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Does Jonah’s ability apply to a hit that sinks a ship? Or does the ship sink without needing to roll one last time for the ability?
When this ship is hit, roll a d6. On a result of 5 or 6, move the crew on this ship with the highest point cost to a wild island chosen by the player to your left.
Technically it will trigger, but because it’s happening simultaneously with the sinking and neither specifies priority, the current player can choose to roll for the crew ejection before the ship sinks or to just let it sink first (which will prevent the roll).
Is Ghostly Encounter still worth gold if the ship has the ability of “This ship’s crew cannot be eliminated”? (I assume you just wouldn’t bother rolling, but wanted to make sure the UT still functions)
Once after revealing, roll a d6 for each crew on the ship. On a result of 1, that crew is eliminated. Ghostly Encounter is worth gold equal to the crew remaining on the ship after all dice are rolled.
You can still make the roll if you really want to (or it’s relevant somehow to an outside effect), but crew that cannot be eliminated will automatically succeed/survive.
Can you bring in a 0 point crew with the +5 selection of a 0LR+5 crew? If so, can you go through part of the Setup phase (I think only when going second and an opponent chooses their +5 selections before you do) with an illegal situation on a ship that is then resolved by a crew like Jonah coming in via the +5? Or must the point cap restriction element be fully resolved by the initial X points of your fleet? (very niche use case, and only good for a very brief deke of which crew are on a ship while your opponent might be considering your fleet while making their own +5 selections, with them going first)
You can bring in non-Limit 0-cost crew with the +5 bonus (or even with recruiters during the game).
Because of the timing of when the +5 bonus points are applied, the ship setups will have to be legal before you can use it to add someone like Jonah, although at the beginning of a game it’s much less of an issue because you can simply start with some of the excess crew on your home island.
What if both players only bring Isles of Fire MI’s? (no islands can be HI’s) Would you have to just ignore the ability text for all of them?
Isle of Fire: This island can be used only as a wild island. At the beginning of his or her turn, the active player rolls a d6. On a result of 6, randomly eliminate one treasure coin from this island.
The best option is to ignore the effect for the ones chosen as home islands, or swap the ones chosen as home islands with non-fire islands.
You could also require each player to provide at least one non-fire island, although that could force some extremely unbalanced home island locations.
You can split it with two silver 1s if you have them, but otherwise change should be made using standard gold coins instead.
Just thought of a strange follow-up. What if the players disagree on how it should be split? Ex: One player wants silver because they have a silver explorer and might try to build a fort with the silver and then bring it back home for the bonus (using other gold on the wild island to keep the fort). The other player is nearly out of the game and sees no way to capture the other player’s silver explorer, yet they fear being home island raided for it. Would it be one of those situations where the players roll to let fate decide?
I could also see it getting a bit weird if a player has a silver 1 on hand, but doesn’t want to use it for the split for similar reasons as above. Or, there is only 1 silver 1 available, rather than the 2 needed for the split to be “equal”
Gold should always be the default if players can’t agree. The Silver option really only works if both players want it.
If a mastless ship has Oarsman cancelled to make her derelict and she makes a successful scuttle attempt, does she sink on that player’s next turn even if the Oarsman is “reactivated” due to the cancellation wearing off? The Code implies as much, just want to be sure. (not so much cancelling the scuttle attempt, but if “uncancelling” the Oarsman reverts the attempt since the ship is no longer derelict again)
Once the attempt/roll succeeds you can’t stop it on your own, even if the ship gets repaired or un-derelicted before your next turn.
Being grabbed by an opposing player is the only thing that prevents it at that point.
If a ship has multiple gold bonus abilities, such as +2 and +1, should they be recorded separately as different coins at the home island or can they be combined into a new 3 coin? (when playing with the option of bringing in new coins from outside the game for gold bonuses, and that gold bonuses can be stolen/used/parleyed/etc.)
If you’re using the option to replace them with other coins, whether to combine them is up to the players. I personally would combine them, because they’re being generated at the same time.
-If a docked ship loads Plague by any means it immediately becomes undocked.
Does that end the explore action? Since UT’s are applied before regular treasure is loaded, I played that since the ship became undocked, it couldn’t load standard treasure. Or can the ship finish the explore action despite not being docked at the island?
You played it correctly that it could not load non-unique treasures, because it was no longer docked.
Undocking does not automatically end the action, so if there are any other things the ship can still do as part of that same Explore action (assuming they aren’t also prevented by Plague in some way), it can still do them.
Can a Sea Dragon swoop attack a fort? Because of the following line from the Code and forts having flags rather than masts, I said no.
A swoop attack is not a normal shoot action and only eliminates masts; it does not use cannons or cause “hits”.
The Sea Dragon could target a fort with a swoop attack, but will do no damage because that only eliminates masts (which the fort ignores unless something specifies otherwise).
In a 1v1 game, a ship is sunk with a silver 2 aboard. Does each player receive a silver 1? (instead of gold 1’s) If they can’t (due to not having any on hand), must they mark/tally each gold 1 with something that denotes that it’s actually silver?
