the crew you need later, as if you were working under the expanded build total right from the start.
You could make the variant more interesting if the extra amount was variable and randomly determined, so players would expect to get something extra but couldn’t count on getting enough to make specific plans for what to do with the points. Rolling 2d6, a d10, or even a d20 would be simplest, but you could also create tables of values, where a few low results might give nothing, while other ranges increase at a certain rate (+5, +10, +15, etc.)
First things first, having everything perfectly costed is impossible without starting over from scratch. There are too many variables to give everything an objective value because of the multitude of ways things can be combined and used. For example, you could have two separate things that are worth 3 points each when used alone, but when combined are the equivalent of 7 or 8. Does their official price go with individual value, or does it use the combined worth? Does it matter which way they are more likely to be used? On top of that, there’s the lack of precision in the available price range that is for the most part from 0-25 (ignoring the few outliers higher). There’s a lot of rounding on point values that don’t fit exactly on one number, and slight variations lead to cases where two ships seem equivalent but one costs more because it rounded off the opposite direction. Changing that to a 0-100 scale would give a more accurate spread, but adds more complexity to fleet building that isn’t helpful.
Back to the question…
Ignoring the issues up in my first paragraph, I think that having “perfect” costs for everything would invite more the creation of even more min/max setups, because every point would technically matter. Players might be less likely to include “fun” items because they’d be afraid of losing out on value that could have been spent on things that are objectively “better”.I like that the game isn’t perfectly costed. The amount of “slop” in the values allows for a lot more flexibility in fleet builds and makes it easier to use things that might be slightly over or under costed without feeling like it’s breaking things in either direction. Having varied costs for equivalent things from one nation to another adds some thematic flavor, even if it’s easy to avoid by mixing fleets. Most of the issue with costs comes from the ones that are obviously over or under valued, like Banshee’s Cry or Maman Brigitte. Adjust those and the others like them to be more inline with the majority, and the game’s costs would feel a lot better in general.
Randomly dealing out ships and crew that are equivalent to each other is good way to keep games relatively well-balanced, and would be a good way to get more use out of a lot of the middle-of-the-road stuff that tends to get ignored when flashier things are available. It would be great for groups with newer players and/or where most players don’t have large (or any) collections of their own.
While it would cut down on stupidly OP setups quite a bit, the downside is that you’d also lose a lot of the creativity that comes from building “thematic” fleets or fleets that rely on crazy (non-OP) combos and strategies that aren’t going to happen in a random draw.
Another option with Sea Dragons is ‘zone control’. Park your dragon at the farthest wild island and have it sit there, waiting for the enemy to come within Swooping range. Since most everyone knows the range of a swoop attack, they’ll likely avoid that island until they have to go there, while you could go there as soon as you’d like.
Area control and herding are by far the best uses for Sea Dragons. The threat of a swoop attack is more potent than the actual attack, and most players are going to wary of sending ships into the dragon’s range. Small treasure runners that will be sunk or crippled by a successful hit are the most at risk, but anything that can’t survive the hit and retaliate with enough firepower to kill the dragon is vulnerable. That allows the dragon to have a lot of control over where opposing ships go, particularly in the islands they visit and when. Forcing them to take longer routes or consolidate their fleet so everything has an escort buys that much more time for the rest of your own fleet to grab loot. If they take the risk of sending ships on their own, the dragon can pick them off as targets of opportunity. Moving around constantly to stay just out of reach of attackers and to force constant course changes is more powerful than just camping out on an island.
Unless it’s near the end of the game where keeping the dragon alive doesn’t matter anymore, or you’ve got a guaranteed extra action for it lined up (Mycron, etc.), sending a dragon in as a primary attacker is almost always a mistake. They’re just too expensive to throw into the fray and hope for the best. If they could be repaired it might be a different story, but as-is, their strengths lie elsewhere.
And on the topic of the Mercs, what the benefit of Ex-Patriot allowing a Merc crew on a different nation ship to let other Mercs use their abilities on that ship when every named Merc crew has Ex-Patriot and can already serve on any ship?
As-is, it allows you to bring along generic Merc crew that can replace or mix with crew of the ship’s own nationality. Useful if you’re short on crew of one nation or another but have extra Mercs available, or you just want extra flexibility if you plan to move them from ship to ship during the game.
Conceivably, if the keywords were modified and then new named Merc crew were created, they wouldn’t automatically have to include the Ex-Pat keyword. They’d still work fine on Merc ships, but to go elsewhere you’d have to send someone else along with them. It would be a good way to give powerful (unique?) abilities to the Mercs without making them too easy to grab by other nations.
