Miniature Englishmen

Originally published to Miniature Trading on October 27th, 2014

With all of the big bad ships that comprise the English faction, their smaller ships don’t get as much attention as they deserve. I randomly thought of the idea for this fleet, and I immediately had a few ideas. All of the ships in this fleet have 1 or 2 masts, and I was tempted to make the fleet bigger since there are so many different options one could choose.

The Bilge is essentially the flagship.  Chances are the last time you saw the Bilge, she was sitting at a home island being used by Lord Mycron to give a huge gunship two actions per turn.  However, don’t disrespect the Bilge because of her past, for she is one of the best one masters in the entire game, let alone in the English faction.

Here the Bilge is the flagship for this fleet of little ships. She is equipped as well as a one master can be, with a base move of L+S and a captain to allow her to move-and-shoot with her 2L cannon. She can survive 3 hits before becoming derelict, and as long as one of her shell panels remains, she can’t be boarded. This protects her valuable crew, among them the 0LR +5 Bratley.

Since the Bilge has a fast base move (especially for the English), she is the ideal ship to tow a flotilla, and here she has the Gibraltar in tow to increase her firepower to effectively that of a five master, with extra range to boot! Between the gun ranks and ranges, this little combo will be quite nasty indeed.

Backing up the Bilge is the Cumberland, one of the four fantastic English 2 masters from the Crimson Coast. She carries a captain and helmsman, giving you two accurate guns moving at L+S for 10 points, with room for two treasures if the opportunity presents itself.

For treasure, I decided to pack in 3 ships for 19 points, with HMS Snipe being the most expensive. I’m not a fan of her ability and I have not used a ship with that ability in a real game yet. She is certainly a gamble, but even without the bonus +L she moves at S+S speed, which isn’t as slow as plenty of other ships with that ability. Theoretically, she’ll be moving S+S+L 50% of the time, which should make up for her lack of cargo space and not having an explorer. I would not normally use a ship like the Snipe, but I wanted to make this fleet a bit different and take a risk.

The Antelope and the Sea Tiger are empty, fast, and cheap treasure runners. They move at S+L and S+S+S, giving all three runners different speeds. This is interesting since they’ll be going out at different rates, which might impact which islands they hit. Although all three runners are fragile, they can carry 6 coins total and move at reasonable speeds. Also, most 40 point fleets don’t have more than 2 runners, let alone 5 ships total.

I don’t really like Natives, but they are nasty and none of the runners have any crew aboard.

Hope you like the fleet! I think it would be reasonably competitive; obviously any large fast gunship would be able to hit this fleet quickly, but between the durability of the Bilge and the fact that there are 5 little ships to chase down, this fleet should win some games.

Thanks for reading; comment and vote! 

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