That’s going to be largely up to what’s available, or player consensus.
You can split it with two silver 1s if you have them, but otherwise change should be made using standard gold coins instead.
Neither player is getting the +1 silver bonus at that time, so it would only potentially matter later in the game if they were removed from a home island somehow (HI-Raider, Parley, etc.) and then returned.
Regarding spyer abilities, are players allowed to shuffle the cargo on a ship’s deckplate around to make it harder for an opponent to spy something different each turn? (such as going left to right on face down crew across a deckplate)
“Once per turn, this ship may look at one face-down cargo on any ship.”
Probably a pretty hard thing to enforce if they can’t shuffle, though it should be that way in my opinion because it doesn’t specify that the selection is random.
It doesn’t specify that it’s random, but it also isn’t meant to allow either player to control which specific treasure gets looked at, so it should always be at least semi-random.
The player with the treasure can rearrange them however they want, but the player with the spying ability can still choose which of those to look at. Treat it similar to a card game when someone gets the option to look at or pick a card from someone else’s hand; the player with the cards can arrange them any way they want, but the other still gets to choose from what they can see.
All of the different treasure backs that can mix together complicate things a bit, but that can be mitigated somewhat by forcing everyone to contribute only a single type of back, or by using proxies for the mismatched ones. Or, just play them as-is.
Woelf, do you know if “The Navigator” (Leon Keller) was someone involved with the rules at Wizkids, or a fan of the game in the community? I’m slowly reorganizing my oldest PCSG document and fixing some links, and came across the name in the original MT rules thread (or at least the biggest/most recent one – 143+ pages!).
I don’t think he was directly connected with WK. As far as I know, he was one of the earlier superfans of the game who created a lot of good content and reference pages, similar to what you’ve been doing for many years now.
I think it would be great if the next Pirate Code update included the No-Duplicates List. (hopefully easy to include as it’s already made)
That’s a good idea. I’d purposely kept it out of previous editions because it was still in flux, but it’s safe to say it has stabilized by this point. 😀
In The Pirate Code, it says this about gold bonus abilities that add value to a treasure:
-These abilities have no effect on the values of unique treasures.
Why is that? How would a player/layperson know not to apply the bonus based on the simple ability text?
One of this ship’s treasures is worth +2 gold when she docks at your home island.
That goes way back to the early days, but I think one of the original intents was to maintain a clear distinction between the coins with a numerical (printed) value and UTs that produce a value, by allowing bonuses to apply only to the ones with printed values.
If 058 Captain Jack Sparrow trades a coin to avoid his ship being affected by Blood Money/Bloody Gold, I assume the receiving ship has to then eliminate a crew to satisfy the UT requirement?
CJS: When this ship is given an explore action, you can swap a treasure on the wild island a crew on any friendly ship.
Blood Money: Instead of loading Blood Money, put it face-up on the wild island. Then reveal all treasure on the island. Each time a ship loads a non-unique treasure from the island, eliminate a crew on that ship that has a point value equal to or greater than the value of that treasure. Eliminate Blood Money when there is no non-unique treasure on the island. Spanish ships are not affected by Blood Money.
The ship that actually loads the treasure suffers the penalty.
Similarly, if CJS trades a coin instead of loading one from an island that Cursed/Savage Natives is on, can the receiving ship only load that one coin for that turn? I can’t tell if the Cursed/Savage Natives UT’s are triggered per explore action, or per turn. (ex: if it’s per explore, you could redock and explore again for a second coin)
Cursed Natives: When revealed, roll a d6. On a result of 1–3, eliminate the crew on this ship that has the lowest point value; on a 4–6, eliminate the crew that has the highest point value. Then this ship can load one more treasure (only). Then put Cursed Natives face down on the island; this ship must leave the island on your next turn. Cursed ships and crew are not affected by Cursed Natives.
Cursed/Savage Natives applies to the ship that revealed it, which in this scenario is CJS’s ship. After rolling and applying the effect, he can then use his ability normally, with no harmful effects on the other ship involved in the trade.
The “one more treasure” restriction applies only to that specific explore action, not the full turn.
Can CJS trade Cursed/Savage Natives to another ship? It just says “the island” rather than “this island”, so it seems you might be able to trade it to another ship docked at an island.
Even though it returns to the island face down, he cannot trade it away, per this line in the PC under his ability:
-This ability is applied after resolving any and all unique treasures on the island. If the UT must be loaded onto this ship or it must remain on the island, it cannot be swapped for a crew.
In regards to the Becalmed event:
-When affected by Becalmed, a ship with an Oarsman, a keyword such as Galley, Longship, Turbine, or Turtle Ship, or any other ability that allows movement while derelict may move as if it had no masts remaining.
Why as if it had no masts remaining? The event just says “unless she can move when derelict”, but gives no indication that the base move should be reduced to S, or that the assumption is as if the ship had no masts. I understand the thematic reasoning, but I don’t think the ability text of the card supports the Code ruling.
That’s just outdated wording that didn’t get updated when a distinction between having no masts and being derelict was introduced to the game. I’ll make a note to fix it.