I really like what WK tried to do by introducing Mercenaries to the game, but like so many other “big ideas” added over the years, the execution of it wasn’t as good as the concept.
The way the keyword tied in with Mysterious Islands (another “big idea” that suffered between concept and execution) was great, albeit difficult to actually use without specifically building toward that purpose, but being unable to dock at home hurt them far more than the loose thematic benefits from it. Yes there are some workarounds (cancelers, dories, etc.), but those are all extra things that non-Merc nations don’t need to spend points on just to be viable, which is piling additional indirect limitations on the already limited pool of resources from being a (mostly) once-off minor nation.
Starting S away from home does benefit them slightly, but that always seemed like less of an intentional bonus to me than it was a band-aid to avoid the rules issues/ambiguities that would certainly come from starting them out docked [SEE ALSO: Eternal Sea Monsters]. With the exception of the 10-mast ships, the benefit barely even matters beyond the first turn because many non-Merc ships can outdistance the vast majority of Merc ships on their first move despite that head start.
———————————–Setting aside any desires to play viable Mercenary-only fleets, what I’d really like to see the Mercenary keyword do is play into the “independent for hire” thing far more than giving them an odd assortment of benefits and weaknesses. Drop the first-turn boost and the docking restriction, and instead give them more flexibility on mixed-nation crew usage. Maybe not quite to the level of the “any crew may use their abilities”, but more flexible than calling out a specific nation.
Perhaps something like this:
Ex-Patriot: This crew may use its abilities on any ship. Other crew of the Mercenary nation may use their abilities on this ship.
(Important! This does not grant the Mercenary keyword to the ship.)Mercenary: While* placing your ships during setup, choose a nation belonging to any non-Mercenary ship** in your fleet. All*** ships in your fleet with the Mercenary keyword are considered members of that nation (in addition to their own) for the duration of the game, even if their keywords are canceled or all ships of the non-Mercenary nation are captured or sunk. [Could also throw in the MI roll bonus pretty much as-is.]
*I use the term “while” rather than “after”, so it could theoretically allow the placement of nation-specific 0-point crew (including 0LR+5) on affiliated Mercenary ships.
**This follows somewhat on the Fort rule of needing at least one ship of the corresponding nation in your fleet. A 100% Merc fleet would still be viable due to the lack of the docking restriction, but wouldn’t be able to poach crew from any arbitrarily-chosen nation. Dirt-cheap ships like El Raton, Jolly Mon, etc. would be able to cheat this a little, so maybe a minimum percentage of the point total would be required instead of just having a ship.
***This could be handled on an individual ship basis, where you choose an affiliated nation for each during setup. It would add some effort to tracking, but could be done by swapping out the bow flags or by using any number of other methods.
Yet another interesting take on modifying BA. My initial thought is that it might be too powerful, or at least worth the ~5 points it was costed at.
That was just a quick take, so it probably would need some refining. My main goal was to get rid of the ability blocking mess.
I wasn’t going for any specific point cost, but upon reflection, 5 points would probably be close – or at least close enough to swap it for the current keyword text without breaking things too much.
A floating cost would be ideal because it’s obviously better on a larger ship, but by not extending that bonus damage scale higher (like giving +3 damage for 4 or 5 hits) means a 10-mast isn’t getting any more out of it than a 3- or 4-mast ship with good cannons.
The JC is one of the few sips where there is a difference between the Unlimited version and the regular version. I think the UL version is the one with the extra text. However according to the code:
The complete ability text for…….should read: “Schooner. Broadsides Attack.” Certain printings included additional text in the ability box that should be ignored.
One of my brothers tried to cheese that version with the copying Jones to get Broadsides on a ten mast.
That extra bit of text that was added may have been an attempt to let the ship ignore line of sight requirements when using BA, but it was so poorly worded that all it did was cause confusion. The way it’s written, it does literally nothing.
The ship could already use BA – you just had to line up the target so the overlapping masts wouldn’t block anything.
Sometimes BA is more of a disaster than I even realize…. XD
I think the best solution for BA is to toss out the existing text entirely and rewrite it from scratch.
For example, keeping the same general concept, but making it much less divisive and lower cost too:
When this ship is given a shoot action, you may choose to fire all of your cannons at a single target. If you do, roll one die and compare that result to all of your cannons that have a clear line of fire and are within range of the target. All cannons that would hit are applied normally, one at a time. If at least one cannon hits, do 1 additional damage to the target; if 3 or more cannons hit, do 2 additional damage to the target instead.
