Parley?
Another Mysterious Island Exploit fleet
3/9/2024
The final Wizkids Pirates game between Captain Randy and I on the Saturday of Dice Tower West 2024. 60 point build total, with Randy combining some elements of his 40 and 50 point builds from earlier that day to make a new fleet. We used the Las Vegas house rules (through the “RtSS legal” part), and ended up with a more spread-out map than the previous two games.
In accordance with my fleet strategy, I placed three copies of Mysterious Island (MI) #15. Randy placed one MI as part of his island contributions, one that I hadn’t memorized the effect of based on its shape. Since we were using MI’s, we needed to use a d6 to determine who placed each island during the Setup phase (to make it random). We placed 4 terrain each for 8 total. I had rolled to go first, so Randy chose my home island (HI) to be in a far corner of the map. I considered putting his HI at the MI he contributed (partly since I didn’t know what the effect was), but wanted to keep the MI’s in play for maximum fun/chaos and noticed that by putting him at the final lone non-MI available, he would likely not get ships in range of my native canoes on the first turn (knowing exactly where I wanted the canoes before I placed them). I made sure to place the French native canoes at one of the MI #15’s, which happened to be quite close to another copy of the same MI. 🙂
The fleets in turn order:
Ben – Parley?
Celtic Fury started with her stern S away from my HI, ready to round earth immediately upon moving. An empty L’Intrepide was my +5 selection, as events were banned per the house rules. Princess Auraa, Jules de Cissey, and a tribal chieftain were content to camp out at home all game and watch the treasure pile up. XD
The Cursed native canoes are easy to proxy in for the French ones, since they have the same cannon rank, point cost, cargo space and speed. These were 10 French canoes ready to farm mysterious island effects like their life depended on it!
Captain Randy:
Neptune’s Hoard + Hammersmith (F&S version), 1 crew
La Santa Isabel + Bianco’s Haulers, 2 crew
Bonnie Liz + Genny Gallows (SM version), Powder Pete
Libellule + explorer
We also agreed to use the chess clock, at 30 minutes per player (automatic loss for a player if their time runs out). It was Captain Randy’s first time using it, and my first time using it in a non-solo game.
I immediately started redocking the French native canoes at MI #15. Upon flipping the MI to reveal its effects, Randy quickly caught on to the strategy and we had a good laugh about it. I think only one canoe got the negative effect (marked by the S length straw), but most of them got the 5-6 effect: “Randomly move one treasure coin from this island to your home island.” 😮😂
Unlike the gimmick fleet used in the previous game, this MI effect did not require any exploring of the wild island – it was a simple automatic transfer of a random coin on the island to my HI. A “direct deposit”, if you will. As a result, it works much quicker than even UPS – theoretically you could win the game almost immediately by redocking at least 4 canoes and getting lucky enough with the treasure distribution that the 4 coins sent home are worth 16+ gold!
In this case I only needed to redock 6 of the 10 canoes in order to fully drain the MI of all its resources. All 4 of its coins were sent straight to my HI, netting me 14 gold (6,5,3,0) within the first move actions of the game! The last 4 canoes sped off to another MI #15 just a short distance away, with one of them docking and sending a coin home (which I think was the French Royal Decree UT, lol). For the Parley aspect of my fleet, it would be perfect if the coins sent home stayed face down so my opponent couldn’t see them, but we hadn’t established a house rule where coins on HI’s stay face down even in a 2 player game. Of course, Parley hadn’t been revealed yet…
Celtic Fury and Intrepide both round earthed, eager to participate in the MI farming experiment. I flipped the SS version of Eileen Brigid O’Brien (aka my friend Tiffany, the former Wizkids Product Manager for the game), getting her SAT/Born Leader roll to catapult CF towards the MI #15 that the canoes likely wouldn’t get to. Since the CF had her linked crew aboard, she would get +1 to MI effect rolls due to the Ex-Patriot keyword. Normally Tiffany and her crew complement on the CF would be worried about negative UT’s such as Plague or Missionary, but not in this case. There was no need to explore the island – just redock and trigger the effect until the island is drained of all coins!