Any ship that can move without masts, derelict or not, can still move while under the effect of Becalmed, but their movement is reduced to whatever it would be when using that movement ability under normal circumstances.
Could the ability of the Maui’s Fishhook be used on a submerged target, be it a Submarine or Sea Monster?
Ability for reference:
Once per turn as part of a move action, this ship can randomly take one treasure from any ship up to S away from her.
Yes, that ability can be used on (or by) a submerged ship. Unlike the Hoist abilities, it does not require contact.
The player(s) placing them will know which islands they were placing, but other players will not.
Interesting, that makes sense to me. So if you end up placing an MI you didn’t contribute (due to the random choice), you can check out the effects for yourself before placing it. Would be a funny way to potentially get tipped off about an opponent’s strategy!
I should clarify that they can only look at the ones they contributed. It’s been so long since I used the standard placement rules that I’d forgotten they go into a shared pool before placement. If you place one contributed by another player you’ll know it’s a MI, but you won’t necessarily know which specific one it was.
Doing it randomly is probably the most fair way, although it does still give better odds of getting low stuff if that’s what the majority of the coins on the island are.
I also agree that it can get extremely swingy if the player can always choose. One player gaining even a single 6 or a 7 while another loses the same is a 12/14-point change, which can drastically affect the end result.
I wonder if a semi-selective option would be viable?
One way would be to let the home island player pick out and set aside a certain number/percentage of coins that are safe (1 for every 5 total, maybe?), then the raider can pick from what’s left. They won’t get the best, but should still get something decent.
Another way would be to automatically set aside the highest and lowest-value coins (all 1s, 2s, 6s, and 7s maybe?) then let the raider either choose or randomly pull from what’s left. If there wasn’t enough on the island to have any leftovers after pulling those values out, the selection is made from everything instead.
I’m curious about this as well:
Are the effects of Mysterious Islands considered public knowledge to other players, or is the contributing player the only one who knows what the islands do until they’re revealed?
It seems that a player could look at the back of any islands they place as part of the random draw when executing the Setup rules. (“players take turns randomly choosing an island”)
I don’t remember offhand, and can’t check at the moment, but are they numbered or uniquely marked in any way on the back sides?
If they can be identified accurately without actually revealing the side with text, they would become public knowledge as soon as they’re placed.
If it’s just the MI symbol, they’re treated as hidden until they actually get revealed during gameplay. The player(s) placing them will know which islands they were placing, but other players will not. (A player that memorized each shape might be able to make a reasonable guess, but I think there’s enough variety and overlap that no specific island shape is unique to any specific MI effect.)
Hallowed Ravine
Ability: Once per turn, roll a d6 for each ship within S of this fort. On a 4-6, give the target ship a fire mast.Now that you’ve clarified that it affects friendly ships too (very good!), you should adjust the wording to a more specific timing, either the start of the fort’s turn, or the end of the turn.
That will prevent any gamey timing manipulations of the effect, like rolling for it just before or just after pulling a friendly ship out of range so it will only hit enemy ships nearby.
The PC sets up the replacement or addition of pieces as an option, just to keep things more accessible to booster/draft games or players in general with smaller collections, where enough extra pieces might not be available.
I have always liked the idea of replacing coins with the modified values, especially with the +1 or +2 abilities, and maybe even using the max (physical) value of 7 as a hard upper limit.
Being able to flood your home island with a bunch of loose 1s and 2s weakens the HI-Raiders too much, unless you allow them to choose what they take, or they’re allowed to make change up to some value (like combining enough low coins to max out at the 7 again).
Is the “nearest” part of Hidden Cove always measured from the ship you intend to teleport with it? Is it always the player’s choice whether it’s the nearest unexplored WI or nearest WI with no treasure on it, or does it have to be the closest of those two options regardless of what they want?
Reveal this event at the beginning of one of your turns: As a free action, dock one of your ships at the nearest unexplored wild island or the nearest wild island with no treasure on it.
“Nearest” is relative to the ship you intend to move. You can choose either option – it does not have to be the nearest of both.
MI #15 says: “1-2: The next time you give this ship a move action, she can move only S.”
I assume that means S overall and ignores bonuses? (or changes base move to S)
S overall, because it doesn’t refer to the ship’s base move. Any bonuses that would add to movement are ignored.
For the Dead Man’s Chest/Pension UT’s, must the crew be on your ships in order to be eliminated and get the gold? (or are they considered “in your fleet” if on a wild island or your home island) If they do have to be on ships, is there an exception for crew inside forts you control? Even if crew on islands won’t count towards the new gold, can you eliminate them anyway (perhaps to avoid them falling into the hands of another player) via the UT?
When Dead Man’s Chest is unloaded at your home island, you can eliminate any number of crew in your fleet; each is worth 1 gold.
Similarly, is a crew considered to be “in your fleet” if you load an enemy crew from a wild island via the free transfer rule, and then just unload it right after? Or is a non-Marine crew on a wild island not considered part of any player’s fleet?