Things to note:
1) It’s still based on a single roll, but isn’t an “all or nothing” result anymore. One bad cannon won’t ruin the shot for numerous other good ones.
2) The “no other abilities” thing is gone completely. It’s too much of a mess, and not worth trying to salvage.
3) Defensive abilities (ignore the first hit, two hits per mast, etc.) function normally, but the hits are applied sequentially instead of all at once, so parts of it will still get through, and the bonus damage can help make up some of the difference.
4) Modifiers and rerolls work. (Additional limits on those could be added if it got too powerful in playtesting.)
5) It doesn’t address Specialists or other offensive abilities (two masts per hit, cargo-killing, etc.), but since it’s not ignoring defensive abilities any more, I don’t think it would hurt to allow these back in. They’d still be subject to their individual rules (range reductions, etc.), and wouldn’t apply to the bonus damage.Hmm. The definition for Galley in Barbary Coast was worded the same as the original Oarsman effect. “If derelict, this ship gains a base move of S.” Must’ve changed since I’ve been gone.
The Oarsman ability was revised slightly when it got converted over to a full keyword around the Cursed Seas era, and the dereliction rules shifted slightly along with it. The Oarsman keyword was applied retroactively to all previous Oarsmen crew, but not to ships or other keywords that had similar movement abilities built in.
In essence, a ship that loses all of its masts is considered derelict whether it can still move or not.
You need an Oarsman specifically to block the dereliction status and prevent it from being towed or captured. An Oarsman just happens to provide movement in addition to that dereliction protection.
The change made things slightly more complicated, but also made Oarsmen a little more useful in the process – especially to the Corsairs, where they were otherwise completely pointless except as meat shields.
-Broadsides Attack prevents the use of all other offensive abilities that could apply to the shoot action, including but not limited to the Longship keyword, the Musketeer keyword, abilities that eliminate crew, abilities that eliminate additional masts, and abilities that can modify or re-roll the die.
Does that include the Reverse Captain ability that lets you move after shooting?
Technically, yes. The ability generates a completely separate action, but it’s still directly triggered by the BA shoot action.
This is one that you could safely house rule to allow – it’s not like there’s an overabundance of reverse-captains being used in general.
Could have sworn that I replied to this the other day, but apparently it got eaten somehow.
Necklace of the Sky: “Load this treasure face down. Give this ship a move action, but do not move her. Instead, reveal this treasure and dock this ship at any wild island. Then unload this treasure at that island; for the rest of the game, no ship in your fleet can load this treasure.”
The Pirate Code says:
-An explore action is required to unload this treasure; it does not unload automatically. The ship must unload this treasure before it can leave the island.
Regardless of the treasure unloading rules, I feel that this PC ruling directly contradicts the actual ability text of the UT. “Then unload this treasure” indicates that unloading happens immediately as a free action after docking. Forcing the ship to explore the island just to chuck a necklace overboard also feels like a strange mechanic.
Xerecs saw the above ruling that is currently relevant to CG4; I played the UT “wrong” in CG1 and CTO, but I think I will continue to do so at least in solo games at this point, since it’s more fun and less confusing that way.
It’s been a long time, but I think this is one that ended up getting clarified directly with the designer (Kelly?) back when that was still an option. The lack of an explicit “as a free action” phrasing on the unload is what makes it ambiguous, and the intent (apparently?) was that it wasn’t meant to be free.
Being able to teleport across the table is powerful effect either way, but I agree that doing it for free would make it a lot more useful.
Second day in a row without this site being auto-blocked by our IT system, so let’s see if it holds up…
Are there any other ways to determine player order that you use/prefer?
First player goes to person with lowest fleet cost (didn’t use all points to build fleet).
In one way I like this idea – it takes the luck out of going first or second. However, I feel it could become a gamey “race to the bottom” as Woelf might say. Knowing this could influence the fleet building process, which could involve bickering, lying, bluffing, and compromise. It would also be interesting to see if people were willing to cut out an essential helmsman or other cheap crew in order to try and go first. Sadly the lack of balance also means you could make a 30 point fleet with OP game pieces more competitive than some 40 point fleets. In multiplayer I think it could be intense in a competitive group. I’d probably be one to just use all the points to have a maxed out fleet. I assume that in multiplayer, turn order could go in lowest cost order (meaning with 36/37/40 point fleets, the 37 would go before the 40 player regardless of where they are sitting).
Thoughts?