Captain Randy was not able to reach any of my ships on his turn. This allowed 4 of my canoes to dock at their second overall MI #15, sending home 1 of its 3 remaining coins (farming efforts were slowed a bit lol, they were getting tired). Celtic Fury also docked at the southernmost MI #15, sending home a coin. Those coins were 5 and 0, meaning that I had already won 19-0 after only a round and a half of play!! 😮😂 However, between this type of ending happening for the second game in a row and wanting to simply play more Pirates that day, we decided to keep playing, essentially just ignoring the “more than half” endgame condition.
An approaching Santa Isabel and Libellule means the canoes will likely have company soon, while Bonnie Liz headed through a whirlpool in search of undisturbed treasure. Intrepide and some canoes head towards the CF’s island, ready to take up duties on the farm in case Tiffany gets too busy fighting to redock constantly.
Neptune’s Hoard got a little too close to Tiffany’s flagship! Celtic Fury rumbled into action, with Tiffany’s SAT helping to deliver a devastating broadside that sinks the ship!
Bonnie Liz managed to get the 5-6 effect at the MI Randy had contributed, and it was one of the wild ones! “When this ship explores this island, replace one treasure coin with a unique treasure from your collection.” He chose Sunken Treasure to try to catch up in the gold race, but the double d6 roll was only 5 total. Santa Isabel reached the canoes and shot 1/2 to eliminate one of them, also docking at the island and sending home a 0 coin (she also found the Celestine’s Charts UT that I had put in, which was inconsequential). This was an unintentional way of actually limiting Randy’s fleet strategy – he wanted to load the 0’s and bring them home so Santa Isabel (or Bonnie Liz) could bonus them up with +2 gold, but the MI effect prevented that from happening by just warping it home! (and you can’t load treasure from your own home island) I believe CF got another SAT from Tiffany, going north to sink Libellule!
CF was on the Santa Isabel’s route home, so Captain Randy decided to simply shoot at her on the way by. It was time to reveal the other part of my fleet strategy – Parley!
RotF Lenoir was flipped at last – she was still face down because I wanted her to be a funny surprise when actually using Parley, and because Tiffany had barely needed Lenoir’s Reroll (this was probably my luckiest day of playing Pirates CSG in multiple years). Unfortunately the fleet strategy didn’t work out perfectly as planned – the random treasure transferred was a 6, the highest value coin on my HI. 😂 The idea is to warp home crappy coins like 0’s, negative UT’s such as Wolves/etc, and then Parley them to an opponent! (as the frustration and amusement mounts)
However, this still prevented the CF from being shot at, allowing her to return fire with a full broadside and dismast the Santa Isabel on my next turn!
My farming efforts were less effective at this phase of the game, with various canoes being slowed by the negative effect and mostly worthless coins getting warped home. The Charts and Wolves are just meant to slow opponents and not me, as I had no intention of ever exploring an island in this game.
Celtic Fury captured the Santa Isabel. With only 1 mast remaining in play, Randy was unlikely to get any more treasure home. The Bonnie Liz didn’t have enough gold on her anyway to make up the difference, especially with Sunken Treasure decreasing in value each round. In addition, I would have sank the Bonnie Liz before she could reach home, so we called it.
Scores:
- Ben’s French: 16 gold
- Randy’s mixed: 6
Another wild “proof of concept” game. When abused to the fullest extent, Mysterious Island effects can completely break the game. As in the previous game that day, I had all the luck on my side though. The fleets were arguably a bit lopsided, which was multiplied by the luck disparity.
I really like this fleet idea. It’s brutal but amusingly effective when things go right. It’s a way to gamify multiple abilities and combos/effects in a way that destroys parity and can make a mockery of the game. With 10 canoes redocking at an MI #15 on the first turn, it’s reasonably likely that the entire island will be drained right away. The Ex-Patriot linked crew can help CF send coins home on her own, while Coeur could even assist by dropping the extra chieftain and trying to dock or explore a wild island at some point. We saw one of the ideal situations in this game – high-value coins getting warped home early for a very quick win. The other (arguably even funnier) option is that the canoes send home complete trash, such as the 0 and Wolves. Then your opponent comes for CF when you have nothing good on the HI, and Lenoir parleys them the garbage coins before wreaking havoc and dismantling the opposition with up to 20 shots in the counterattack! “One man’s treasure is another man’s trash”… in this case, it would be more shocking to have coins on HI’s face down, so that Lenoir knows what coins will be parleyed out, but the opponent can only respond with horror when they realize they’ve been had.
Feel free to know what you think of this gimmick fleet idea, or the games played at Dice Tower West. Thanks for reading!