With the exception of Marines, crew on wild islands are technically not owned by anyone, and can be loaded/claimed by any ship that docks there. For that UT, the crew would have to be on one of your own ships and/or your home island.
Crew in forts don’t count, because the fort can be destroyed to revert it back to a normal wild island.
Does the gold from Dead Man’s Chest/Pension show up in coin form on your home island from outside the game, or is it a total number assigned to the face up UT? (thinking about how Kharmic Idol can eliminate it later on – would that gold disappear as well) Pension eliminates itself afterwards, but the DMC does not.
The way it’s worded, it doesn’t assign the value to the UT itself (even though it really should), so the value you gain is tracked with whatever external recording system you’re using for other gold modifiers. Removing the UT later won’t affect it.
Are the effects of Mysterious Islands considered public knowledge to other players, or is the contributing player the only one who knows what the islands do until they’re revealed?
Also, the Code states:
Mysterious Island effects cannot be re-rolled
Does this refer to the individual effects of the island or the determination of which effect happens when you dock at one?
For example, I have a ship with re-roll dock at Mysterious Island #13. Am I not allowed to re-roll the roll to determine which 1-6 effect takes place, or am I not allowed to re-roll the 1-2 island effect?
You cannot reroll anything for Mysterious Islands, whether it’s the initial docking roll or an extra effect within that. The only help you can get is from the Ex-Pat keyword, or some other theoretical ability that very specifically refers to MI rolls.
A question regarding the No-Duplicates rule. The very last line of the entry in the Code states:
“The no-duplicates rule applies to unique treasures only during setup, when placing them in the treasure pool. If an ability or effect allows you to bring in additional unique treasures, you may duplicate ones that are currently in play”
Could the same ruling be applied to Events? At set-up you can’t have two of the same Event, such as Duel or Divers, but if you are able to add them to your fleet during a game, could you add a duplicate?
As I’m writing I think this answers that:
“If an ability or effect allows you to bring in a named crew, event token, or other game piece from outside of the game, you may choose one that was previously removed from the game or eliminated without violating the no-duplicates rule, provided that both “copies” of that game piece are not in your fleet at the same time.”
As you found, Events are limited the same way as crew. If one had already been used, its effect was completed, and it had been removed from the game, it could potentially be brought back in later, similar to how an eliminated/removed crew could be brought back, as long as there was never more than one copy of it in play at a time.
The primary reason an exception is made for UTs is because it gets a lot more complicated with treasure reveals and abilities that can peek at things. Some players could know that a facedown treasure is a specific UT, but until it’s actually revealed somehow, it can technically still be duplicated by Pandora’s Box or anything else that added them during the game. Being a “shared” resource due to the random island distribution means there’s also no way to enforce duplicates on a fleet-specific basis, at least beyond the initial setup, unlike most other things.
Meant to be the first one. Would amending the wording to:
“When this ship is given a shoot action, before an dice are rolled, you may eliminae one of this ships masts to cancel all crew and ship abilities of one enemy ship within S of this ship until the beginning of your next turn.”
make the intent and functionality better?
Yep, that will work.
Would something like this work:
“When this ship rolls a 6 on a cannon roll, instead of eliminating a mast, the target ship may not be given am action on it’s next turn.
That would lessen the effect if used by that ship, but doesn’t prevent the copying issue. To keep it somewhat similar, maybe try something like this:
“When this ship rolls a 6 on any cannon roll, the shoot action immediately ends. Do not eliminate a mast; instead, the target ship may not be given an action on its next turn.”
It could still be copied, and a large ship would still be much more likely to trigger it, but it wouldn’t be able to knock out multiple ships at once with good rolls.
Spearhead
Ability: When this ship rolls a 6 on a cannon roll, the target ship may not be given an action on its next turn.This should probably have some extra limitations built in. The simplest would be to make it an optional effect that you use instead of firing normally, and then add a die/cannon limit, like a max of two.
That wouldn’t change anything for this ship, but would make it far more resistant to being copied onto something larger where you’ll have far more chances to roll a 6, and where entire fleets could be shut down with several good rolls.
Split Peas
Ability: When this ship is given a shoot action, you may eliminate one of her masts to cancel all crew and ship abilities of one enemy ship within S until the beginning of your next turn.What’s the intended timing on this ability? Do you have to eliminate the mast before rolling anything, or can you choose to eliminate one after you’ve fired some/all of them?
Does a facedown Oarsman crew not take up cargo space? I seem to remember that being the case from a previous rules question answered long ago, but just want to be sure.
The “no space” ability only functions while face up. Links are one of the few things that do still work while facedown, because they’re not abilities (excluding the handful that are).
I see that the Plague UT can eliminate a Ransom crew. If Plague is used to eliminate the Ransom crew in a hostile manner (such as intentionally ramming the enemy ship to take out their crew), does the player who used Plague to eliminate the Ransom crew receive the 1 gold payout?
It’s a bit more of a gray area, but that elimination still counts toward Plague, rather than the player who delivered it, so no one gets the Ransom payout.
Can you cancel the Eternal and Fear keywords granted by the Manawa nö Köwhatu UT? (“This ship gains the Eternal and Fear keywords.”)