I think any system that gives players control over the starting turn order is asking for trouble. Whether it’s determined by points used/remaining, the number of ships/crew used, ship sizes, cargo spaces, or any other arbitrary factor, any interesting fleet design choices will quickly give way to gaming the system for advantage. If anything, it would make fleet designs less interesting because there would be that much less incentive to use the countless items that aren’t quite top-tier. Brutal efficiency would become even more critical, and instead of using a few leftover points to upgrade a ship to something slightly more expensive but far more interesting, or using those points to add/upgrade a fun named crew, those points would just get dropped entirely for the bonus of maybe going first.
Then things can get weird with both/all players squeezing out the same number of points. If everyone happens to cut 6 points from their fleets you’re basically right back to where you started, and you’ll once again need a way to determine who goes first.
It may not really work with this game, but I do like the idea of a variable turn order system. It could be as simple as each player putting a marker in a bag and drawing them one at a time to see what order they use each turn. Even simpler would be to have everyone roll a couple dice, and the highest goes first in a given round. Essentially that’s an “initiative” system, and maybe that’s one way to give players some influence over the order. Rather than basing it on point costs, players could get a bonus to their initiative roll by including certain crew in their fleets — it could be added to some existing crew, or even a new 0LR crew could be created to give an initiative boost.
“More precise” is really vague. Maybe they meant concise?
The current system provides far more precision than any grid/hex-based system could ever hope to do. There’s a lot of room for fudging when measuring out distances and angles, but within the handful of limitations on movement, you can put your ship pretty much anywhere and at any orientation you want. You can often park your ship in a precise location to hit a target without letting the target’s cannons hit back without moving first.
A specific tool for measuring (instead of card edges) or even movement templates similar to what you see in games like X-Wing would add accuracy to the game without doing much to limit the open nature of it, but with how the game already works, that’s just adding extra pieces for little gain.A grid or hex system would make the game far simpler and more concise. Almost all of the debates about ranges and distances would go away entirely, because there’d never be any questions about how far things were apart, but the game would lose a lot of nuance. Maneuvering wouldn’t matter nearly as much. It wouldn’t necessarily be bad, and in some cases would be an improvement, but it would definitely change the overall feel of the game. (Indirectly, it would also limit the potential scope of the game because you’d be limited to the size of the sheet or board the grid was printed on. Playing across a huge table or even the floor would be difficult if not impossible without making your own custom grid.
Can I put Ned Lands on board a ship with the effect “this ship gets +1 to its boarding rolls” and/or “this ship gets +1 to its boarding rolls, +2 if her opponent is a sea monster?” Ned Lands’s effect IS different than theirs, technically.
The +1 boarding part is the same on each of those, so against a normal ship you’d get only a single +1 to boarding.
Ned giving both options isn’t different enough from the other versions of that ability that target only one or the other, so you’d only get a single +2 bonus if the target was a sea monster or submarine.
However, against a SM or Sub you could combine Ned’s secondary +2 with a “standard” +1 from the boarding ability of another ship/crew for a combined +3, because that is different enough.
It doesn’t trigger when a ship is scuttled because of a fire mast, right?
Correct. You must reveal it immediately after sinking an enemy ship. For the purposes of the event, the ship doesn’t get credit for the sinking retroactively from the scuttling. (especially because that scuttle can be avoided if the ship can row to safety/etc)
You may reveal this event immediately after one of your ships sinks an enemy ship
It is sunk by a hit, scuttling removes the sinking attribution from the ship effectively doing the sinking. (starting to go on a Captain Jack ramble XD)
(99% sure, hopefully Woelf will confirm)
Correct. It has to be a hit that sinks the ship immediately. Scuttling the ship later doesn’t count, even if nothing else touches the ship in between.
Thematically, the divers are salvaging cargo from the destroyed ship as it goes down, not pulling treasure off the sea floor.
Also, you can’t mark it explored with a crew like James Cook and dock a ship at it. You have to have made an actual explore action.
I’m not sure why that wouldn’t work.
Timing matters. If you mark the island before docking you get the free explore action. If you dock first, you’ll need a separate explore action.
Either way, you have to actually explore before you can build a fort – a marker alone isn’t enough.
Can a Scorpion ship use its blade immediately after going through a whirlpool, without an extra action?
No, exiting the whirlpool ends the entire move action, and any actions that would attach to it.
Woelf, let’s say I load Ghostly Encounter on a ship with one crew, and I roll for its effect then. Can I transfer Encounter to a ship with a whole lot of crew and use that ship to dump Encounter on the HI without risking any crew?
Yes. Ghostly Encounter’s effect only applies when first revealed, and that locks in the gold value. After that you can safely transfer it between ships like other treasure without rolling, but the value won’t change either.