Yes, because the ship gains the keywords. If the UT text simply read, “Eternal, Fear” you’d need Jailhouse Dog or something else that targeted UTs directly to shut them down.
For the units in play tiebreaker, must the unit(s) be capable of an action of some kind when the game ends, or as a game piece in general? (such as when the game started) I can think of some situations such as a ship that can’t be given any of the actions, but could explore if it was moved into contact with an island. Similarly, abandoned forts can’t be given shoot actions with no cannons. Another strange one would be an Eternal sea creature that has no segments and has been moved away from the home island – unless it is “killed” again, it can’t be given an action.
A “unit” is defined as any game piece that can be directly given at least one of the four primary actions (move, shoot, repair, or explore). This includes ships, sea creatures, flotillas, forts, and crew with the Marine keyword, but does not include events, equipment, treasure, or non-Marine crew
That tiebreaker doesn’t care about the current status of any of the units. As long as they’re still in play they count, even if they couldn’t be given an action at that time due to damage or any other factors.
One of Darrin’s old fleets (the Miniature Trading member who invented the UPS fleet archetype as far as I know) made me peruse the Mysterious Islands again and ponder some effects.
MI #15 seems particularly wild, especially in the case of Unique Treasures. “5-6: Randomly move one treasure coin from this island to your home island.” Perhaps I’ll start with a question that might put you in a good mood, before this gets ugly. XD
It’s been rather amusing to think about all of this today.Ex: Bad Maps is flung home via the MI. I assume you can look at it since it’s your treasure. An enemy ship then raids your home island, ending up with the Maps (allowing the controller to move their own HI in a 1v1 game). Can you use Bad Maps to “ram” friendly turtles to get a bunch of them home safely all of a sudden without having them move to touch the HI?
What happens if Cursed Natives is revealed during an HI raid?
Can flinging home the Altar of the Loa cause it to be operational? It seems that it would work, after giving an explore action to explore your own HI.
MIs break things in some weird ways, so I should probably add an entire section to the PC that goes into more detail.
In general, UTs that do not produce a gold value will not function if they end up on a home island, and they are not eligible to be targeted by other effects, with the exception of something like Kharmic Idol if the UT was face up. They’re essentially set aside, and can’t be stolen or activated.
The ones that do have a gold value (Rum, etc.) do retain their values and can be stolen like regular treasures.
Does the effect of the Rum UT last for all player turns following it being loaded, or just the controller’s next turn? I’m thinking about it being found during an HI raid after the MI effect gets used, then a 3rd player using All-Powerful to try and force the drunken crew to go back for more with a repeat theft attempt.
It applies to the ship’s next turn, so if it changes hands immediately after picking up Rum, it can’t be given an action by the new controller during the turn it was captured.
When using Bad Maps, does it function as a linear movement that can be blocked by islands/terrain/ships, or can the opposing player move things up and over/under stuff as long as no contact is made by the end placement?
It moves like an iceberg, so it has to stop if it would hit something. It can’t jump over things, even if the full movement would clear.
-If the island ends up close enough to another island, can a ship (such as a 10 master with a wide bow) dock at multiple islands at the same time?
No. Even if a ship could physically touch its bow to two islands at once, it can still only dock at one of them at a time. The controller can choose which, and it would have to move at least a little bit before it could switch to the other.
A [custom] UT could give itself a negative value, but it would have to explicitly say so.
Due to that, I assume that Rum can’t be worth negative gold if there are 7+ crew on the ship that finds it?
Correct. If there are more than 6 crew, the value stops at zero.
Can you unload a facedown Abandoned Crew on your home island, then voluntarily reveal it to make it crew? (including during an opponent’s turn)
Abandoned Crew can only be revealed when you use their abilities, so you can’t reveal one simply to prevent it from being grabbed by something that takes treasure. Because they are treated like standard, non-unique treasure, they could be taken by a HI-Raider if they were face down on your home island.
Does the Trees UT get loaded onto a ship using it at all?
No. You either use it immediately to repair your ship, or leave it face down on the island.
I think the Code entry for Wolves should probably include a note about needing to keep it face up once revealed. The part about it needing to be hit for elimination implies that, but it’s a little odd that it doesn’t say so explicitly. I could also see a newer player finding it, keeping it hidden, and then not taking any treasure from the island while bluffing that they didn’t want to (whereas Wolves should become known to all players).
The general rule for UTs is that they get revealed when found and stay revealed, unless something specifically flips them face down again, but I can add a note clarifying it.
I’ve never played that a ship has to begin a player turn docked at a wild island to explore that turn (even making the distinction to “her” turn as a specific ship would be very important for something like Hidden Cove, a staple of competitive play). She should be able to dock, then potentially get an extra action to explore.
It’s a bit odd to me that the Complete Game rules should be the incorrect ones here, since normally the Start Here rules contain the annoying discrepancies that got fixed with the Complete Game rules or Code. (Such as not looking at coins while exploring. It’s still odd to me that the wording for that made it into the game – it would make sense for one set if Spanish Main had no UT’s, but if players pull a UT out of their first pack, the game will probably have an asterisk for the “error” caused by the bad rule)
That rule might have been written before all of the abilities were fully fleshed out, because extra actions and even the Explorer’s own text contradicts it. I’m not sure why they bothered to change the wording, unless it’s intended just to make it clear that you can’t grab treasure immediately after you dock. In any case, it’s pretty safe to ignore that “begin the turn” rule when extra actions and such are involved.
On that note, thanks again as always for keeping up with this so consistently over the years. The more I dig into things, the more discrepancies and gray areas I find. I thought by now this thread would be less active, but it seems there will be no end to new rules questions!
You’re welcome! It’s funny how no matter how much gets covered, there’s always something more.
Does anything strange happen if the Wolves UT is teleported straight to your home island? (such as by one of the Royal Decree UT’s, or a Mysterious Island effect) This old review makes me think not, but I want to be sure.
I was slightly hopeful it might prevent HI raiding, but it specifies a wild island in the ability text.
If Wolves is facedown, a Royal Decree can pick it randomly and dump it on your home island, but it’ll have no effect there.
If Wolves is face up on a wild island, Royal Decree can’t pick anything from that island; it has to pull from elsewhere.
—–
Similar happens with Mysterious Islands. They can move Wolves and other treasures around, but Wolves would block anything that involves loading treasures from their island, even if it’s triggered by a ship exploring a different MI somewhere else. Wolves will still have no effect if it somehow lands on a home island.
Some of the interactions between MIs and other abilities get weird, so use your best discretion if something with them doesn’t line up in a clear way.
I find this quite intriguing. It is a bit strange thematically that exploring a friendly ship (that presumably has sailors on it) takes longer than a ship in question exploring an entire island she may not have ever been to. It would probably make explorers more useful throughout a game, rather than mostly being useful in the first half of games. It would be nice to strike a balance where specific ships that have explored islands can explore those same islands as a free action later in the game, but it would require too much tracking effort to be worth it.
This is an artifact of the weird way the game does (and does not) compress time. If you arrive at an island without an Explorer on board, your ship’s crew are really spending the entire time from when you first dock up through your next turn actually exploring the island. When you get to the actual “explore” action the turn after docking, really all they’re doing is loading up whatever they found and dragged out to the beach, which is more consistent with the time spent transferring stuff directly between ships at sea. Another ship in your fleet going to the same island later can load up more quickly because the stuff left behind is already sitting in a place that’s known and accessible (to your own ships, at least; others would still have to search).
Explorers (and extra actions) throw off the math, and there’s not really a good thematic explanation for either of them unless you assume that each player turn is taking place over several days, so they’re really just adding efficiency. Helmsman are similar in that they don’t increase a ship’s top speed, but they plot a better course so you can cover that much more distance in the same amount of time.
A shipwright should be able to put out fires as a repair action
No objection here. Shipwrights feel like they could be made a lot more useful in general. Spending an entire action to replace a single mast barely feels worth it unless you’ve got a lot of spare time. It would be interesting if repairing at an island (one mast at a time) was always an option, but a shipwright would make the action better by letting you replace multiples at once.
To specify about gold in forts counting towards victory, I think it should only count when no other action can be made. It shouldn’t count if there is an opportunity to battle over the fort.
I’m not sure I like this. Essentially, forts would extend the game even more than they already do, as having one in play would make the “more than half” endgame trigger irrelevant on its own. Might need to ponder it more though.
I’ve said (and/or implied) it many times before, and will say it again. The “more than half” endgame trigger is dumb, and should not be used at all.
It’s okay if you’re using the illustrated rules and playing with a single game pack each, but as soon as you move up to a full “standard” game, it quickly loses any purpose for existing.
I even made my own terrain, Pack Ice, it’s essentially a Sargasso Sea, but it moves like rolling fog, and any ship caught in it drifts with it. It also allows you to explore/unload cargo and crew to any island the ice touches. If the ice touches an iceberg, it affects the ship the same way as if the iceberg hit the ship directly.
This does sound really cool, especially the part where you can treat it kinda like an island while your ship is stuck.
Make musketeers rare crew, and they can target other crew instead of masts.
Rarity of items is largely irrelevant to anyone with a decent-sized collection or access to proxies, so that should never be a factor in what an item can do. The way crew are used in the game, being able to target them directly can quickly become overpowered, so I think it’s better that the abilities that do target crew are few and far between, and are either named characters or inherent ship abilities, so you can’t just put one on every single ship.
A crew based way to capture a ship without destroying it? I’m not sure how, I just don’t like the capture rules as they are.
Not a bad idea, but the boarding and capture rules would need a complete overhaul to make something like that work. Making it possible to grab an opposing ship that’s largely intact would make the first-to-strike advantage even greater than it already is.
Allow your own crew to use their abilities on captured ships regardless of nationality.
Easy solution for that is push the single-nationality rule harder, and then when you capture a ship you remove and replace the flag on the back with one of your own. It has always felt weird thematically to be able to capture an enemy ship and then use it while still flying the enemy’s colors. That might be part of the idea they were going for with the pennants included in the older ship models, but they should have included an extra flag or two as well (or instead). Making all of the flags the same smallish size would have been better too, so they’d be much easier to interchange without having to swipe one from another ship of the same specific size.
It’s yet another example of slightly ambiguous ability wordings interacting in ways that were never fully thought out.
I’ll make a note in my updates list to address it somehow, to make it more clear.
Would holy water save a submerged submarine being fired upon by a ship that has an ability can shoot submerged ships.
Yes, because that ability is affecting the sub by allowing the shoot action.
I reject this ruling. The “target” of the ability is the ship with said ability; it doesn’t directly affect submarines because the ability itself doesn’t target them. By that logic, World/Faction Hater shouldn’t work against Holy Water; Captain won’t allow a Move-Shoot targeting a ship holding Holy Water because it “allows the shoot action”.
To quote Holy Water’s entry in the Pirate Code: “This unique treasure protects a ship only from abilities that affect or target it directly. It has no effect on abilities that affect it indirectly by modifying the actions or effects of another ship.”
The interaction between the ability allowing the ship to submerge and the sub-shooter ability is just like the interaction with a standard canceller, except the effect is passive and automatic rather than actively targeted. In both cases, the ability is directly and specifically affecting the shot prevention.
Could a submerged submarine be hit by Neptune’s Trident, and if so if it’s the Nautilus submarine does it take two hull pieces of damage or one because of its defensive ability?
Yes – The wave affects everything in the area, whether it’s submerged or not.
It eliminates masts directly without causing hits, so abilities that reduce/ignore damage from hits won’t apply. Nautilus would lose two pieces.
Would holy water save a submerged submarine being fired upon by a ship that has an ability can shoot submerged ships
Yes, because that ability is affecting the sub by allowing the shoot action.
2) A player has unloaded more than half of the game’s starting gold value onto his or her home island.
–The gold value required to trigger this end condition is determined during setup, before the game begins. Abilities or effects that increase or decrease the actual gold value in play during the game do not change that required value.
Is the last sentence mainly to reduce confusion? (with lots of +1/+2 abilities and gold-bearing UT’s potentially in play)
I don’t think it’s a bad rule, but certain competitive fleets that abuse the gold bonus abilities certainly have an interesting way to exploit it (sometimes by flinging gold home that gets increased in value, sometimes allowing a fleet to win with spoils from just one island or a couple original coins).
Yeah, it’s meant mostly just for clarification, specifically because of all of those abilities and effects that increase the total gold value. You only look at the original/starting amount, instead of having to constantly keep recalculating a new “half” based on what’s actually in play.
That gold rule worked okay way back in the early days of the game, and it works when playing with just a couple booster packs per player (and/or the illustrated rules), but so many gold modifiers and adders got added to the game over time that in a full format game it can end things ridiculously quick.
That’s why it’s almost always better to toss that rule out entirely and use the full multiplayer rules even in two-player games.
Who rolls the d6 for the ability of Paradis de la Mer, the fort controller or the player shooting at it?
The fort’s controller gets to make the roll.
“The first time this fort is shot at each turn, roll a d6. The result is the number of times this fort must be hit that turn before any of its cannons can be eliminated.”
I also think the Pirate Code entry about it is a bit confusing – the ability to me says that if you roll a 4, it ignores the first 4 hits and the 5th hit will take out a flag. But this line indicates otherwise:
-The d6 result is the number of hits required to eliminate the first flag only; it is not the number of hits required to remove each flag. For example, if a result of 4 was rolled, the fourth hit will remove one flag. The fifth hit and every subsequent hit this turn will remove one flag each.
It’s a poorly-worded and broken ability, but the number rolled is the number of hits needed to take out the first flag. Once you’re past that initial armor, every hit after works just like it would against any other fort. It is a little ambiguous the way the ability is worded, but it was interpreted/ruled that way a long time ago in an attempt to make it slightly less broken.
So, if a 3 was rolled:
1) First hit – no damage
2) Second hit – no damage
3) Third hit – eliminate one flag
4) Fourth+ hit(s) – eliminate one flag each
From Tilorfire27:
Does Seleucis move another sea monster Seleucis’ speed or the target monster’s speed?
Can Davy Jones copy Intermediario? It says if this sea creature, but could a vanilla ship copy it?
-Also in the Pirate Code, for the Intermediario entry it lists the ability as “if this sea monster” instead of sea creature. (card does say sea creature)
The ability of Seleucis doesn’t specify the distance, so it uses the target creature’s base move.
DJ can copy Intermediario’s ability, but because it specifies the type he can only use it if he’s on a creature (via Chariot), so it’s much easier for Behemoth to use.
I’ll make a note to correct that wording.
Might be a bit of an odd question, and/or a tough one to answer:
What is your favorite treasure distribution? (standard 8 coins for 15 gold, or otherwise)
Ex: 7,7,1 and 5 specific UT’s, or seven 2’s and a 1, etc.
It’s been a long time (too long) since I last played the game. and far, far longer than that since I last used the official treasure distribution rules. I don’t think the 7-value coins were even in the game yet the last time I set up treasure that way. When it did get used, usually I’d put in at least 2 or 3 UTs, and then would divide the rest as evenly as possible, so it would end up being mostly a mix of 2s and 3s.
Instead of the normal rule, I’d take all of the coins from a couple different UT cards, add a bunch of other UTs (often chosen randomly), and then would distribute everything equally to however many islands were in play. More treasure per island meant more return trips, and a wider variety of UTs kept things a lot more interesting. It’s wasn’t so much a race to be the first to find the two or three highest-value coins.
I’m not sure where you have the current version priced, but adding this negative could drop it down to being a 1-point ability. Making it zero-cost is tempting, but the Sargasso benefit is still slightly better than the reef negative.
Currently the Jungle is a 4 point ship.
I was considering the ability in isolation, and hadn’t really looked that closely at the rest of the ship’s stats. Even with only 2 cargo and S move, that seems awfully low for a ship with three masts and decent cannons. There are a lot of others already in the game only slightly better that cost twice as much or more. That low cost does severely limit options to improve it, so maybe it’s okay.
Without some sort of range extension (2x, etc.) included, when would this ability ever get used? Even with some of the thinnest of the generic WK islands, plain L-range cannons are going to have a hard time reaching anything on another side unless the target is docked and this ship is parked tight sideways against the opposite shore. Cutting the edge of a corner doesn’t add much when it’s safe to assume that any fighting ship will have a captain.
Given that, could the point cost come down if I don’t give it a range extender?
A little, maybe, but not much. Unless you’ve got a Nexus crew that boost ranges it’s going to be difficult if not impossible to give the ship enough of a range extension to make that ability useful, but it’s still good to avoid giving out abilities for free or even deeply-discounted just because they’re not useful where they’re placed.
It’s not likely to be a target for a copier on some other ship, but that possibility still has to be considered too.
Shuri
Ability: Junk. This ship ignores iceberg terrain. This ship may look at all face-down coins on islands within S.You should make that a “once per turn” or “as part of a XXXXX action” ability, just so players can’t use it to annoy opponents by looking at the same coins over and over. As written, it could be used at any time and as often as you wanted, without any timing restrictions or limits.
Something like this?
Black Totem v.2
This ship may begin the game as a member of the Cursed nation instead of its own. If it does, change its flag to Cursed during set-up; it is now a member of the Cursed nation (any crew aboard the ship retain their original nationalities). If Cursed, the point limit for cargo on this ship is reduced by 1.Yep, that should work.
Repeating Guns: When this ship is given a shoot action, you may declare that she is using repeating guns. If all cannons hit during that shoot action, each cannon may shoot again as a free action. The first cannon that misses on its second shot ends the shoot action.
Is there a reason why the use of this needs to be declared ahead of time? Unless there’s some potential negative or an interaction with some other ability being addressed, you could trim it down to something like this:
If all of this ship’s cannons hit during a shoot action, each cannon may shoot one additional time as part of the same action; if any cannon misses the additional shot, the shoot action immediately ends.
I changed up the wording a little bit to make the bonus shots be part of the original shoot action rather than a separate action that could potentially run into the action limit. The “one additional time” phrasing also prevents it from being chained multiple times with really lucky rolls or other outside effects.
Grand Jungle
Ability: Junk. This ship ignores Sargasso Sea terrain.Flavor: The Grand Jungle has a surprisingly deep draft for a ship her size, allowing her to sail unimpeded through the various seaweeds and kelp forests in the Nexus Archipelago.
Taking the thematic angle a bit further on this, you could add something like, “This ship is considered to have one additional mast when affected by Reef terrain.” I’m not sure where you have the current version priced, but adding this negative could drop it down to being a 1-point ability. Making it zero-cost is tempting, but the Sargasso benefit is still slightly better than the reef negative.
ADDED:
Untraveled Path
Cannons: 3L-2L-4L
Ability: Junk. Islands do not block this ships line of fire.Without some sort of range extension (2x, etc.) included, when would this ability ever get used? Even with some of the thinnest of the generic WK islands, plain L-range cannons are going to have a hard time reaching anything on another side unless the target is docked and this ship is parked tight sideways against the opposite shore. Cutting the edge of a corner doesn’t add much when it’s safe to assume that any fighting ship will have a captain.
Giving the ship Extended Range (or the older double range but must roll a 6 ability) would make this ability a lot more interesting and useful.
Black Totem
This ship may begin the game as a member of the Cursed nation instead of its own. If it does, change its flag to Cursed during set-up; it is now a member of the Cursed nation (any crew aboard the ship retain their original nationalities). If Cursed the rank of each of this ships cannons is increased by 1.The cannon penalty seems pretty harsh, especially if this appears on a larger ship.
Replacing that with “If Cursed, the point limit for cargo on this ship is reduced by 1.” would make it a much more direct analog for the original Black Mark. The ship allowing one less point of space is the functional equivalent of a BM crew needing one extra.
